Mystery of the Century
“John Knox is my name. I’m exactly thirty-six years, fifty seven days, twelve hours, and thirty-five minutes old. I’ve been a crime detective for forty percent of my life. I have salt and pepper hair and am about six feet tall. I work mostly on murder cases and have really put a lifetime of work into them. Ever since I was a kid I always wanted to know why and how about everything. I’m going to be recounting one of my most difficult cases to you today.
The year was 1979 and I was twenty five years old. I had been working as a detective for a firm in New York City. I walked into the office one morning and it was just as it normally was; my boss was sitting at his desk smoking a cigar, looking over some unsolved cases. He looked up and gave me a smirk that had trouble written all over it, I nodded my head and went to my desk. I opened my the window that was by my desk because it was always very stuffy in the office.
“John come to my office please.” Bill’s (my boss) voice erupted over the intercom, the only reason he ever had that intercom was because he was to lazy to get up from his desk and get people in person. I got up from my desk and began my way to his office and he still had that same smirk on his face and that’s when I knew it was going to be trouble. I opened the door and took a seat in front of his desk. He was a short, squat man without any hair except a mustache which was very long and grey, nobody knew the original color of his hair because he hadn’t ever had any in his twenty years as head detective. He and I never got along, one of the reasons being because he had beady eyes, I HATE beady eyes.
“John, it’s good to see you are well this morning, I have a new case for you, do you think you can handle it?”
“Well I can certainly give it a shot, Bill. What does it entail?” I said this with a snap in my voice to show him I meant business.
“Well a woman was shot last night outside of Manhattan, her husband called and asked for you by name to profile the case. He also said his name was Tony and I mean the Tony that’s responsible for having killed eight other detectives for hunting clues on his other eight wives. Her body is in the morgue right now you may want to take a look at it aside of the bullet hole in the chest the coroner believes she is in pristine condition.
“Bill… that sounds like a lot of really hard work, what is he paying?”
“Providing you live to see another day, about half a million dollars.”
“Wow…. If I solve this case I want you to know that I’m retiring.”
“If that’s what you want then good riddance.” I then turned to walk out of the office and he hollered my name so I turned and he said one last thing to me
“GOOD LUCK”
I got into my car to go to the morgue and drove straight there. It was on the other side of the city so it took a while and the rain was POURING. I’ve never seen that much rain again to this day, but anyways back to the story.
I got to the morgue and began to search the body. I asked the mortician for the tox-reports and so she brought them out I was looking at them and there was only one that read high and it was just high enough to kill her. I began to think If he was going to shoot her why would there be a need to poison her also… what if someone is framing him this time, He did call in the crime after all. I continued my search, maybe there is a place where she was injected with poison. Sure enough after about forty-five minutes of searching I found a small pin prick in her left wrist.
“Interesting”
“What?”
“Well look what I just found” as I pointed to her wrist
“Wow so that must be where they injected the poison.”
“My thoughts exactly.” I walked out of the room and decided it was probably time to go see Tony and ask what he knew about all of this. I got into my car and began driving. His manor was in the north part of town and there was a lot of security to get to it, all together it took me about one and a half hours to get up to his driveway. I got to the top of the curvy driveway and looked at the formidably large sidewalk. I began my walk and it was a long one. I knew three of the detectives that were apparently “knocked off” by Tony and they were maybe better than I was but I had to take my chances. I got to the door and I knocked using the huge brass knocking triangle.
THUD THUD THUD THUD
What if I shouldn’t be here doing this, This could get me into serious trouble or even death… is this really worth my life to make half a million dollars? Maybe this is a bad idea…No this is a HORRIBLE idea what am I thinking he’s just going to end up killing me. I’m much to young to die I don’t have a family or anything, I’m going to leave now before they answer the door and I’ll just move to Mexico or somewhere else where they would never find me. I turned to walk back to my car and the door swung open.
“Tony will see you right away, Sir.” I wheeled about on my heels to see who was talking to me at once, it was the butler
“Absolutely, I’d like to speak with him at once.” The butler turned saying follow me and I did, (I shouldn’t have though but hind sight is twenty-twenty as they say.) As I entered the door I heard another car pull up into the driveway I looked before I entered the manor and it looked like my boss Bill’s car. Hmm probably just a coincidence. (Well it wasn’t) I walked into the huge foyer and began to take my shoes off so I didn’t stain his Italian rugs that were all over his house.
“There’s no need for that sir we aren’t expecting you to be here much longer.” (Yes he meant on Earth, with the living, I wish I would have known.) I kept my shoes on and walked through a set of double doors and as I did they closed behind me with a loud bang. I looked ahead of me and there he was Tony himself. Fear ran through my body like a deer’s on the chase. I didn’t know what to do or to say.
“Hello John, how have you been? Never mind don’t answer that I already know since I’ve been watching you all these weeks. You’re a good detective John but that’s bad for my business. I bet you didn’t check that body close enough to figure out that it was actually just a rubber model huh. I paid the mortician off to put it there, the killing never happened. The only killing that’s going to be happening this week is the killing of you.” He smiled with a maniacal tone to it.
“Well Tony, I’m sorry we had to meet on these terms,”
“That’s enough talking, I’m sure you want to know what you did to deserve all of this right? Don’t answer that these are rhetorical questions. Well when I said that you’re bad for business I meant for the mob business not the detective, I know you saw Bill’s car pull up into the drive, but that wasn’t Bill in the car, it was Maria my wife. The same wife that’s been killed seven times before. We just needed to get your company out of here before we could take over the whole city and eventually the state, if you would be so kind as to turn around and meet your killer, Maria.” I turned slowly to see the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen standing behind me with a gun pointed straight at me.
“I hope this is all just a misunderstanding Maria, maybe we could work something out?”
“No I think that Tony and I have it all under control but thanks.”
“Shoot him” Tony said calmly and she began to pull the trigger and at the last second I ducked
BANG
I heard a hysterical scream immediately after the gunshot Maria dropped the gun and ran over to Tony. Thinking quickly I picked up the gun and pointed it at all of them including the butler.
“Call the cops, NOW and tell them that detective John Knox has just solved the mystery of the century.”
“So to all of you out there reading the book I just wrote, thank you for you support and I hope that the book gave you many helpful clues as to how to solve the everyday mystery of life.”
“Thank you John” said the reporter whose name just isn’t important to me John Knox detective of the century.