Oh My God! What’s happening? This has never happened before. I am cornered, trapped, boxed in with no safe way out. There has always been a way out before, miraculous last minute saves.
I think back to how I got here and I remember I was assigned this case as per usual. I show up for work and the Captain tells me there has been a murder, he gives me the details and then I begin my investigation. I can’t tell you how I know where to start, I just do. Sometimes, I start with the family, sometimes the place of employment and sometimes I start by interviewing friends of the deceased; but all that is always after I examine the crime scene. I am constantly looking for motives, a place to start, something to sink my teeth into.
Every assignment is unique and interesting, but this one has had more convoluted twists and turns than any case I’ve had in the past. There are so many suspects, each with a different motive, making me feel like someone is playing a trick on me. Maybe I’m dreaming and I’ll wake up to a new day and a new case, but that is the way I feel when I start each new case. I feel like I am daydreaming and walking through my investigation in a fog. I sometimes fantasize that there is a puppet master out there pulling my strings but I don’t tell anyone, because I don’t want to sound paranoid.
I’m alone this time since my dear friend and partner Jake, was killed while investigating our last case. I have so far refused all attempts to give me a new partner. I have vague memories of Jake and I starting out at the academy together and working our way up the ladder together, even passing the Detective’s Exam and being promoted at the same time All my memories before our first case are vague, almost as if it never happened, just memories of having heard the story somewhere. Even stranger is that I can’t remember anything prior to entering the Police Academy. Very odd…I keep meaning to ask if I had some type of trauma and that’s why I can’t remember my childhood, but somehow I never get around to it.
Jake was more than my partner, he was my best friend and lover. I started where he left off. We finished each other’s sentences and had that queer short hand communication that people who have been married a long time have. I have a strong conviction that if Jake were still here, I wouldn’t be in this mess. We always watched each other’s backs.
My name is Lt. Valerie Dodds and I am considered to be one of the most brilliant investigators that ever lived. I have extraordinary powers of deduction enhanced by an uncanny sixth sense about people. Once I close a case, I look back and realize that on a subliminal level, I already knew who did it, and the investigation is just the necessary steps to prove it. Even with a stellar reputation, I am still ignored by the men of my precinct. They have a pathological need for me to be wrong, so they choose not to listen. My Captain, on the other hand, likes my 100% success rate. I make him look good and he knows it, and that is why he assigns me the most difficult cases and to hell with the fact that I am a woman.
Right now, as I stand here terrified, not knowing which way to turn, I wish I would get that odd sensation that I get sometimes of moving backwards, and all the events are disappearing as I pass them, and then I start over. I don’t speak to anyone about this, not even Jake; because for sure they’d lock me up in the loony bin and throw away the key. They say that there is a fine line between genius and insanity, so maybe I cross the line sometimes, and maybe that insanity is precisely the key to my success as a homicide detective.
All the events of each of my cases, every conversation, every activity all start as a narration in my head. It’s like I say it to myself, and then it instantly is! You want to know what’s even more insane…it’s this; when I narrate my suspect throwing a punch at me, and I don’t back away or even duck. I just narrate my reaction to it, like taking the suspect down with my expertise in martial arts. I know you will think this is nuts, but I narrate each move, as if I am choreographing the fight and the suspect doesn’t have any choice but to respond as I expect him to. By the way, I always win!
HELL NO! Never before have I interrupted the narration in my head and refused to follow through. But damn, it’s telling me to turn the corner where I’ll be shot and killed. “Hell no, I won’t go”! Now I feel hands shoving me in that direction but I dig my heels in and don’t budge an inch. Come to think of it, never before have I been so self aware, so involved in my narrative. It’s like the fog is lifting and I am waking up for the first time.
The hands on my back start to shove harder and harder and I hang on without moving forward. The tension between the shove and my will is explosive and sparks begin to fly. The sparks cause a smoky atmosphere in which I am lifted up and that’s when it happens, BOOM, an explosion, and I am propelled into the air and land in a strange room.
I look around and I see an older woman sitting at her desk working on her computer. She is looking at me, mouth agape, as if she is shocked by my arrival. “Who are you and where am I”, I ask? She says, “I am the Author”. This means nothing to me, so I continue “please explain yourself”. She replies, “you are the main character in the detective novels that I write, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how you resisted your destiny and popped out of my book.”
Then it dawns on me and I say, “So you’re the voice in my head…YOU TRIED TO KILL ME! Why?”
“I wanted to tie up all loose ends before I stop writing these stupid detective novels”, she said. “I’ve hated each and every one of them, but they were my bread and butter, so I had to, but now you have made me enough money that I don’t have to write you anymore. I was getting a lot of pressure to continue, so I figured, if I killed you off; that would be the end of it once and for all”.
I thought about what she said and I began to become more and more angry. I didn’t even realize I was slowly raising my right arm with the gun still in hand, and pointing it at her and as I pulled the trigger, I said “DIE, YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH”.
Epilogue
The Author’s neighbor heard the gun shot and called the police. When they arrived and found the study, they saw two bodies, one dead at her desk and the other dead on the floor. The woman at the desk had been shot, but there was no outward sign of the cause of death of the other woman that was lying on the floor.
The lead detective turned to his partner and said “when are these ‘characters’ going to learn not to kill their Authors? This is an important lesson for you, for both our sakes, PLEASE, never ever kill our Author!”
Bio: Creative writing is a wonderful outlet and keeps the mind exercised. Most, but not all of my work has a Metaphysical theme which is my main interest. I have always toyed with the idea of writing, and since I have retired; I have the time to pursue this interest. I have published three manuals and a Meditation CD, plus one work of fiction to date. I am currently working on a Murder Mystery Novel.