j_ung wrote:
I was sound asleep in my usual position on the couch -- slumped to the side with a full ashtray in my lap and an empty gin bottle in my hand -- when the call came in. I fumbled for the phone in my drunken haze, knocking a lamp to floor in the process.
"It's your dime," I growled. "Spill it."
"Mr ung?" It was a woman's voice. She seemed shaken to her very core. I knew with only those two words that this was a woman who knew all about pain -- and not the good kind. "j_ung?" She asked again.
I sat up straighter. "Yeah," I replied. "This is j_ung. What can I do for you?"
I was on the phone, mostly calming the babe down, for over and hour, but the details were still sketchy. "A murder," she had sobbed. Somebody close to her had been killed. I bundled my coat around me, scant protection against the biting chill of the night, and left for the crime scene.
I arrived just after the cops, which was perfect. The fools had already secured the scene for me, but hadn't yet crawled all through it and ruined the evidence. Freakin cops! Here's what I saw.
[img]http://img70.echo.cx/img70/7263/crimescene8vq.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img148.echo.cx/img148/8274/chalklines2cf.jpg[/img]
Closer examination revealed several grizzly details. The vic, a small green frog-like fella, hadn't just been clipped, he'd been mangled. The look on his face showed that, at the time of his death, he was terrified and in no small amount of pain.
[img]http://img233.echo.cx/img233/9881/victimface1ub.jpg[/img]
The vic's wounds were horrific in the extreme. His guts had been pulled out and exposed to the air, which was saturated with the stink of decomposing plastic. This was no fresh kill. A thought occurred to me as I prowled the scene for clues. To pull guts out like that, one would almost have to reach into the body and yank forcefully. I didn't like that line of thinking, but I looked closer anyway. I choked down my bile when I saw exactly what I expected to see:
bite marks. I was dealing with a real psycho on this one. The perp who did this was inhuman for sure.
[img]http://img233.echo.cx/img233/5251/evisceration5xc.jpg[/img]
Splatter marks further enhanced my gut feeling that this was no ordinary killer. This guy -- or guys -- had a real lust for destruction. He must have reached in the vic's body, grabbed a fistful of innards and shook the poor guy by his own entrails. Yeah, I thought again, a real animal.
[img]http://img215.echo.cx/img215/952/swanguts5oh.jpg[/img
[img]http://img148.echo.cx/img148/1845/splatter6zd.jpg[/img]
I was momentarily lost in thought -- dark, deadly thoughts that would drive a man to drink if he didn't already spend 2/3 of his life in a gin bottle -- when a tap on my shoulder snapped me out of it. "Hey ung, whatter you doin here?" It was Sergeant McClasky, a morbidly obese, greaseball cop who always had some sort of food somewhere on his person. Tonight it was powdered sugar on his chin and shirt. Doughnuts. Typical. He also stunk of farts.
"McClasky, you puss bucket," I growled, my disdain for cops veritably dripping from every word. "I got a call tonight from the vic's wife. You guys talk to her yet?"
"Naw," he replied, completely missing my attitude. What a dumbass. "But we do got shots from a surveillance camera."
"And you didn't think that was worth mentioning before?"
"Before what?"
"Nevermind," I sighed. "I need to see those shots."
"I don't see why," he replied. "They don't show nothin' but a couple dogs. But, if you wanna see 'em, c'mon, I guess." He shrugged and turned away, so I followed in his ample wake. Ugh! I hate the smell of farts.
He was right; the shots didn't show much -- just a couple dogs. Still, something didn't seem right. I couldn't quite put a finger on it, though, and to be honest, my gin buzz was wearing off. I always think better when I'm drunk, so headed out for the bar to do some real thinkin'. Oh yeah, when that fat jerk McClasky wasn't lookin', I "borrowed" one of the surveillance shots.
[img]http://img236.echo.cx/img236/2517/survaillance16nt.jpg[/img]
I pushed the door open to Vinnie's Bar, and walked into a familiar dark room. Smoke hung in the air like curtains and swirled behind me as I walked purposefully to the bar. Vinnie, my old friend, was there as always. I didn't have to say a word; he knew what I wanted. The sound of the gin hitting the bottom of the glass was sweeter than jazz to me. "Make it a triple." I said.
"Whoa," Said Vinnie. "Rough night?"
Yeah," I said back. "I just left a pretty bad scene. Murder. Poor guy had his guts ripped right out."
"Any clues?" Asked Vinnie.
"Just one," I said and dropped the surveillance shot on the bar.
Vinnie picked it up and turned it upside down. He gazed at it a few seconds and his expression grew serious. He turned it sideways and his face went even more so. "This is more than just a clue," he said. "This is a shot of the murder scene, while the murder is happening!"
"What the Hell are you talkin' about?" I asked. "There's nothing in that shot, but a couple o' dogs playin'!"
"Wait a sec," said Vinnie. He grabbed my gin glass and topped it off, slapped the photo down on the bar and then sat the glass on top. Sure enough, the gin acted as a magnifying glass and the details I missed before were clear as day. We had our perps and I was right, they were real animals.
[img]http://img156.echo.cx/img156/713/redhanded9ww.jpg[/img]
A quick call to McClasky and a whole squad of Keystone cops was on its way back to the house to make the arrests. Stupid dogs. Killing a guy right in front of a camera? Yeah, typical.
The next day, I read in the paper that the both of them had turned states evidence against each other in return for a shortened sentence. "Great," I said aloud to myself when I read it. "They'll get at least a smack on the nose with a rolled newspaper."
[img]http://img125.echo.cx/img125/8632/louisfront9mu.jpg[/img]
[img]http://img218.echo.cx/img218/8137/daisyfront3hp.jpg[/img]
Case Closed.
Good show 
