-the yellow tape is lifted up as two detectives enter the house-

“I want a coffee Fritz! Go fetch it!” Detective Connor Jones orders like a smart ass.

“No you dumb ass I'm the lead detective,” Aaron sighs entering the room if the deceased girl.

“Ugh…” Conner rolls his eyes and enters.

-Aaron walks over and observes the girl as Connor asks the police questions-

“Its a suicide,” one says referring to the noose.

-a few minutes pass-

“Well it looks like a suicide to me. The chair, noose, everything in place,” Connor says stretching.

“Yeah…. But it's not,” Aaron says narrowing his eyes.

“Heh?”

“No letter, no shoe marks, and,” Aaron says revealing a shot mark on the girls neck, “an entry wound.”

“Wow, no wonder your the lead detective,” Connor says.

“Yes, and now, this is a case.”

They thought it was a suicide. They thought the pretty blonde girl, With all her makeup And money And friends And popularity, Was just another suicide case. She’d fallen from the top of her perfect mansion, Her perfect castle on top of the world. They whispered in the streets “Why would she do that?” “She had everything, why did she give it up?” “Did she know how much we suffered? She was so lucky!” No one bothered to look into it. No one bothered to learn why. They thought she was so arrogant, So selfish, So unsatisfied. They said “She thought she had it bad? She had everything, How dare she think she had problems?” They took bets on why she did it, Made jokes about what drew her there. “I bet her daddy didn’t buy her the right type of car.” “I bet her mommy didn’t like the 98 on her test.” “I bet her perfect little friends forgot to tell her how beautiful she was.” And I listened to their whispered insults, Their shared laughs. I listened, Just like I listened to her. I listened to everything she told me. How her dad didn’t buy her a car at all, Because he knew she would try to escape. How her mom hit her for not getting a perfect grade, Because she always had to be perfect. How her friends constantly pointed out her flaws, Because they were jealous of her kindness. I listened to it all. And when they dismissed her death as suicide, I knew the truth. It was murder. Cold blooded murder. The culprit? Every person who told her she wasn’t enough, Wasn’t pretty enough, Wasn’t smart enough, Wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t a suicide, Not at all. She had killers, People who took her life Long before she fell from that roof.

"Aurelius! Please come and watch a movie with meeeee!" Cosmia shouted up the stairs.

Aurelius chewed on the eraser of his pencil more. A few papers were scattered over the desk below him. He furiously scanned them again and groaned. Cosmia came into the room with worried eyes.

"I still can't find anything!" he grunted.

"Aurelius, maybe take a break and watch a movie with me?" she whispered.

He turned to her with loving eyes. "Anything for you my dear."

He got up and stretched before going to her and kissing her forehead. She giddely walked him downstairs and to the couch. They sat down and she turned on their favorite.

After a while, Aurelius leaned down and kissed Cosmia. She happily looked up and returned it passionately. They kept kissing until someone cleared his throat.

"Am I interrupting something...?" he asked nervously.

Aurelius backed away and coughed. He got off the couch.

"Come on, the movie!" Cosmia whimpered. "It's not over yet!"

"I'm really sorry dear. I really must see what's going on..." he grabbed his hat and swung on a trench coat.

He pulled the guy out with him and began walking. "Why did you have to so rudely interrupt our se- I mean movie?" he growled at him.

"The police sent me to you to investigate the scene of a suicide." the guy said nervously.

"Of course. Well, come on, quickly now." Aurelius jogged over the sidewalks until yellow tape and police lights came into view.

"Good, you're here Aurelius." Officer Yulio grunted. His thick mustache twitched. "You told him about why he's here correct?" he asked the guy.

He nodded vigorously.

"Very good." he coughed. "Come." He guided Aurelius to the scene.

Immediately, Aurelius saw the victim. Her blood was everywhere. He kneeled beside her head.

"Do you know how she did this?" Aurelius asked.

"There's no evidence here except for the blood." Officer Yulio replied.

"I see." Aurelius rubbed blood off his fingers and stood up. "Have you gotten a sample?"

"Yes sir." he nodded.

"And you've examined the mud over here?" he pointed.

Officer Yulio twitched his mustache again. "I don't believe we have, actually."

"You." Aurelius motioned at another officer. "Bring us a light over here. Preferably a big one."

