Whodunnit

Joshua Rizer
Sep 4, 2018 · 6 min read

Climbing out of his car, the detective unfolded a bundle of coupon printed newspaper and held it for himself as a disposable umbrella. Lo-fi cymbals of rain hit the roof of it. The call had come to him from dispatch under the description of a real shit storm, which qualified as doubly accurate and, with a stretch of observation, ironic: He felt the barometric press of both the storm and of neighbors standing slack in their yards or under the canopies of their porches. He crossed to the address of the crimes and peripherally noted their eyes like flashbulbs, their need and curiosity all bouquets of microphones at a press podium. It was, reduced, a predictable equation: crime and then people, like flies on…

A real shitstorm.

Perhaps ten police officers were active outside in the mud, preserving scene integrity and traffic control as well as holding the press at bay. Police lights and press lights and street lights and porch lights all had that soothing mutation under the grey sky, somehow more vibrant but also sealed in an antique amber, living things inside of precious stones.

Under the porch awning he threw down the papers and passed an officer posted outside the door. The cop’s eyes were like the neighbor’s. Detective Mintglade noted the ramp leading to elevated planks they’d already erected so that he could tour the house without contaminating the crime scene. Yellow tape and small flags marking things of significance were scattered before he even got inside, as were the first signs of spatters cast long and thin as if deployed at high speed.

“Just sayin. The first shocker is immediately inside the door. Behind it. Brace yourself,” warned the cop.

Hartman Mintglade had already pulled on gloves. He peered into the house through the doorway and ascended the scaffolding, turning to see behind the door as well.

It looked like a burst stomach thrown inside a wind tunnel. Like God had shat himself against the wall, sprayed there a gory vandalism of our frailty. The wall behind the door was covered in a drying collage of wet chunks with some remainder of bones wedged into the sheetrock. Fanning out from the substantial remains were thinner human chutney and further away still were more of the longer, thinner spatter patterns shooting up the wall and across the floor. It looked as if an entire human being had simply been swatted. The door itself was cracked and sagging, the thin, residential grade metal veneer folded from some brute entry. The required force struck him immediately as almost supernatural.

He was already anticipating the Jackson Pollack comment. It was obvious. Most things were to Hartman, this being the principle reason he’d been selected for such a bizarre investigation. This was why, at the staff Christmas party two years prior he’d received a clay tobacco pipe and the following year a deerstalker hat. Except Sherlock Holmes had never worn a deerstalker hat in the books. Also obvious. He was careful to curb the comparison co-workers made, so in his mind he always said obvious and never elementary.

He looked further into the living room where dozens, maybe hundreds of foot prints stained the floor in muddy tracks, all high heeled and of various sizes. How many he couldn’t yet say due to their chaotic helix of knotted patterns. Detective Mintglade had heard there were four victims, all male, but women had been here too. Perhaps they’d run. Escaped.

“Never seen anything like this. Not…ever. Not even in a movie,” said the forensics lead. He couldn’t discern her meaning as she was covered in disposable booties, a zippered jumpsuit, hairnet and mask as though she were prepped for surgery. She approached him on the scaffolding like some grim, clinical runway model. “Like a goddamned Pollock painting.”

He nodded back. She went away, walking the fat tightrope of the scaffolding. It was wet in there, like when a whole house has been painted inside and the air is musky with evaporation. It was both rain and vascular dew. He moved into the dining room for the next exhibit. There was a small table with unfolding leaves pulled up for some measure of dinner or celebration. There were candles on the table, burnt away into pools of white putty. Wine was there as well, unopened. Only one chair had been pulled away, or kicked away. One of its legs was gone and it staggered down towards the floor without it. On the other side of the table lay the second victim. He was on his side, as if he’d rolled there during his last breaths, to make death more comfortable. The missing chair leg was there, in his mouth, most certainly hammered in using some larger, heavier object. Somewhere in his neck Hartman could see the outline of the square peg. The victim had the look of a trophy rug now and it almost seemed the chair leg was wearing the man like a fox fur scarf. Flashes went off from a camera, making the detective think again of the neighbors and their eyes. Here there were plenty more of the gibberish footprints. Some were on the body and some were buried very deep from the weaponized stiletto design of the shoes. Had this man been trampled in some panicked escape attempt? Kicked? Were the women culprits? He began to consider the scene differently. There was a connection here he couldn’t yet make. Not as simple as the Pollock joke.

He moved further in to where he’d been told another victim resided. In the kitchen, some degree of humor or commentary had been added to the violence. Upon the granite island lay the next to last death, a man on his back, arms hanging off the sides. Flowers were sticking up out of his wounded torso, red roses surely, as if he were merely a planter, a flower bed. Whatever vase the gift had come in was now broken, the shards protruding from the man’s body, his wrists, his cheeks and his groin.

“Gives new meaning to pushing up fucking daisies. Jesus,” said another officer, crouching over more blood splatter. He was unsticking glass from blood and dropping it into a labeled plastic bag. Mintglade had considered the idiom already and had prognosticated its use.

On the wall, underneath a rack with hanging pots and pans was a message scrawled in what was certainly, thematically, dried blood. Writ there was a number in odd spacing with sections smeared, almost as if the culprit or culprits had tried erasing portions to conceal meaning.

It read #l ll l00.

Hartman stared at it, waiting for sense. He pulled out his phone and took a picture of the wall. The forensics woman reappeared across the elevated runway of planks, carrying sealed baggies of evidence. To transport it all, countless trips would be required. She had picked up too many slippery bags and they were teetering on sliding from her arms.

“This is unbelievable. Just unbelievable,” she said, muffled through the surgeons mask. “Have you seen the man upstairs? It’s inexplicable.”

“I don’t need to see him. I was briefed with a description. Would you have someone call the station for me? Tell them the homicide is solved,” Mintglade said.

Homicides, you mean. Solved them already? How is that possible? You haven’t even seen the entire house. You know who these men are?”

Detective Mintglade had pulled up the picture he took and was casually drawing on it using his fingertip. “No, I meant homicide. And it’s not about who did it. It’s not who died. It’s what.”

She held out her hands in mock surrender. “What, then?”

The detective held his phone up to her face, showing her the photo of the bloody graffiti. There he had interpreted the blanks in a sort of ad-lib game, filling in spaces. The message #l ll l00 now said #METOO, after he’d made letters of the seemingly random marks.

Shoving his phone back into his pocket, Hartman ticked off on his fingers. “One, we have a man holding a door. Two, another who’d pulled out a chair. Another victim brought flowers. I’ve been told that upstairs a gentleman has frozen solid in the middle of spring after giving up his jacket. I think it’s obvious what happened here. Chivalry.”

“Chivalry?” she asked.

“Yes. Chivalry is dead.”

Again he could not discern her reaction through her mask, but knew she needed to pass him on the scaffolding to deliver the bags of evidence. Two were about to fall from the makeshift basket of her arms. Outside a gust blew dirty water against the window, rattling it and he did not offer any help.

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