Tony sighed in contentment as he finally got to open his new recipe book. He'd found it at a yard sale a week earlier and immediately picked it up. The heavy book was filled with Italian recipes, some of them actually written in Italian, which fascinated Tony. Surprise filled his features, not that there was anyone around to notice, as Tony flicked through a couple of pages. Before each of the recipes was a short explanation of the recipe's origins, and Tony was amazed at how dedicated the author had been to write so much.
"Nobody will ever believe that I bought this book," Tony muttered to himself. "They think I'm too stupid to read or cook. How do they think I support myself? Nobody can live on just take out," he added dryly as he thought of how the team had been teasing him mercilessly that week.
Tony flipped back a few pages to the start of the first origin story in the book. Settling against the back of the couch, Tony began reading. He was a fast reader, and before he knew it, he had gotten halfway through the story. He was hooked on every word, so much so that he nearly missed the fact that the sentence he had just read was talking about a murder. An addendum at the end of the page noted a website with more information on the recipe, so Tony closed his book and logged onto his laptop.
Navigating to the site, Tony found that it was a blog. Blogs weren't his thing, but he had to know what this supposed murder was about, so he started clicking on links until the origin story came up.
"Living in America as an Italian isn't too bad, but it's hard to find authentic Italian food here. That's why I want this book out there. The idea for making this blog is to reach more people, since it's clear books are becoming obsolete," Tony read aloud. He scrolled further down. "I lived in a small country town for a while, until it was rocked with a murder. I couldn't take the suspicious stares anymore, so I left. They all blamed me for stabbing the victim twelve times in the back."
Tony frowned. There was no way the police would have released information like the amount of wounds. Opening a new tab, Tony googled the town and clicked the first news link available. The murder was front page news, and only stated that the victim was stabbed. No matter what Tony searched, nothing told him how many wounds were in the victim. Suspicion creeped into Tony's mind, but he pushed it aside for the time being. Closing off the newspaper, Tony grabbed a pen and notepad. He quickly jotted down his suspicions, then returned to the blog on his screen. Seeing that the links in the blog took him to the same stories from his book, just in more detail, Tony settled back in his chair and began reading the origin story for the second recipe.
"Here we go," Tony muttered as he found a paragraph talking about the author's next move.
After leaving town, I ventured along a quiet stretch of road. I finally found a diner that claimed to serve authentic world cuisines, so I stopped. Anyone that cooked authentic food had to be good people, right? I went inside and sat down in a booth. A waitress took my order and promised a short wait for my food. As I settled in, I realised that nobody here was staring at me- I had gotten away clean. Well, it was a start at least. I could hopefully start fresh somewhere else.
Tony frowned. The author made it sound like he was being made a martyr, when all it really was was a case of mistaken identity, or of being a stranger in a small town, or of a possible murderer. Regardless, Tony was glued to the story and figuring it out, so he continued reading.
When I got to the next town over, people pointed at me and whispered among themselves. I never did work out what they were saying, but it was uncomfortable for me there, so I moved on. I drove for several days, stopping where I could for breaks, food and sleep. It was a lot like my days as a soldier, actually.
A soldier? Tony thought as he skimmed the next couple of paragraphs. This just got interesting.
The rest of the story went on to tell Tony things that he was sure he only picked up because of his police training. People would have taken it to be nothing more than tall tales, but Tony read it and saw the sentence that clearly said the author committed the murder. He picked up his phone and called the first number he thought of...