DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery

by CHRISTOPHER M. COLAVITO

  This show of fortitude made Knox smile. Perhaps, he thought, there was a fire inside Lane after all. The trouble was, that drive would push him towards failure and not away from it. They may have been standing at the beginning of the end of their careers, but Lane was not put off by the risks. Respect was beginning to emerge in Knox, a strange brew he was uncomfortable accepting.

  “You know what? You're right. I do like puzzles, and I do like mysteries. What I don't like is having my future tied to one, but if you don't care that this could kneecap you before you even learn to walk, I might as well strap myself in and go along for the ride.”

  “That's the spirit . . . I guess.”

  “Cheer up, kid. We've got a genuine mystery to solve.”

  “You're right. Do you have any initial insights?”

  “It's a bit early for me to have much of an opinion. I need some time to sit down and go through my thoughts.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Knox could feel Lane deflating, his interest waning as he was sidelined. Wasting time before one could assess the merit of each piece of information was not something Knox was comfortable with, but if Lane was going to be kept afloat, until they were dragged to the bottom together, such accommodations would have to be made.

  “What about you? What's your initial take on all of this?”

  As quickly as the air that seeped through the cracks, Lane reinflated, back to life. He had been waiting for the opportunity to prove himself to Knox. This was the first time his input had been solicited, and he considered it a major turning point in their relationship.

  “People don't just get killed in locked rooms, so it seems to me that there's only two logical explanations. Either we've missed a key piece of evidence in our initial sweep, or that room wasn't locked at the time of the murder.”

  “That could be, but how would someone go about locking it from the outside? It was a deadbolt keyed from the inside.”

  “I didn't say I know how it was done. There has to be a way, and we're going to have to figure it out.”

  “What's that thing they always say about the simplest explanation?”

  “That it's always right.”

  “Yeah, forget about that. It's not true at all. Murder is a complicated affair.”

  “Maybe so, but engineering isn't. A lock is a lock, whether someone is murdered behind it or not. There has to be a way to get in and out without making it look like it. Magic isn't real.”

  Knox appreciated the doggedness Lane was showing towards logic. He reminded Knox of himself as a younger man, unable and unwilling to admit the world didn't behave according to the rules. It was possible Lane was right, that there was a simple explanation for the problem that confronted them, but he was not counting on it. Knox knew problems grew more twisted, tangled, and complicated the deeper you searched, not the other way around.

  “You're not being much of a detective. Don't write off any possibility until you absolutely have to.”

  “So you're saying magic is our best bet?”

  “I'm saying that by the time we’re done here, it might be the only explanation we have.”

  Detective Lane could sense from the tone in Knox's voice that he needed to give his partner space to let the case percolate through his mind. Knox appreciated not having to forcefully shove Lane aside.

  Detective Knox wondered what kind of parasite had gotten inside his partner, eating away everything but his optimism. Optimism was for characters in books, not something that should be believed in by flesh and blood people. Everything is easier when the ending has already been written, and is merely waiting for someone to connect the dots and fill in the blanks. Real life is a different beast, however. The answer may appear one day, it might fall right out of the sky, but counting on it is a fool's errand. Detective Knox thought optimism would have been bred out through evolution long before, but there did not appear to be much intelligence guiding the process.

  Puzzling Murder Scene Ripped From The Pages Of Pulp

  By: William McNeal

  Police last night responded to yet another murder, only to find that this time something was different. This city is infamous for the violence that occurs within its borders, most of which is related to the rampant criminal underground which has overrun much of normal life. Rather than being another in a long line of criminal killings, the murder of George Hobbes presents the police with a different challenge; solving the unsolvable.

  Sources in the department have revealed key details of the scene, which paint a picture straight out of a mystery novel. Mr. Hobbes' body was discovered, stabbed to death, in the middle of a locked room. The initial investigation has revealed no evidence of tampering with the locks, nor any other means for a killer to have gotten in and out of the room. It is, by all accounts, a real-life mystery.

  It is too early to rush to judgement, but this case could very well become a referendum on the entirety of the city's law enforcement. Their ability to solve this case would go a long way towards restoring faith in law and order in the face of overwhelming violence and bloodshed. Citizens have spent far too long living in fear, as criminal enterprises take control of all aspects of life in this city. The police have been powerless to stop their advance, but have maintained normal order outside their ranks.

  This case will present an opportunity for the police to flex their muscles and prove they have not given up chasing the evils that plague our streets. The statistics may make catching every killer difficult, but they can show they are not picking only the low-hanging fruit. Solving a high-profile murder, with the spotlights shining on them, will give pause even to the criminal underbelly that has for so long relied on police negligence and incompetence.

  Watching this case play out will be a watershed moment for this city. Our very futures may depend on it.

