Wian Bhite – The Worst Detective in Deductive sans Reasoning.

As soon as I heard the door close I knew I had found the killer. It was, to be honest, just that easy. The woman sat down and looked up at me, as if to say “What do you want?”

“What do you want?” she asked me.

“I want to know why you killed Billy-Bob the Burger Snob,” I said, trying to not sneeze. I snoze anyway.

“Billy-Bob the Burger Snob?” she raised an eyebrow. It raised the stakes. I razed myself of any feelings and pressed on.

“Mascot of the Snobby Burger chain? He’s dead. You killed him.”

“I’ve never even heard of that clown…”

“No! The clown works across the metaphorical street! Don’t try and confuse me!” I didn’t want to tell her but I was already confused. Confused about why she kept denying she had done it.

“I don’t…”

“You do!” I told her, turning my back as I paced, “I’ll tell you why, even.”

“Tell me then.”

“Those earrings you wear, the silver hearts. They were bought for you by a lover, I can tell. But he died, the wear on the left one where you reach up and rub it between your thumb and finger, reminding yourself that he’s all deadified. You still wear them because of a sick fascination with death and what it brings. The rot, the loss of life, the death part. That part there. Fascinates you.”

I picked up a glass of water and drank. She looked at me hard, angrily, but kept quiet. Good, because I wasn’t finished.

“But being fascinated with a lover’s death wasn’t enough. you had to branch out. To kill others. Your left index finger, it’s crooked. You broke it once playing basketball, and in revenge killed your coach. No,” I rushed out, “don’t try to deny it, I’ve seen all the signs before. The crinkle of your skin, the way your right ear is droopier than the left, it all speaks to a long career playing basketball. And murdering.

“But then you had to go one step further. Once your basketball career ended and you had to hide so they wouldn’t suspect you had killed your coach, it was the team mascot who found you out wasn’t it? And so you became obsessed with killing them. Which brings us to today, and Billy-Bob the Burger Snob. You killed him. You killed him hard and you killed him good.”

She squinted, as if trying to see me for the first time. “Not a single part of that was right,” she said slowly, as if speaking to an infant.

“Tell it to the cops,” I said to her, with a nod.

She shrugged and stood up. Outside the room we were in cops waited. She went there, and talked to them. They led her away, obviously to a jail cell to spend the rest of her life in. Except they went the other way, toward the exit. Must have been to a waiting Police van.

I sat back, satisfied. Another case solved, expertly.