Chapter 1.
It's nights like these that make me wonder why it is I stay in my line of work. With the wet wind whipping at my face I stared intently down at the scene before me. Triple homicide. So far no leads, no suspects, and no witnesses. All we have is what we see, a crime scene, victims, detectives, and a lot unanswered questions. This is my job, I'm Detective Wiles, and prowling the dark streets solving crimes is what I do, and unfortunately for me I'm damn good at it.
The homicide involved two men and a woman. Pulling up my collar I looked down at the scene. It seemed as if the small group was walking down the street and then were gunned down. I retrieved a cigarette and lighter from my coat pocket while contemplating the situation. Why were these supposedly innocent people gunned down? Taking a drag on the cigarette I took a closer inspection of a small anomaly on one of the victim's left wrist. A tan line, indicative of the kind made by a watch worn too often. It was gone now, was it stolen? Looking at the woman I realized that she was wearing no jewelry, but was dressed in what appeared to be fairly fancy attire. Was this nothing more than a burglary? No, that can't be it. Petty thieves don't usually hit groups of people. This must have been something more, and then disguised as a theft that went bad.
"Jimmy, you get an ID on these folks?" I called out to one of the techs on the seen.
"Yes sir Mr. Wiles, we have a Mr. James Brook, a Miss Samantha Fletcher, and a Mr. Thomas Burns. We are running the names through the computer now to see if we get any hits." The young techie responded.
"What about their wallets, did you find any money?" I pressed.
"Their wallets...? That's kind of messed up, Mr. Whiles..." The techie said somewhat confused.
Getting irritated I responded, "Look kid, answer the damn question, did you find any money on them?" I getting fairly pissed as I was now soaked to the bone and having to argue about ethics with a subordinate.
He looked a little taken aback, but answered "Well sir, we found about seventy dollars between the three of them, and all of their credit cards too. Why does that matter?"
So, my fear was correct. Whoever had done this stole what jewelry they could grab in an attempt to disguise the crime as nothing more as theft. Staring out into the dark rain that surrounded the area, I tried to gather my thoughts. It's crimes like these that bother me the most. It would be one thing if it was just a simple murder, but for someone to go through the trouble of disguising the crime indicates a certain level of thought being put into the crime. I need a place to start, but I could not do much until we got family contacts and places of work. Until then I would just have to make do with what I had.
I needed three things, a motive, a suspect, and a nice hot cup of coffee. Thankfully one of those was pretty easy to get a hold of.
D. Boud
