by Lotta Smith
“Oh really?” I gave my employer—who had just admitted that he was sending me to the wilderness—an up-and-down glance. He was wearing an above-the-knee-length lace dress in light purple by Diane von Furstenberg, a pair of red, open-toe pumps with sky-high heels, and lots of makeup.
Yeah, you heard me right. I just said my employer was wearing women’s attire from head to toe. And I’m talking about a thirty-one-year-old 6’3” transvestite standing seven-feet with the heels on. With his long auburn hair worn in a loose ponytail, he was looking like a towering seven-foot supermodel with too much growth hormone. In addition, it wasn’t Halloween.
“Mr. Archangel, here’s one thing I’m sure of: Regardless of what you say about me, the chances of my getting raped are significantly higher than you,” I said. “No one rapes a giant transvestite.”
“Hello? Did you just call me a giant?” Archangel narrowed his eyes. “If I don’t get to send you to search now, what’s the point of keeping you employed at my cost?”
“I’m chauffeuring you around, you know. And you like pancakes and sweet Japanese omelets with a hint of soy sauce I make for you every morning, don’t you?” I pointed out, a little bit too desperately for my own comfort.
“Then again, if I fire you, I can rent that apartment, which is currently occupied by you, to someone else and earn an extra grand or two every month. I wouldn’t die immediately if I went back to cereal or an energy bar breakfast.”
“Oh, no. I was just kidding,” I said, hurriedly, “Actually, I was meaning to say I absolutely love trees! And I’m more than happy to go and fetch whatever you’re looking for.”
Did I sound desperate? If so, it was because I was desperate. Unlike assistants of detectives in fiction, I had no special skill. I wasn’t a former police officer, special-ops agent, or a budding forensic scientist in training. Before I got this job with the huge cross-dressing detective, I was a maid at a mansion on a remote island. And before that…well, I hope you stop asking me too many questions.
Anyway, I wasn’t as useful as Dr. Watson. So I could drive, I could cook, and I could breathe fire, but that was about it. In addition, I wasn’t even sure if I should include fire-breathing in my skillset. Right then, I was a part chauffeur, a part cook, and a huge part comic relief for my employer.
It had been about three months since I had started this job with Michael Archangel, and I didn’t know if I liked or hated working with him. I wasn’t fond of meeting dead people and murderers on a regular basis, but even this job had some perks, such as the accommodations. Archangel owned an apartment complex just three blocks from his home slash office in McLean, and I got to occupy one of his two-bedroom apartments for just a hundred bucks a month, including the utilities. And I happened to like the apartment. Very much.
“In case I’m in trouble, I’ll call you. So please send backup really fast, okay?” I said, and reluctantly started walking toward the spooky forest.
“Kelly,” Archangel called me.
“Yes?” I turned back to him, hoping he would say it was just a joke and laugh his ass off.
“Walk faster,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah.” I waved my hand behind my back while making a mental note to self: In case I get raped and murdered while in the forest, haunt him like Hell.
CHAPTER 3
When I returned to the tennis court, the dead body of the Sushi Czar had been already removed and what remained was a pool of drying blood. Lucky me.
“You were quick on the way back from the shrub,” Archangel noted.
“Mr. Archangel, you should really try walking in that godforsaken forest yourself. Listening to a murder of crows was truly lovely.”
“Oh yeah?” Responding to me with a one-eyebrow raise, he turned to Henderson. “Ritchie, this is the evidence.” Archangel was pointing at the black knit mask featuring a printed white ghost face with hollow eyes. The mask was secured in a plastic bag. “And I’ve figured out the ‘who done it’ part of this case.”
“So, who killed Weitzman?” Henderson asked in his stern voice.
“The Ghost.” Archangel clarified, “Or rather, the Ghost in the Net.”
“That’s not funny.” Henderson’s frown deepened.
“It’s okay. I’m not joking.”
“What? Are you telling me the killer was a ghost because the killer was wearing this ghost mask when he attacked Weitzman?” Henderson seemed genuinely puzzled.
“Yeah, sort of.”
“But, what about the locked room? How did the killer make that?”
“Oh, yes? Do we start from the locked room?” Archangel cocked his head to the side.
As his head moved, the ponytail swayed like a dancing wave. I had no idea what this PI was talking about, but there was one thing I was certain. If Mattel was going to release Transgender Barbie anytime soon, the dolls should look exactly like Michael Archangel. To my annoyance, in spite of his tastes in clothes and makeup, he wasn’t ugly. If only he looked like a sumo wrestler in a geisha getup, I could at least sneer behind his back when he was mean to me. But unfortunately, he had inherited high cheekbones, baby-blue eyes, and a perfectly sculpted nose, forehead, and jaw from his Greek ancestors. He looked somewhat stunning, even in women’s skimpy outfit.
