FICTION
It Never Starts With A Body Part 9
A Sunny Alexander-Johnson and Henry James Series By P.G. & Sharon Barnett
My name is Sunny Alexander-Johnson, and I’m Henry James, and we’re writers for Dark Sides of the Truth magazine.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
After Nathan Bertram left, we slowly made our way back to the bullpen. Up until now, neither of us had experienced a story like this. Typically when we latched onto a story, we were usually the ones driving the bus until we reached the finale.
Now it felt as if the bus had just rolled over us.
“We’re missing something, princess.”
“No duh, Captain Obvious.”
“You want to slow your roll for a minute? Look, what do we do when we’re stalled on a story?”
“I don’t know, eat tacos and drink beer?”
“Funny Johnson. Excuse me if I throw up instead of laugh. Come on, Shaundrika, I’m serious. What do we do?”
“For the love of God, please don’t quote Arthur Conan Doyle again, please don’t say it. Please don’t say…”
“Once you eliminate the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable must be the truth.”
“And…you said it anyway.”
“Bite me, Sunny. It works. We need to start from the top and look at what we know is the truth again.”
“How long is this going to take?”
“Why? You got somewhere to be?”
“I do have a family, you know.”
“Yeah, and I’m family too, you know.”
“Oh, you did not just go there, old man.”
“Humor your step-father, princess.”
“Fine. Then let’s start with the most obvious. We have Richard Carlson dead in the warehouse. And I’m not about to drill down on how we found him in that damn warehouse. I want my children left out of this, Henry.”
“Don’t blame you one bit, my Nubian writing princess. We know from Charlie Alvarez Carlson didn’t kill himself.”
“And we know Carlson knew his killer.”
“Right. From what Nathan Bertram said, Richard Carlson was going to confront him with evidence that would set the record straight.”
“Evidently the person who killed Carlson didn’t know about the statute of limitations, Henry. By the time Carlson was released from prison, whoever did the embezzlement couldn’t be tried for the crime anyway.”
“Okay, then there had to be another motive.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Money, maybe?”
“Carlson didn’t have a cent remember? Whoever did this ruined the man both personally and financially.”
“Unless the perpetrator had a reputation, and that reputation was tied to some big bucks.”
“Possible.”
“So, what else do we know, princess?”
“The perp had twin sons, not that it narrows things down. Do you have any idea how many fathers of twin boys there are in this world? Hell, just in Austin alone, we could throw a rock and probably hit hundreds of them.”
“Yeah, but whoever the killer is, they worked with Carlson at Crowley and Alcott. I’m thinking we need to work that connection.”
“Henry, you heard what Becca said. The super-spy twins would have to widen the net and start doing random searches of any mention of the company. A company that’s been defunct for almost fifteen years, by the way. Then they’d have to find a way to tie it back to the people. It could take months before they’ll find something we can use.”
“Well, then after all this, we’re really no better off than when we started princess.”
We turned our attention to the routine hustle and bustle of the bullpen. Writers were chasing down leads on the phone, others pounding away at their keyboards, and a few were bunched together chattering about anything but work.
This was our world, a place we usually thrived in, but for some inexplicable reason, today, everything seemed to be a major distraction.
“What time is Henry?”
“Almost nine-thirty.”
“Can’t be, we’ve been sitting here for almost three hours.”
“Yeah, you’re right. The clock on the wall is reading eleven-thirty. Huh, maybe the battery in my watch died.”
“Henry that’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“I just watched you take your watch off and put it in your pocket. Give me your watch.”
“Why?”
“Just give me your watch, old man.”
“Fine. Okay, now what?”
“You have a pair of gloves in your coat pocket, don’t you?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Okay, put them on and try to take your watch off my wrist. You have less than a minute to make it happen.”
“Let me guess. I’m the shooter, and I just plugged you. Now I’m in a hurry to get the hell out of dodge, but to make it look like a suicide, I need to take your watch off and transfer to your other wrist.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, that ain’t going to happen quickly unless I remove at least one glove.”
“Right again, old man. Stop right there. Look at your hand Henry, the way you’re holding the watch. You’ve got two fingers underneath.”
“I know where you’re going with this Sunny, but Alvarez said the watch was dusted, and they didn’t find any prints.”
“It’s the improbable Henry. Arthur Conan Doyle’s improbable, remember? Once we’ve eliminated the impossible? What if the tech missed it? What if whoever dusted the watch for prints forgot to dust the bottom of the watch?”
For several seconds we simply stared at each other. We knew the odds of what we were thinking were one in a million, very close to being an impossibility.
But then perhaps the improbable was staring us in the face just waiting for us to find it.
“Call Charlie Alvarez Henry.”
“Already on it, princess.”
Read On — It Never Starts With A Body Conclusion
Let’s keep in touch: P.G. & Sharon Barnett
© P.G. Barnett, 2020. All Rights Reserved.