Clue in the Garten

You are a kindergarten at Isopropyl Elementary, Paoli, Indiana. No one has asked you why your school was named after rubbing alcohol. They are more likely to ask you about the double murders that happened last Thursday in your neighborhood. Given you are 6 and was hanging like a banshee in your school’s jungle gym when the crime happened—around eleven in the morning—would not really hold back anyone from asking you, a little girl, about the gruesome killings. You live in that neighborhood, in that quiet cul-de-sac, probably bike-raced with the kid sister or kid brother of one of the doomed.

A girlfriend and boyfriend shot in a Toyota 4Runner, in a junk-filled, soundproofed-because-of-stacked-junk garage. It did not make anybody jump out on the sidewalk, not the mailman or the executive that came from Louisville to pay a promiscuous housewife a visit. Either way, he would not have dialed 9-1-1.

The truck was obviously the boyfriend’s, and the 9-millimeter was also his. The gun was found in the girl’s clutching left fist. But according to her family, she was right-handed. Two teens positioned to appear like they were in a lover’s quarrel a generation older than them, the police detective in the scene thought.

You are a biker, would tan your skin a shade darker each day from riding your Schwinn. Your mom let you bike for hours, as long as the sun was up and the pavement dry. The other little girls in the street would envy you because of your freedom. All these girls go to the same school as you do. If someone goes to a different school, that school would be private.

Your mom was a “former.” That’s all you know. Former what? People’s asking has to be addressed to your mother, not to you, to know this info in full. Your vocabulary had not reached that level yet.

Now, your father was an MA-certified accountant. You are sure about that, not a bookkeeper. Neighbors and friends would hear his complete professional title if they would ask about him. Wherever you are in the sprawl of streets, in a one-mile radius, you would bike your heart out to meet your father coming home from work. He is the reason why you have nice clothes and a Lexus sedan to be chauffeured in each morning.

Your mother, of course, was responsible for your clean look each school day and the poached-egg, green-juice breakfasts you are not a fan of all the time. Though you miss your father a lot when he’s at work, it is with your mother you spend quality time with the most. You are always entertained by her streetwise lingo—the way she describes things and tells funny little fibs.

Four days have passed, and the town police have no lead as to whom committed the murders. The notion that the young lovers did each other is no longer a plausible act. Teens cannot be that passionate—plus a cache of six Bitcoins is missing from the girl’s bag. They were fake Bitcoins the boyfriend had ordered from Amazon. According to his family, he thought they were a cool gift to give her on their six-month anniversary dating.

To gather more clues, the police captain had the idea to have someone sit incognito in one of your classes since most of your classmates lived in the same neighborhood the murders had transpired—and since kindergartens are most vocal when they happen to know each other well. The youngest students at Isopropyl Elementary tend to get loud even if they are supervised. The police would look for the slightest hint.

They chose a morning session when the children participated in the conversation. They have sent in a female officer who appeared to be someone’s mother or nanny. Miss Belk (you like her, as do everyone else) prepared an exercise where someone compares one thing to another to make themselves clearer or precise, such as “red,” and the students would answer “like an apple”; or “hot” with “like the sun.”

But Miss Belk, to everybody’s surprise, chose a hard noun to decipher, maybe as directed by the police. The word was “sweat.” Miss Belk first picked on six-year-old Oscar. Oscar was caught off-guard, so he said, “Sweat…like plywood?” Miss Belk said, “Very good, Oscar. Plywood could sweat if it’s extra humid outside, yes. Anyone else?”

Elaine raised her hand and shouted, “Sweat like a dolphin.”

“Certainly,” went Miss Belk. “Especially when they’re fresh out of the water. Great, Elaine. Now, kids, let us think more of the ordinary, what we see every day or feel every day.”

“Sweat like a pig!” someone declared in the back, and the whole class laughed in a frenzy.

“Good, Elliot, good,” returned Miss Belk. She raised her hands up high to congratulate Elliot. You were quiet all this time, yet each comparison was building tense inside you. Each spoken item seemed to be climbing in Miss Belk’s want. The unknown person next to her was getting in the thrill as well. “Now,” Miss Belk said. “If someone could top pig sweating, please do.”

Within your silent self, you wanted to stay that, silent. But your urge to contribute was too strong. So, from your mouth came and burst, “Sweat like a motherfucker!”

The Paoli Police did not get a surefire lead that morning, but they knew more of the families living in the little girl’s neighborhood. For one, they have a healthy interest as to whom the parents were of this little girl.

(There was a similar case in Tempe, Arizona in 2018, in which two teens ended their young lives due to unrequited emotions. “Chilling ‘good bye’ tweet of a 15-year-old girl shot dead with her teen boyfriend in shocking murder-suicide outside their school cafeteria” their paper headlined.

This story inspired me to write the second-person, clue-focused piece above.)