While I was picturing Transgender Barbie in my head, Henderson said, “Yes, I need to understand how it was created.”
“Okay, so let’s start with this part. There are several possible ways to make a locked room out of this tennis court,” Archangel started. “According to the park custodian, the key of the tennis court was left intact at the office, so we can presume the murderer wasn’t carrying the key.”
“Don’t tell me the killer climbed up the fence and went out of the cage after locking the door.”
“Why not? I was going to mention it as possibility number one. Leaving out the improbable is the first step to finding out the probable.”
“You have a point.” Henderson crossed his arms.
“I know.” Archangel nodded. Then he said, “Kelly.”
“Yes?” I couldn’t help gasping when my name was called. As Archangel was in discussion mode with Henderson, I was in a zoned-out mode.
“It’s your turn to mention possibility number two.”
“Who? Me?” I asked, puzzled, mostly because I was trying my best to forget I was standing within twenty feet of a murder scene. For me, accepting that I was near a dead body was bad enough, and suggesting a possible theory of how the locked room was created, was out of the question.
“Of course,” Archangel said. “Don’t expect to get paid for just standing here like a scarecrow, Miss Assistant Dolittle. Except, you’re a tad bit heavy for a scarecrow.” And he cracked out laughing.
“Did you just say I’m fat?” I narrowed my eyes.
“Nope. By the way, it’s unfair to use the fat card to get away from my question.”
While my wacko employer was verbally abusing me, Henderson was pretending he wasn’t listening. It was the moment I lost my faith in the FBI.
Biting my lip, I seriously contemplated kicking the shi—I mean, kicking the sense out of Archangel, but I focused my thoughts on the apartment I called my home. Every now and then, Archangel treated me like the butt of a joke, or a doormat, but I truly liked the apartment. In addition, I was aware of the fact I was not going to rent a decent place in Northern Virginia for a hundred bucks a month. I wasn’t even sure if there was any chances I could rent a parking lot for that little of money.
I thought about how much I liked the lavender walls in my bedroom and the small balcony overlooking the neighborhood—just like other times I was tempted to cuss. Then I took a deep breath. “Okay, how about this? After killing the Sushi Czar, the killer came out through the door and somehow locked it from the outside.”
After mentioning the possibility number two, I realized there was a huge hole in my theory. So I added. “Oh, but if I were the killer, I would rather have run away than creating a locked
room. I wouldn’t want to risk being seen.”
“Okay.” Without dissing me furthermore, Archangel nodded. “Anything else?”
“How about this?” Henderson said. “The victim got stabbed outside of the tennis court. Then the vic came into the cage and locked the door from inside in a desperate attempt to flee from the killer. That’s possibility number three.”
“Hmm…the locked room was created accidentally. That sounds like one of those commonly-used tricks in mystery novels,” Archangel commented. “This problem with that possibility is it restricts the weapon to something sharp and small, which temporarily plugs the wound and keeps the blood from flowing out, such as a narrow-blade knife or an ice pick. But in this case, the weapon used was neither a narrow-blade knife nor an ice pick. As we saw earlier, the weapon was a bulky army knife. And considering the profuse bleeding of the victim, if he was stabbed outside of this cage, we should be seeing a blood trail continuing from outside where the vic got initially stabbed to the place he was found lying dead.”
I took a glance at the tennis court. There was a dried pool of blood, but there was no visible trail.
Archangel continued. “In addition, take a look at the cage door and the lock. There’s no bloody fingerprints on them. Kelly, when you get stabbed in the gut, what do you do?”
“Well…” I thought for a second, then I said, “If I was stabbed, I’d kick the hell out of whoever did that to me. Or whack him really hard with my purse, which is even better, provided that I would be carrying a purse. But if possible, I’d beat them up before I got stabbed. As they say, the best defense is a good offence.”
I knew better than to say, “I’ve never been stabbed before,” because that was not the answer my demanding boss was asking for.
“Oh yeah?” Archangel raised one eyebrow. “I told you even Hannibal Lecter would think twice about attacking you.”
Henderson snorted out laughing.
“What’s wrong with you guys?” I muttered. “If I remember correctly, it’s awfully rude to stab at someone.”
Henderson’s laughter escalated to a full-blown guffaw. “Michael…I think now I can understand why you hired Ms. Kinki,” he said between the gasps. “She’s…hilarious…”
“Not to mention, I get to eat a decent breakfast every morning.” Archangel shrugged. “Which is not bad, actually.”
“Agent Henderson, will you call me Kelly instead of my surname?” I said. My biological father had disappeared when I was a toddler, and my mother is Japanese. She always kept her maiden surname due to a series of her short-lasting marriages. I was still stuck with my weird surname Kinki. For some years, I got to be called Madame Estevez, but the name Kelly Estevez had a social stigma that screamed, “the ex-wife of the huge swindler,” so I had no choice but to go back as Kelly Kinki.
