Academy Murders: Machine Gun

Beeps from her ankle monitor did not bother her. As the rhythmic blips continued, Kim pored over what seemed like reams of information. She scoured the printed out pieces and also looked at a laptop screen. A phone sat on the adjacent nightstand. It was a government phone which provided only basic functions such as transmit and receive calls and form texts.

Steam from the instant coffee looked like the engine to a nineteenth century train. The black liquid kept her going. She still couldn’t take the edge off with alcohol so she used the black gold as fuel to work on this case.

She looked at the ME’s notes and how she had admitted to missing the neck marks. Kim surmised that the marks could’ve been made after Susan was killed.

As she worked, the beeping continued and the pot of coffee lifted vapor to the air. A sip from her cup charged her and she kept working. The paper work, so voluminous, didn’t overwhelm her. What caused her to get that special sense as a cop brought her to the point of connecting all of the points of the investigation.

Once she had looked at the wrists and the intimate areas, she knew that Susan had been sexually assaulted after being killed as well. How did the ME miss this? she questioned. By taking the sheets, Kim shuffled through the bits of data. Her mind was a supersonic jet or a rocket. It slowed in the sense that she never felt alarmed and that “things were going fast.” It was the sense that her horsepower in her mind reflected such vessels in the way she integrated and produced results.

If Susan had been raped post mortem, then she would have had to have been entered by way of some tool like a plunger. Either that or a male guard could have killed her and then assaulted her. A pen became her friend. As she jotted down the various aspects of the jail system, she wanted the names and hours of those on guard the night that Susan was murdered and attacked.

Kim turned on some punk rock music channel and guided her pen over the details.

Like lights shining bright according to the star system, Kim illuminated the information. A highlighter squeaked against the text and made the words pop up into her retina.

Another sip of coffee drove her mind even more. When she opened up her mind to see not with her third eye but her eighth eye, she started to see a distinct cohesion. All of the patience that she had once possessed started to dissipate. Ire for this ME bubbled in her throat. Indigestion from the coffee mixed with the anger. She kept it from poisoning her investigation. Kim swallowed hard. As she looked at the screen an image to accept a video chat appeared.

The hotel had WiFi but the bandwidth of the laptop was rather low. Nonetheless, Kim accepted the call. The glitchy, splotchy reception still did not hide Yawquisha.

“Hey, there inspector,” the young woman said.

“I’m glad to see your face,” Kim replied.

The splotches continued with the video and audio. Despite all of this, the detective entertained the chat.

“You have to be busy,” Yawquisha surmised.

A laugh like a burst from a machine gun emitted from Kim’s throat.

“You already know,” Kim sighed and pulled her hair out of her face. “I saw you on Saving Time. I can’t thank you enough for defending my honor as you always do. You could have sold me up the river for a billion dollars. I would’ve done it against you to be honest. But you didn’t and I thank you for it.”

Yawquisha saluted. She had a smile on her face.