  Chapter 6

  Reminders Of Death

  Dawn is supposed to bring new hope, the promise of another day. Each sunrise carries in it the warm embrace of possibility, the chance to set ourselves on a new path and make all right again with the world. Morning light stirred no hope in Detective Knox's soul. Sunlight didn't shine on miracles; it made clear the scars and debris left on the battlefield after the fight for survival took yet more casualties the night before. He looked around the city and saw nothing but reminders of death, a concrete cemetery that entombed him.

  Sleep had eluded him, not that he gave any effort to the cause. His mind was too filled with questions to shut down for even a moment. Some days he thought of himself as a machine in perpetual motion, and if he ever stopped the endless torrent of his thoughts, he would surely die. It may have been a justification for his obsession, but convincing an addict of the damage his drug of choice has done is nearly impossible, and Knox made sure no one tried staging such an intervention on his behalf.

  He was an addict, and enjoyed the fix too much; he reveled in weaving the threads together to form the tapestry of truth. Without truth, there was nothing in life worth surviving for. This outlook was bleak, he knew, but it made his life possible. If indeed he was merely waiting for the reaper to call his name, there was no sense denying himself a little bit of fulfillment along the way.

  The precinct was normally empty so early in the morning, but Knox did not walk into a box devoid of life. Phones already buzzed, keyboards clattered uninterrupted strings of letters, and the clamor of voices mingled together in one unholy howl. This, Knox thought, proved how important it was for him to keep chasing evil, to continue trying to convince the people that crime was a consequence of, and not the cause of, life. Against this backdrop, he had no choice but to smile, fill his lungs, and brace himself for when reality would come down from above and crush him as it always did.

  Detective Lane waited at his desk, the look of an eager puppy on his face. Knox knew already it was going to be a long, tortuous day. Lane didn't move until Knox sat, and after handing a cup of what was politely called coffee to his partner, he began.

 
; “George Hobbes doesn't have much family, but they're all in the city, so they're our prime suspects. We've rounded them up, and they should all be here shortly. I convinced the captain to let us handle all three of the interviews.”

  Knox was not impressed by his partner's display of initiative. Talking to suspects was a chore, one Knox preferred to leave to others, so he could focus his attention on more important tasks, which to him meant anything but human conversation. Hearing the words as they were spoken wouldn't reveal anything more than a transcript would, and served only to slow down his access to the information he needed. Body language was one Detective Knox did not speak, his eyes giving him no more information than words would convey. If anything, Knox thought, he learned less by being in the room, because he was distracted by the uncomfortable choice of where his gaze should be focused.

  “Why on earth would you have done that?”

  Lane didn't understand the question. He assumed any detective worth his salt would want to conduct the interviews himself, to control the proceedings and make sure no detail escaped attention. Knox didn't operate according to the conventions, which made it hard for Lane to know how to proceed. It put him continually in the wrong, making the desired progress of getting into Knox’s good graces impossible.

  “I figured you would want to be the one to question them, since only you know what you have in your mind.”

  “You have a point, or I suppose you would, if I had a theory to work with. I'm drawing a blank right now.”

  “Trust me, something one of them says is going to lead you off on a trail that you'll be interested in following.”

  “There's that trust word again. You know I don't like it.”

  “I do, but I also know that feeding your pessimism isn't healthy. If we both think we're going to fail, it kind of becomes self-fulfilling.”

  * * *

  Faith Hobbes carried herself with an unusual air of confidence, considering the circumstances. Though no longer the doting wife, she came into the precinct inexorably tied to her ex-husband, a fact that should have led her to show sympathy, either real or imagined. That she didn't try to hide the lack of emotion she felt was telling, at least to Detective Knox. It might not have been an indicator of guilt, but it revealed the sort of woman she was, and what she could be capable of.

  Sitting across the table from him, she gave off the same air of burden he did, as though neither one of them wanted to be in the room together. His reticence stemmed from his displeasure at having to talk with people who would offer little in the way of insight, while hers was forged from an attitude of nonchalance. It appeared, looking at her, that she didn't care that her former spouse was dead, or that she was one of the likely suspects.

  “Mrs. Hobbes, you understand we have to ask you some questions about your husband, don't you?”

  “Ex-husband. Please get that right.”

  Knox had left the qualifier off intentionally, digging for whatever feeling there was beneath her polished surface. She was skilled at not showing her hand, at keeping up appearances at all costs. Prying information from her would either be futile, or she would give it without a second thought. Sociopaths were hard to predict, even for a trained detective.

  “My apologies. Let's begin with your relationship with your ex-husband. How would you characterize it?”

  “Necessary.”

  Knox almost laughed at her answer, which caught him off-guard. Few people were able to be so blunt with him, and to do it with no pretense of apology was startling. This woman, he thought, was something entirely different from the person he expected.

  “That's not a very descriptive answer.”

  “How are you supposed to put complex things into simple words?”

  “With one word after another.”

  She did not appreciate Knox's levity, nor the assumption it contained that she was holding back from him. Her reply was brusque, but honest. A lie, constructed to give him what she thought he wanted to hear, would have been far more complicated.