The officer wheeled over a light. "This is the only one we got."

"Good enough." Aurelius lined it up infront of the mud and switched it on.

The bright light illuminated the mud. Large letters appeared. Reading, 'This was a murder. 4103 Judge Avenue. Search if you dare.'

"That doesn't give very many clues, but we might as well search that place." Officer Yulio grunted.

"Thats-thats my...my house." Aurelius looked at him.

Silence filled the next few seconds.

"Well, that just makes things awkward." Yulio sniffed. "Yep, definitely awkward."

Aurelius looked back toward the mud. He spotted footprints branching out from the letters. "Guess we have something to follow. Come on, boys."

The scene around me seemed off, things almost seemed staged. Areas had been disturbed, the dust moved around but were magically back in place after he was found dead. Then there is the fact of the angle of the gunshot. It would be near impossible for a person to do it themselves. These small details would be easily missed if you hadn’t analyzed scenes like this for twenty years. Stepping into the closet I notice a couple of shirts out of place. Shining my light down below them I find a footprint, like someone was hiding there to ambush them. This seems more and more like a planned attach than a suicide.

Terrence Arceneaux parked his unmarked car a little off-campus. He had been called all the way from the 5th precinct down in Bywaters - which was rather unusual. He passed the PJ’s before the clock hit 9 o’clock, the flocks of students in need of their morning caffeine fix still encircling the place.

Terry hurried towards the Newcomb Quad, the smaller lawn on the West of the Tulane University campus. A group of students and teachers was massed around the visible “police, do not cross” ribbons. Terry hated the demonstrations of shock and excitement that these situations provoked in people. It made him sick, because he knew what he was about to find.

He made his way through the crowd and one of the uniforms let him in the closed off building. Newcomb Hall was a majestic brick and stucco building, with a triangular tympanum supported by 4 columns. Terry thought the whole Greek temple aesthetic to be a bit over the top, but the architectural feats were sought after - Tulane was no Ivy League, but it was still the Harvard of the South.

In the main hall, he saw Millard, who waved him to come closer.

“Eric - I got the call fifteen minutes ago. What else do you know?”

“Female, nineteen, Afro-American, found dead this morning by the cleaning guy. She was identified as Toni Clark, an English Major. Gunshot wound to the temple. Prints match. It was the class she was in for Creative Writing, so she knew the place.”

“How did she get the gun?”

“Ruger Blackhawk, .44, belongs to an uncle down in Lafayette. We’re in touch with the local PD to give him the news and bring him in for questioning, but I don’t really know what else we can do here. It’s clearly suicide.”

“Note?” 

“Not that we’ve found.”

We arrived at the classroom door, guarded by another agent. The team was waiting to collect samples, so I just had a couple minutes before they would storm the scene.

The smell was horrid. The girl’s body was sprawled across the teacher’s desk. She’d been sitting down and she had collapsed sideways and forward, her face turned, showing the gaping wound on the right side of her head. Blood had splattered the desk, the walls and ceiling, and had been dripping down her lifeless arm onto the dark linoleum floor. The pink and brownish mass in her hair had coagulated, making it obvious that she’d been here a while.

“Tsk, a damn shame.” Millard did not cross the threshold. 

Terry stepped in, his shoes covered in sterile cloth. He did his best to avoid all the splatters. She was wearing sweatpants, trainers, a short- sleeved hoodie.

“Did she have a bag?”

“No bag in the room - her keys and phone were in her jacket, phone turned off. Otherwise she had the gun and that’s it.”

“How did she bring in the gun without a bag?”

“Probably concealed it under her clothes. Forensics might be able to tell but I doubt it.”

Terry kneeled closer. He could now see her back under the matted black kinky hair. Her eyes were open. Glassy.

On the underside of her arms, he saw a tattoo.

“Did you see this?”

Eric nodded no.

“It’s fresh. And it looks weirdly familiar.”

Terry could not put his finger on it.

“Alright. Let me know when toxicology is done. And get the team in.”

“Due diligence, yeah? Poor kid.” 

Terry stepped outside. This drawing on her arm, that kept bothering him. He went down with Millard, who offered to go with him tell the family. Not far from Holy Cross, where Teddy lived.

They followed Saint Charles Avenue, and Loyola. It was when they passed the cemetery that Terry realised.

