![]() Midnight MurderA Chapter by Tristyn![]() A who-dunnit. Written in 2005.![]() The rain was pelting down outside the windows of the old
country police station. The three men inside playing cards were young and
inexperienced, so they wiled away the night playing games and drinking. After a
while, Bill got up and stretched, while Bob and Jeffrey kept playing. Bill was a smart, athletic sort of character, the sort to
make girls swoon. You know the one don’t you? He was also a very good leader,
and he was very quick at putting two and two together. He was also very good at
making people and things do something they didn’t really want to, like getting
a little old lady to go home and not worry about her lost cats, or getting a
computer to give them access to a top secret file that only the president could
access. Jeffrey was a little slow, and not very quick at anything.
Often in a conversation Jeffrey would answer your question about two minutes after
you had moved on. Now Bob, what can I say about Bob? He was a hell raiser, a
real little trouble maker, when he was a kid, always getting in trouble with
the police. His parents had the bright idea to make him a police man, to keep
him out of mischief, and it worked, to a certain degree. He didn’t make trouble
any more, he just acted silly and clumsy, and kept the whole force on its toes.
He became the ‘comic relief’ for the little town, and everyone opened their
hearts, houses, and especially kitchens to him. Yum! When it came to the crunch
though, he turned serious, and worked hard, but it was rarely needed. Bob tipped his chair onto its back legs, covered a yawn,
stretched, and promptly fell over backwards when there was a peal of thunder.
The door crashed open and a bundle of wet rags fell in the door. The rags
started to shake and then unroll, whereupon Bill crowed in surprise, “It’s Paul
Miller!” “Why so it is”, exclaimed Bob. Paul,
just then having got his breath back yelled, “They killed him, they killed my
poor sad, little George. You have to
help me find them.” Jeffrey inquired who ‘they’ were in an interrogative sort of
tone, at which point, Paul snapped back, that if he knew who they were, he
wouldn’t need the police because he would deal with them himself. Bill then calmed him down and questioned him about the
murderers. All they found out was that
there were two men, no one he knew, with a black BMW, license plate LJZ 093; which
he knew because it had dropped off in his yard.
He had found George outside in the paddock shot through the head with a
rifle shell next to him. He had originally
gone downstairs to get a cup of tea. He had then heard a shot so he had run
outside. He was just in time to see them
shoot George through the head but he was too far away to do anything. He ran after them but slipped on the license
plate that had fallen off the car and knocked himself out. When he came to, they were long gone and he
went slowly inside, washed off the mud , made and drank a large cup of tea,
then bundled himself in lots of layers and made his way to the police
station. The phone rang and broke the spell on the four of them, no,
make that three of them, because Bob seemed to have curled up under the table
and gone to sleep. The inspector was on the phone, checking if everything was
okay. When he was told about the murder, he said that Paul should go back to
bed, and he would come in, in the morning and sort everything out. Bill then
soothed Paul and told him that they would call him back in the morning to fix
it all, but in the meantime he should go home to sleep. In the morning the inspector came and told them that this
would be good training. He sent a team to clean up Paul's home, and called in a
squad car for the boys. They took the rifle shell to Jeffrey's home to study
it. Jeffrey’s dad was an expert on guns, rifles, and their ammunition, so they
took the shell to him. He told them that it was very rare to see a shell like
this in this day and age. He also told them that the only shop that sold it was
Hunting’s Hunting Store on the corner of Jikka and Ford streets. The checked
the other stores anyway, just to make sure that the bullets hadn’t been
recently ordered. They finally agreed that Hunting’s must have been the only
place that had the shells. As they stepped into the store, they felt like they were
stepping back in time, to the good old days. In those days, hunting was simple,
and you didn’t have these super-easy-sniper-weapon-guns that practically shot
for you. They made a whole lot of mess and you couldn’t fix them if they broke.
But this store had it all! The first guns ever built, the gun that killed J. F.
Kennedy, guns from both the world wars decorated the walls and lots more! After
they got over the whole time travel/stepping back in time thing, they made
their way to the front counter. They rang the little bell, and waited. A little man came out of the back room, with a large rifle
in his hands. The boys stepped back, until he saw their convulsive movements
and reassured them that he was just polishing it. They asked if he had sold any
of the rifle shells that week, so he got his big black book out. He told them
that if anybody wanted to buy something from him, they had to put their name,
telephone number, and address in his book or they got nothing. He came up with
three people who had bought the shells in the last week, and for two of them,
their reasons. He said that Abbie May bought them because they were the only
shells that went into her rifle, and she would use no other rifle because it
was her late husbands. Tom Porter bought them because they worked best to keep
the rabbits away from his crops. The other man had only just moved in, and he
wasn’t very friendly, so he didn’t share his reasons. They thanked the store
owner and left. It was disorienting to leave the store, because of the ‘time
(and era) differences’. They went back to the police station, and checked on all the
people in the area. It was a tradition of the town to have a photo of each and
every person who came to the town, and a little bit about them, along with all
contact details. The name of the man matched up with noone in the town, and
they were beginning to give up hope that they would find them, until they came
to the end, and found a short note basically saying that two people had just
moved into the Veelin house, but had not given their names, or any personal
details. They went to the house, and found a black BMW with only 1
licence plate, reading LJZ 093. They knocked on the front door, and rang the
bell a few times, but noone answered. They decided they would come back later,
and walked back to the car, when a voice called “Can I help you?” They turned
as one and looked at the man who had called. He had a pleasant face, but his
eyes seemed unbearably sad. They asked him to come back to the police station
for questioning, after he admitted that yes, his name was Lance Gelts, and yes, he had
bought the bullets. At the police station however, he denied any connection to
the murder. He told them that he had moved here to escape his old life, and his
ex-best-friend. Last night, two men in black had broken in and stolen his
rifle, the ammunition, and his car. He was going to put in a report in the
morning, but his car and rifle were returned to him, so he just left it. He
thought that he had recognized one of the men as his ex-friend the night
before, but he couldn’t believe his own eyes. Jeffrey suddenly asked who his
ex-best-friend was, and gasped when he replied. Jeffrey immediately left, and
returned ten minutes later with Mr Whitly, who took one look at them all, and
confessed. His plan had been to set Mr. Gelts up, and have him jailed, because
he wanted revenge, and how dare he invade his life again, just when he had
almost forgotten. He also said that he knew that George’s death would be
greatly avenged by Mr.Miller, and he wanted Lance to pay. As Mr. Whitly was taken away, Jeffrey stood with a puzzled
look on his face, “Now that we have found the murderer and solved the case, we
have one last thing to figure out. Why
on earth would someone want to kill George? He was just a cow!” In unison they groaned “JEFFREY!!!!” © 2014 TristynAuthor's Note
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Added on May 13, 2014 Last Updated on May 13, 2014 Author![]() TristynSydney, NSW, AustraliaAboutI am an avid reader, and from the age of two, when I first started to read, I have been checking out of reality to take on all sorts of new adventures. I have been dabbling in writing for years, an.. more..Writing
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