  “We had a relationship typical of people who are no longer together. Some days we didn’t get along, and other days we talked.”

  “And what happened on those days?”

  “We would fight, as is customary in such cases. Love and hate are not opposites, nor are they mutually exclusive.”

  “So it's fair to say you might have wanted him dead.”

  “Of course.”

  Again, she caught Detective Knox by surprise. Only grand-standers and attention seekers tended to openly admit to such feelings, so her confession struck well outside the bounds of normalcy. Knox wasn't sure what to make of her; whether she was putting on a defiant act, or whether she was incapable of understanding how her words would be construed.

  “Really?”

  “There were many times I wished for him to be dead, but we know wishes don't come true.”

  “But this time they did.”

  “Perhaps yes, perhaps no. We don't always know what we wish for until it’s been granted.”

  “Did you want your ex-husband dead yesterday?”

  She hesitated as she gathered her thoughts. Knox sensed genuine contemplation, having spent enough time lost in his own mind to recognize the signs. It was an open question for her, one whose answer was a matter of fact, not one with an obvious choice if ever asked.

  “I can't say for sure. It's possible my subconscious was thinking it.”

  “And what exactly was the conscious part of your brain doing instead?”

  “Oh, you mean you want to know what my alibi is, don't you?”

  “If you would be so kind.”

  “But of course. I'm afraid to inform you that, regardless of my intentions towards my dear ex-husband, I couldn't have killed him, if you're thinking such a thing. I was out all evening.”

  “Doing what?”

  “My new fiancé took me shopping for a wedding ring. We were at the jewelers trying to find the perfect one.”

  “And they can corroborate your story?”

  “You'll have to ask them.”

  “Can you think of anyone else who might want to kill your ex-husband?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Knox was beginning to ask himself if he hadn't indeed fallen asleep into a lucid dream. He had never questioned anyone who cared so little about the conventions of pretense. Faith Hobbes was a woman unlike any he had ever met, and he was utterly captivated by her. Amongst the pieces of the puzzle he was trying to solve, he had found a second riddle tucked inside, one he might have to decode before the bigger picture would fall into place.

  “Who would that be?”

  “Our children, Emerson and Tory. They had their own issues with their father.”

  This couldn't be real, Knox thought, as he struggled to find his next words. An improbable case deserved a suitably difficult set of characters, and Knox had never come across one quite like her. Detective Lane's words came back to him, that he should maintain faith. He realized Lane had been right, as she had uncovered Knox's optimism. No matter where the investigation led him, Knox had met the most fascinating human enigma he could have imagined.

  “We'll be speaking to them next.”

  Chapter 7

  Crashing Bores

  Beads of sweat clung to Detective Lane's brow, holding on in a vain effort not to plunge to the earth. Weighed down by fear and desperation, they were tiny drops of hope pulled from inside him, sentenced to take the fall that plagued mankind from the beginning. His gait was stilted, his body stiff as he tried to understand what he had just heard. Faith Hobbes made no sense to Detective Lane; she struck him as being something other than human. Though not the veteran his partner could claim to be, Detective Lane had been on the job long enough to have seen most of the faces people could wear. She was an entirely original creature.

  Detective Knox emerged from the interrogation room in a similar, yet altogether different state of mind. Like his partner, Knox had never seen anyone like Fa
ith Hobbes, but instead of seeing her as an alien creature, he saw her as a salvation. She possessed the very qualities he wished he had; the confidence to throw away the rules of convention and live life with no regrets. Knox envied such a strong belief in herself.

  Lane reached for his collar, impeding his airway, momentarily depriving himself of the oxygen needed for thought. As it rushed back into his body when he released his grip, a sense of calm filled him. It was a quirk he picked up, though he couldn't remember how or when. All he knew was that it worked, and it was the only thing that could settle him when the job began to be too much for him. Feeling more at ease, he broke the ice.

  “What did we just see in there?”

  “I'm not sure. That woman is something else.”

  “That's for sure. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be afraid of her or not.”

  Detective Knox bit his tongue, fighting the impulse to make the crude joke that flashed through his mind. It wasn't the time or place for such a remark, and by the looks of it, Lane wasn't in shape to let it roll off his back. Part of being a good detective was being able to read people, and Knox's read of his partner told him to press gently.

  “So what was your take on her?”

  Detective Lane's face told the whole story, a look of bewilderment not unlike that of a child witnessing their first magic trick. His senses told him a story his mind could not believe. He knew it was real, even if he didn't know what it meant.

  “Honestly, and I realize this is the last thing a detective should ever say, but I don't have a clue. There's something about that woman that is almost beyond belief.”

  “I know what you mean. I've never come across anyone like her before, either.”

  Lane's face wore a look of relief as he heard those words. Someone else had seen the same flesh and blood ghost he had. Color returned to his cheeks as he let out his breath, filling his lungs with new air.