“Eric - the symbol on her arm. I think it might be voodoo.”

Millard glanced at him.

“Bad taste for a tattoo.”

“That’s what I think as well. Not a thing you want on your skin.”

“Unless you’re an idealistic college student who needs to find an identity by using symbols she barely understands.”

“Or unless it wasn’t a tattoo she got.”

“What are you saying?”

“That she was marked. And if she was marked, she was murdered.”

The dead woman lay on her side, the carpet stained red beneath her head. She held a gun in one hand and a tape recorder in the other, both tightly gripped even in death.

"We haven't touched anything," said one of the officers. "We know how you feel about disturbed crime scenes. Though I wouldn't call this a crime scene. Poor girl. At least whatever was causing her pain, it's all over now."

Detective Muñoz put on a pair of gloves and crouched next to the body. She carefully reached out and pushed the "play" button on the tape recorder. It whirred to life.

"I can't take this anymore," said a woman's voice, shaking with emotion. "Everybody's left me. I have nothing to live for. This is the end." A gunshot rang out on the recording. The other officers in the room flinched and shook their heads sadly.

Detective Muñoz shook her head, too, but for a different reason. "Get me the DA on the line," she said. "We have a murder on our hands."

"A murder? But the tape -"

"Who rewound it?" Detective Muñoz stood, looking slowly from face to face in the room. "If that gunshot was the sound of her killing herself, then who rewound the tape?"

All around her, expressions of sorrow morphed to confusion, and again to horror.

Suicide. That unwanted fly buzzed around the ears of station. That unwanted fly injected fear and urgency into the senior staff’s veins. Suicide. Another victim failed. Another family to inform.

Slipping from the strange undercurrent that had a hold of the station, you slithered into the driver’s seat of your work car. Drumming your fingers impatiently on the already smooth polished leather wheel, “Come on, Lauren!” You weren’t known for your patience when it came to an urgent call. At last, you saw a figure silhouetted against a backdrop of warm light, before the resounding clang of the door snapped shut.

“Sorry, I did bring you a doughnut. Your favourite- raspberry jam, with just a sprinkle of sugar- I swiped it from under the Super’s nose!” Detective Lauren Order babbled on, still clutching the sweet treat delicately in a paper napkin pincer.

Catching her mischievous grin, you shook your head, “Well you’ll have to feed me the stolen goods if we are going to make it on scene before the men!” Comically opening and closing your mouth as you turned out of the carpark. Hitting the blue lights, you snapped your teeth impatiently. Before being promptly shut up by soft pastry that was shoved in your face.

Light conversation filled the air, once you licked your lips clean of fine powdery snow. When suddenly you clutched your head with the hand that strayed from the wheel. “You alright, Rawkings?” Concern pulled her delicately shaped eyebrows together, tendrils of worry curled around her orbs of steel.

“We aren’t going to a suicide.” You ground out through gritted teeth. There was nothing more to say, except hope that the twenty decades of work together was able to breach the cryptic defence.

Lauren’s lips pursed in thought and, “Ohhh,” whistled out in hurried enlightenment, “Your feelings haven’t been wrong yet, Lottie, but I don’t know whether I hope you’re wrong or right this time.”

“Trust me, that’s all I ask.” Your eyes return to the deserted road, “The Sarge and DC are already there with the local patrol…Shame.” Lauren desperately wanted to alleviate the tension that clamped slender fingers to the steering wheel, yet she had no words.

Nibbling on her cherry painted lips, she did the only thing that was deemed safe in a moving vehicle. Reaching out a tentative hand, pulled in by a gravitational force the elegant appendage found a perfect perch on the curved planes on Lottie’s knee. Lauren felt the muscles tense under her touch, but quickly relaxed. The tense fibres sent out a peristaltic wave, one of comfort and a sense that everything will work out, and you let a small smile tickle the corners of your eyes.

Finding a quiet space amongst the madness you applied the brakes, which let out a soft sigh of compliance. Killing the engine, you stole a glance your colleague, one that would be lost to the hands of time. “Ready?” A question that never should be asked, yet there was no avoiding it. In perfect practiced synchronicity the two detectives exited the vehicle.

