Upstaged

Thirteen years. Thirteen years I’ve been breaking my back. Kid comes in, somehow takes a week. Impossible. He’s such a rookie, he hasn’t even developed a crippling caffeine addiction yet. There’s absolutely no way he’s cracked this case. I need to think this through from the beginning.

We have a man. Lying in a pool of his own blood. He’s a dead man. Wasn’t always that way. Certainly is now. In this line of work, that’s a common progression.

Doors locked from the inside. Vents sealed. Surely a suicide. But there I am, observing the body. This was 13 years ago, mind you. My pot belly was still in development. I only owned about three trench coats. What a rookie. No detective worth his badge has anything less than seven. I’m on twelve now. Each with a design made with cigarette burns. That’s what the job taught me. Dealing with the gruesome world of murder makes your clothes all ashy, your teeth all yellow, and your wife all divorced. Not that I ever had a wife. But the picture of an unnamed model I keep in my wallet looked upset with me all day. I don’t know man, I think I’m losing her.

Where was I? Right, I’m observing the body. And ‘what’s this?’ I ask myself. Out loud so that the effect is felt. No point having an epiphany if you keep it to yourself. There’s no I in epi…god damn it. I had a niece who pronounced it ‘emphany’. Certainly no I in that.

I notice his wounds seem inconsistent with a suicide. For a while, I’m hailed as a genius by everyone in the department. Except for the mortician who insists he would have been able to tell us anyway. You can’t control other people’s jealousy, I always say. And other people, do certainly spend a lot of time being jealous of me.

Prior to this case I had a 100% record. One case, one arrest. Earned myself a bit of a reputation. Coworkers called me Mr. 100 because of that. It was an odd case too. You never expect a centenarian to commit a crime, but lo and behold, one had. Next thing everyone knows, the man they call Mr. 100 has a 100 year old in a choke-hold. Though, they only gave me the name immediately after that choke-hold. Timing is a bit odd. But that’s not all my coworkers admire and possibly envy about me.

As mentioned earlier, I’ve got twelve trench coats. My partner doesn’t even have one. He’ll spew some nonsense about not needing a ridiculous costume to solve crime. What a fool. If you want the part, you need to dress for it. Why does he think we put all our convicts in matching convict-uniforms?

His ignorance does not stop him from being a good man and partner though. I’d pay for his trench coats out of my own trench coat’s pocket. But it takes more than that to become a talented and experienced detective. Asides from experience, you need the stench of either cigars or cigarettes. Personally, I am not a smoker. Never got into it. But to be the part you need to play the part. I think it is unfair that the purpose of most deodorants is to mask the smell of smoke. If there was one that gave off the smell of smoke instead, then I wouldn’t have to constantly take breaks at work. Maybe I’d have gotten more time to solve the case.

Speaking of which. I ruled out suicide. The mortician backed me up.

After a little digging, I found that the victim was deeply entranced by the mystic arts. Something that my partner called, ‘malarkey’. Can’t tell you just how proud of him I was when he used that word. I’m not besmirching the name of crystal ball related nonsense. It was his use of the word malarkey that impressed me. Think we’re all in agreement when I say that the 1940s were the golden age of detective-hood. That was a very 40s word. Playing the part gets you the part.

One aspect of the victim’s hobby that caught my attention was hypnosis. I’ve had the old pocket watch dangled in front of me before, I’ll admit. They’ll tell you that you’re feeling very sleepy, but really, that’s just stating a fact. Staring at anything longer than thirty seconds is a very draining activity. I refuse to believe that I was in any way influenced by a stranger. I chose to somersault on stage. It was a well-thought out plan to eventually lull a member of the audience into a false sense of ease. Three months later. I nearly busted one of them. Albeit on an unrelated case.

For the next year I went undercover, posing as a juggler, just to get close to the hypnotist I believe the victim had been seeing. Unfortunately I chose to disclose my full name and identity upon speaking with said hypnotist. Rumors that I did not volunteer that information on my own volition are complete fabrications.

Next we sent my partner in as a mole-person. We thought it’d be funny because he’s an actual mole in their little carnival, feeding us information. Sadly, they got the joke quickly. They were fast becoming my greatest foes.

The years rolled by and I was no closer to shutting this case closed. I was certain that the hypnotist was responsible. He’d hypnotize the victim, mortally wound him, leave, and have the dying man’s final act to be to lock the doors and then lie in the middle of his kitchen.

The head honcho thought this was a ridiculous theory. I’ve seen men with the upper-body of a stick-figure lift massive weights while under the influence of hypnosis. Surely, as a man bleeds out, he could simply lock a door. Locking doors is easy, it’s muscle memory.

Time went by and over the years this one case became my Moby Dick. I hope I’m using that term correctly, I’ve never actually read Moby Dick. I do remember Moby the musician lying about datimg some actress. In a near identical way, this case was lying to the world when it said that the hypnotist was not responsible. Does that work as a sentence? I do not care. My potential memoir, my rules.

I do not understand how it could be anyone other than the hypnotist. Why become a hypnotist, if not for to carry out some malicious scheme? Don’t get me wrong, I do not intend to career-shame, but being a hypnotist for the sake of being a hypnotist seems a little unambitious for a person of such an extraordinary ability – which sadly was rendered useless when attempted on myself.

