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36
Critical
In high school, all we’d flounder on was rumors, little white lies that fade too dull to be the
colored truth. The heat of betrayal was uneasy on the nape of the neck, but eventually, I figured
branching to colder parts of the world—where maturity’s rigid and not tempted to soften for fun—
would settle pettish parts of the past.
`I taste the bitter in my laugh when I realize how far off I was. I could never fully praise the
extra fun that goes around here, after all, we deal with crime which is never something that should
harbor lightheartedness. Not when relations to the victim are heaving around a weighted heart—
most crimes end fatally.
“Do we have an estimate on what time this all took place?” I finally barge into the discussion,
after only leaking in the information. “I’ve gathered criteria on that spot in town, not very shady I
suppose, but always one with some project going on somewhere.”
“We settled it happened around sunset that day, enough to go undetected by pedestrians—
maybe they saw the burst of beauty as a ploy so no one would pay attention to the sloppiness of
their crimes. Any evidence there?” Julian, a colleague, poses to me. There’s a wilt of my head’s
composure, and I mentally scrounge my head for background.
“Don’t know about evidence, but maybe a witness could be our gold mine,” I offer to the buzz-
ing table. “Speaking to the owner of the house, and the ring leader of the mourners, they decided
before winter comes, a bit of renovating should fix their showcase hardships. Now, if you were to
improve your old timey house, where would you start?”
The buzzes diluted, and vibration only struck their lips. Wasn’t too hard for me since I already
had a lead on who to fixate on, my juddering was out of cognizance.
“Windows, too keep out the cold weather?” In jutted an indefinite voice with a slight note of
question in it. My head sways hastily.
“Could be, but think bigger.”
“Foundation?” Another bug walking in the sticky string I got.
“Think higher,” I prodded to our web.
“Roofs!” Troye festers suddenly, but it doesn’t lighten there. “Their house is an older model, the
roofs in that condition made with straw…The thatcher!”
“Why wouldn’t he come forward?”
“He’s still a fairly young guy like the rest of us. Cases like these aren’t left brained sometimes,
Julius. Crank out the variety of a situation and join us.” I toyed through my beam, for he could be
an old fashioned guy on repetitive cases. If you don’t get a little creative with scenarios like this,
you’re stuck in a bland task.
“Always looking on the bright side of cases, aren’t you?” He seals his laugh, so the venom of it
doesn’t soak the scattered black and white palettes underneath him.
“No use preying on the plants when there are bigger beasts out there, getting away with it,” I say
with a scrunch of my shoulders—the muscles taut in my blades and back to make a smug point.
“We haven’t had a dilemma like this in years. Everyone’s so quick to the big bits, but this isn’t a
swab and clean case. No, we’re going sterile on this.”
As always, chuckles tittered in different resonates and directions, but all narrowing at my meta-
phorically tensed words. In this eruption, no one spoke with articulation; hence, my poem harrows
on.
“Has anyone looked at the case, the little bits, connected the dots? No forced entry. Either they