Ghostly figures rushed and pummelled the figures, painted onto the city caught in the licking tongue of the dying sun, with relentless fury. A well-oiled ant colony worked tirelessly amongst the hectic display of flashing blue and red, each had a task, and each knew how to complete that task. A line of thin tape flapped feebly fighting to break free of the lamppost to which it had been bound.

At the centre of all the chaos was a man.

A dead man.

Remarkably, there was no crowd. Unusual. People seemed to be drawn to crime scenes like bees to a honeypot.

“Sargent Nix!” Barked Detective Order, “How is he still in the police force?” She muttered lowly, smirking as she observed the quaking of your smart black coat. You made yourself scarce not wanting to get caught up in the verbal shoot out.

You wandered over to the momentarily forgotten corpse, silently studying the way the once sculpted muscles now lay wasted. His pride crumpled on the hard tarmac, drowned in a slowly spreading metallic pool of burgundy, that became more coagulated with each snaking turn. Twisted at an awkward angle, his left arm trapped under his body, whilst his right arm seemed to have been flung out… reaching for something.

Keen caramel eyes followed the invisible line that had been drawn, at the end a small black pistol. To the untrained eye the sidearm would appear to have been dropped by the deceased man.

His face seemed in conflict with his well-maintained physique an excess of skin sagged, like it had given up, into ghastly rolls. A strange sickly pasty shade painted by an amateur hand over a faded flush. Eyes of dull wood bulged in alarm… or perhaps horror at what was to come.

Crimson blooms embellished the obsidian wool of a beloved jumper, tainting the innocent façade of a well-respected businessman.

“It seems as though the Detective has located the body,” An obnoxious laugh grated against the sensitive hairs in your ears.

Coldly, you replied, “Sargent. If you have nothing better to say, get on with your job.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Scolded he scuttled away, to start placing miniature pyramids at sights of interest. Crouching down you listened to the dead man, while ensuring that you didn’t contaminate the scene. This was no way to die.

Robotically, you rose and with staccato steps moved away from the main hubbub. The distance increased, until you froze. Spiders tapped their way blindly across your spine, leaving icy silk behind in a painful wake. There was someone out there. Someone who knew the chilling truth. Rotating your head, you locked onto a tourmaline slash in weakening inferno… there. Restarting in haste your work boots started to propel you forward, desperate to reach the suspect before they blended into the umbra.

You started violently as you felt a hand catch your arm, “Hey, where you going?” The wave of adrenaline subsided; you knew that it wouldn’t be gone for long.

“I’m going over there. We are being watched. The gun…it’s fake. Over there. A female… she has hair the colour of ginger biscuits. She has the real gun- “Your words march out in a disorderly line; your arm raises limply.

Taking a moment to locate the gapping mouth tucked just behind the first pillar, Detective Lauren Order inhaled sharply, “Ma’am, we are not going on any wild goose-chases, not without suitable evidence!” Hurt broke the surface, bubbling up from a hidden volcano waiting to erupt, your friend never spoke to you sharply- so why now? “How about we clock off here, let the others gather the evidence and send the body to the morgue? Then we can follow up your hunch by ‘interviewing the locals’.” Her low rumble of words managed to divert an ugly loss of control.

Nodding once, “I’ll wait in the car,” Bumping into her shoulder as you made your way back to your car, you took a moment to appreciate how unjudgmental and understanding Lauren was.

Unlocking the doors you let a secret slip into the evening air, “This is only the beginning.”

She was exhausted and more than a little irritated at being summoned on her day off. When she arrived at the scene with a cup of hot coffee in her hand and a glare on her face, a rookie quickly lifted the yellow tape for her. She snatched the cigarette out of his mouth as she passed him and stomped it out on the pavement. “That’s bad for your health!”

Copious amounts of caffeine and negativity are bad for your health too, he thought as he watched her stride away rather dramatically, but he didn’t say it out loud. That would be bad for his health...

Her partner breathed a sight of relief and annoyance at the sight of her. She glared at him too, while a more logical part of her mind informed her she was making that expression far too much. She knew she was a sight to behold, wearing a grey sweatshirt and blue jeans, flip flops and her long tawny hair still bedraggled. “You just woke up.” He accused. She looked up at the taller man, acutely aware of his 6’3 to her 5’5. What she lacked in height, she made up for in sarcasm.

“What? No ‘hello Taylor, how are you?’ Im fine, by the way, thanks for asking,Connor!”