About five years into the case, my boss passed away. Murdered. By his arteries. Of the set of coworkers I had when this case began, many have died. Some retired, which is essentially being dead too. My partner calls this little dark detail a coincidence. To quote him; ‘malarkey’. A coincidence is two people dying. Six? That’s being targeted.

Of course, he’d say things like, ‘on a 13 year time line, doing one of the most dangerous jobs? Yeah, six is pretty good’. How cavalier of him to suggest that losing the lives of just six people is somehow a win. I could not be more proud. Well, if he had been holding a cigar, I’d probably appreciate the moment a bit more.

But what if these deaths are not an unholy coincidence? What if there’s something far more nefarious at play? Maybe the mystics decided to cut me from my team, my bedrock, my support system. It’s an attempt to weaken me. They have succeeded.

While I’m banging my head against the wall and listening to Edith Piaf on repeat, a new captain slinks into the room, armed with much fewer firearms than the last captain. There’s something about him I don’t like. He just does not have the presence of a captain. He rarely wears his hat and his upper-lip is devoid of a mustache.

Yet my partner insists that he is sterner and more demanding than anyone we’ve worked with before. He may have yelled at me a few times. What good detective hasn’t had the old phone-book tossed at his head a few times?

The rookie couldn’t believe I still owned a phone-book. God damn delinquent. How else am I going to live out the fantasy of having a phone-book thrown at me by a superior officer if I don’t have the one required ingredient?

Our main tool is deductive reasoning, yet we hire a kid who can’t get that?

That is strange though, isn’t it? A child cracked a case that’s been ongoing for 13 whole years. According to him, there was a mishap in the original evidence collection. Something about a mold pattern. I didn’t quite understa—listen. I didn’t quite listen. Don’t even know who they’ve taken in. Whoever it is, they’re wrong. And now an innocent man whom I don’t know will be behind bars for the rest of his life. Or however long the term for these cases usually are.

I look at this rookie now, regaling the other rookies of how he brilliantly made a hideous blunder. Of course, he does not know it’s a blunder. Just makes it that much worse doesn’t it?

His desk isn’t even cluttered. How is he ever gonna cut it as an obsessive detective with such a clear desk? All he’s got on there are his feet and a pendulum. As he leans back in his chair and takes a swig of herbal tea – not even coffee! – from his mug, I can’t help but stare at that pendulum. A singular metal orb swinging from one height to the next. It’s really grasped my attention. The only other time I recall being this entranced was when I had a pocket watch dangled in front of me and….WAIT!

Retelling this story, I find a ton of peculiarities screaming at me to notice them. While I am hot on the tail of this hypnotist, my captain dies. Replaced by a dud. A lot of my coworkers die and are replaced. More duds. Seemingly weak-minded. The kind of minds that would be susceptible to the laziest of hypnotisms.

It sounds almost unbelievable, but the rookie did it. Kurtis did it. Kurtis probably isn’t even his name. No one in the real world has ever been named Kurtis.

I need to cool down and collect my thoughts. He’s 31-ish. The murder took place 13 years ago. This makes him… I’m not here to do math, I’m here to solve crime. This has gone on for too long. Does that count as math? Either way, the moment calls for immediate retribution.

“Kurtis!” I calmly growl as I stomp across the room. He looks up at me but so too does everyone else. Do they all respond to Kurtis? Are they all called Kurtis? I gently grab him by the collar and swing him slowly towards the cabinets on top of his table. Like the child he is, he whines. This mild berating seems too much for him.

“Why did you do it?” I ask aloud. As he struggles beneath my elbow, I feel a weight drop from one of my very deep trench-coat pocket. When it lands it clinks and that distracts me from the task literally under my hand.

Due to my overly precise peripheral vision, I can quite clearly see a golden pocket watch. Fellow Kurtis’s get on either side and manhandle me away. I flail my legs which happened to be free in a futile attempt to escape their brutal grasp.

As the youngest Kurtis gasps for air I have time to study what just fell. A pocket watch. Is it…is it my pocket watch? Have I always had a pocket watch? What kind of man owns a pocket watch?

The answer, much like everyone in the precinct is staring me right in the face. Can I really pretend I don’t see it?

It’s me. I am the man of the mystic arts. Could I really have become so entrenched in my art that I became the subject of it, unbeknownst to everyone, including myself?

My captors foolishly relinquish their grasp. A man, a man with priors is behind bars. Put there by the juvenile in front of me who can’t see a true killer even when they’re pinning them down over their own desk. It’s time to come clean. What a revelation to everyone. It now makes complete sense why a detective of my caliber was unable to solve this unsolvable case for 13 years. I am going to blow all their minds and heroically save an innocent man from jail time and possibly execution.

I can already imagine the front pages.

“Hero cop really a murderer?”

“Mr. 100 Percent Guilty”

Really need to floss before my mugshot is taken. Can’t have a great big seed between my teeth all over the papers. All this whirlwind of twists and turns, all stems from what I am about to say.

Yet. I notice I am not saying anything. My mouth is most certainly open. Where is my voice? What is keeping me from sensationalism?

My feet begin to substitute for my no-show vocal chords. I sprint out of there, knowing full well I can never return. I am now a fugitive of the law. Gruffly, I take off my trench coat and shove it into a dumpster. That life is behind me. And sure enough, so too will be the police.

My nerves are wracked as I take many looks back. But, there’s no one there. They don’t seem to be after me. Was that pocket watch just part of my act from when I pretended to be a member of the crew? Am I not a wanted criminal?

No. No, of course I am. I look the part.