“It’s 1pm!”

“It was my day off!”

He let the matter drop and simply rolled his eyes as he handed her the paper jumpsuit. It matched his own and as she bundled her unbrushed hair inside the hood he told her what they knew. “Laini Brown. Age 46. She lived alone in apartment 3b, found by one of the neighbors with a bullet in her head. They all say they never heard anything. Looks like a suicide but you said to alert you if there were any.”

He long ago learned that when she wanted something, it was for a specific reason, even if she didn’t disclose it at the time. This was a weird city and you couldn’t be too cautious. She was a difficult partner to work with, she knew, but she was just too good at her job. She finally found a partner that was willing to put up with her and actually could keep up with her. “Well let’s go take a look at Ms.Brown.”

The apartment was odd and dark. There were windows but heavy black out curtains had been pulled over them and each lamp was turned on but thin scarves had been tossed over the shades, making the light dimmer and more colorful. A mug sat on the island, a tea bag seeping. The tea was long cold but the microwave was still open. A ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ magazine sat on the arm of a chair, open to page 5, showing a recipe for some sort of chocolate monstrosity, ingredients circled in black ink, the pen on the left side of the page still uncapped. “What did she do for a living?” The bookshelves were lined with dictionaries and history books. “She worked at a museum. A curator for ‘Ancient Empires’.” She was in the bedroom, laid out on the white sheets. The gun lay in her right hand and as I studied the weapons, something seemed off. The gun was quite obviously fully functional, that wasn’t what was wrong. Taylor left the body and went over the the desk. Photocopy’s and translations littered the desk, yellow highlighters marking points of interest. She sat in the deceased woman’s desk chair and she heard Connor’s sigh at the breach of protocol. He worries too much. Her computer was still open, simply needing to be woken up. The screen lit in a flurry of color, showing old crowns from the Ottoman Empire. “It would seem... she was in charge of the exhibit... and protecting said exhibit...” Ms.Brown had been entrusted with such precious gems. Her responsibility. “What was the time of death? Estimated?” “11:30ish. That’s all we’ll know until the autopsy. Why?” “Because something was downloaded off this computer at midnight...” She spun the chair around and met her partner’s eyes. “Laini was left handed. The gun is in her right hand. She works at the museum, in charge of certain valuable exhibits. She dictates the security protocols around anything in her jurisdiction. The Ottoman Jewels are a traveling exhibit, visiting for the next two weeks.” She peeled off her rubber gloves as she left the room,Connor on her heels. “This wasn’t a suicide! This was murder!”

“Why would she not finish her beans?”

All the officers turned around, staring at me with silent disbelief.

“Wh...why would you say that?” The police officer beside me mumbled, horrified and refusing to meet my eye.

“No, no, uhh... I didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” I quickly backtracked, face glowing red in embarrassment.

“I mean, if you were going to kill yourself, would you bother cooking? Look, it’s still lukewarm,” I said, dipping my finger straight in the bowl on the bedside table.

I glanced around, before awkwardly wiping the sauce on my trousers. It left an orange smear against my light grey jeans and I began regretting my existence. The chief silently passed me a handkerchief and I muttered a thanks, the entire room staring as I rubbed the sauce further into my trousers.

A cough brought the attention away from me as the photographer entered the room. Humming, I walked to the window and looked out. The crime scene was gruesome, much more horrific than anything I’d seen for a while. It was a woman in her 60’s, her neighbours calling the police after hearing screams. On first glance, it appeared like a violent suicide. Deep slashes up her arms, slashes on her legs, with the finale of a knife to the heart. Blood soaked bedsheets. Nasty.

I was hesitating though. I had no doubt that it could be a suicide, but something didn’t add up. It was the beans. My brain was fixated on the beans.

“God, imagine being that determined to die. She must have had so much adrenaline to do all that,” an officer spoke aloud.

“It seems almost too much, you know? Detective, is there anything suspicious?” Another chimed in, staring at my jeans. “Apart from the .... beans?”

Nervously clearing my throat, I walked up to the corpse.

“I mean, there are all signs it’s a suicide. Victim has antidepressants in the bathroom cupboard, we’ll need someone to follow up on her psychiatric history. If you look at the arm...” I awkwardly leaned over.

“Look, hesitation marks. You know... more shallow ones before the deeper, more fatal ones. Getting used to it, that’s why. Dipping your toe in before jumping in. It’s the type of thing you don’t know about unless you’ve seen it before, and almost impossible to fake. No, I’m almost a hundred percent sure these cuts were all self inflicted. The knife placement seems in line with self inflicted, based upon the placement versus the hand.”

I made a stabbing motion, mimicking what I thought had happened.

“The knife handle being that way round suggests right handedness, which I presume she was, because of the way her bedside table is laid out. Again, just a presumption, I’m not as certain about the final stab at this moment. Because something...something doesn’t seem to add up.”

The officers in the room had stopped talking amongst themselves, instead listening to my verdict. The click of the camera was loud and noticeable.

“The beans are warm, right? Well, more lukewarm. If you look at the body, its still warm but it’s starting to stiffen. The beans can’t have been heated longer than maybe fourty five minutes ago, probably less, yet the body looks to be more around the three hour mark. It’s not exceptionally warm here, so rigor mortis isn’t being accelerated. My only explanation is that the beans have to have been cooked after this woman died. Which then creates the question, who cooked the beans and why? Why were they here, where are they now, and did they have anything to do with this woman’s death?”

The camera stopped clicking, the photographer staring at us in confusion, before returning to their job.

“No disrespect detective, but the neighbours clearly said they heard screaming at 1:37 pm. It’s 2:43 pm now. What you’re suggesting is preposterous!” The chief spoke indignantly. “You said it yourself, the wounds are self inflicted!”

I rubbed my neck, suddenly very clammy.

“The body has to be three hours old, sir.” I pulled some disposable gloves on and attempted to open the woman’s mouth.

“See? Rigor mortis has begun to set in. The body can’t be fourty five minutes old, it’s impossible.” Shrugging, I pulled my gloves off and disposed of them.

“So what were the screams the neighbours heard?”

“Either the person who cooked these beans, or they’re bluffing.”

I stood over the body. The police and my team had been called to the scene fairly early in the morning. The boy on the ground was 20 years old and wore glasses. I looked closely and examined his wrist. He had cut deep horizontal lines into his wrist, a cry for attention. While examining his wrist, and I had almost missed I noticed a bullet hole in his chest. The boy had shot himself and slashed his wrist? Then I realized what was going on here. This wasn’t a suicide. This was a murder. We were looking at a boy who had been killed in cold blood. “This isn’t a suicide. See the bullet hole in his chest?” I said “Yeah, I’m perplexed. How did he get the slashes on the wrist.” “Maybe, it was a prior injury.” “You might be right about that.” Diaz phoned the chief of police. “Roberts, uhh yeah we noticed a bullet hole in addition to cuts on the wrist we are ruling this as a murder.” “Well you’re not autospy analysts so make sure to get it to an actual expert.” “Sure thing boss.” Diaz turned to me. “Woo What crawled up his butt?” Chief Roberts had had a long standing feud with Diaz. Officer Diaz had beat him out for the Citizenship award at police academy. Just then we saw a man go riding by on his bike. We raced outside and shouted hey which made him stop. “Hi do you know the man in that house over there?” “That’s Mr. Stevens.” “We’re investigating a murder-“ I shot Diaz a very critical look and he cleared his throat. “We’re investigating a suicide in that house over there.” “Mr Stevens is dead? So that’s what the smell coming from the house is. I was just on my way over to the police department to report a strange smell coming from that house.” “Could we have your name sir?” “Of course it’s Jerry. Jerry Adliner.” “Did you know Mr. Stevens?” Diaz asked “Yep. We went to AA together. I had no idea he was depressed.” “Often times people who are depressed are very good at hiding it.” “Well I hope you find out what happened.” Jerry got back on his bike flipped the kickstand up and then pedaled away. “Did it seem weird to you that he said he hopes we find out what happened?” “No why?” “Usually in cases ruled as suicide the situation is pretty clear.” Diaz dialed the police detective. “Uhh chief I think we found a suspect.” “But you haven’t even gotten an autopsy report or an official ruling from a coroner yet. Go to the coroner’s office.” We went to the coroner’s office. “Yep it was a murder. There is no way he could have done both of these injuries without one killing him first.” We managed to track down through GPS from the police station our suspect on wheels. We arrested him and brought him to the station.