Henderson, who had just recovered from the laughing spell, didn’t take my offer. Instead, he suggested, “How about Ms. K?”
“That’s better,” I said. Anything was better than being called Kinki over and over.
“Okay, back to the topic about the stabbing victim,” Archangel said. “Generally speaking, when a person gets stabbed, this person tends to check for the wound first thing, before seeking revenge on the attacker. And considering the stabbing happened in the middle of the night, it was pretty dark. When you can’t see things in the dark, the first thing you do would be to feel for the wound with your hands. So if the victim himself had shut the door and locked it, the door knob and the lock would be covered with bloody fingerprints. However, as previously confirmed, the cage door and the surrounding area were clean.”
CHAPTER 4
“What? Are you denying the possibility of option number three as well?” Uncrossing his arms, Henderson looked up the sky.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Then what? Should we consider that the killer made a locked room just for fun after killing the Sushi Czar inside the cage? Perhaps the killer might have climbed up the fence, or maybe the culprit went out the door and locked it from the outside using a lock pick or something.” Henderson massaged his temple. “Of course, that’s unrealistic.”
“How about this?” I said. I had just come up with a good theory. “Let’s call it possibility number five. What if the victim was already inside the cage? So the killer lured Weitzman to the fence, and when he came close, the killer stabbed him through the chain-link. At this time, the cage door’s already locked, so the locked room was unintentional.”
“Or rather, a halfway-locked room,” Archangel interjected. “Basically, it’s the same thing as possibility number three but just like in that scenario, if the vic was stabbed through the fence, the fence should be drenched with blood and locating the crime scene should have been a piece of cake, which is not consistent with this case. It is practically impossible to kill the vic through the fence because he was found dead in the center area of the tennis court, far from any sides of the fence. If that were the case, we should be seeing a trail of blood from the fence to the place the vic was lying.”
“I see.” He had a point.
“Then who killed Weitzman? And why did the killer bother to make a locked room out of the cage?” Henderson groaned.
“Technically, since there’s no roof, there wasn’t a real locked room.” Archangel pointed at the cage. “Anyone could have come in and out of the cage by climbing up and down the fence.”
“Archangel, I’ve had enough with the locked room mumbo jumbo,” Henderson spat. The frown lines between his eyes got deeper and deeper, to the point I started wondering if his head would turn inside out. Obviously, he was irritated.
“Oh yeah? What a shame. Unfortunately, that’s the crucial part with this case, so you want to be patient about this locked room part,” Archangel said nonchalantly.
“Hell.” Henderson groaned again.
Archangel continued. “Generally speaking, there are several possible explanations for making a locked room. For example, making the death look like a suicide, delaying the time of the corpse getting discovered, and framing someone else for the murder, just to name a few. However, none of the above possible explanations gives a plausible answer to our case.”
“I know.” Henderson released a resigned sigh. “First of all, no one believes the Sushi Czar would commit a suicide.”
“Right. In addition, this caged fence is quite useless when it comes to hiding things from the park visitors’ view.” With the palm of his right hand, Archangel called our attention to the cage. “Look at this. Basically, we can see everything inside the cage from outside. Therefore, keeping the cage locked had no effects in delaying the discovery of the corpse. Provided there was no witness and no camera, practically anyone had a chance to kill the victim in the cage and get away unnoticed by climbing up the fence. And here’s the questions: Who locked the door? And, what was the purpose about that?”
“Hello? Have you noticed I’ve been asking these questions?” Henderson said sarcastically.
Not acknowledging his former boss’s sarcasm, Archangel continued. “Remember the possibility three’s purpose of locking the cage door? That explains everything about this case. The victim used the lock for its general purpose.”
“Yeah, the idea that the victim locked the door for protection. For your information, you rejected the theory just a couple of minutes ago.”
“Right. But I didn’t reject every part of it. So without the key, it’s hard to open a locked door from the outside, but at the same time, if you’re inside, locking and unlocking the door is easy. All you have to do is turn the latch.”
“I know.” Henderson furrowed his eyebrows.
“In the dark of night, the victim was running in the deserted park, running away from the hunter. Desperate to flee from the lunatic coming from behind, the victim jumped into the cage surrounding the tennis court, shutting and locking the door. The purpose of the action was to keep herself out of harm’s way.”
“But in that case, we sh
ould be seeing blood all over the door and the knob.” Henderson pointed out. “Besides that, did you just say ‘herself’? For your information, we’re dealing with a male victim.”
“First of all, it’s absolutely fine that the door has no bloody fingerprints, because at the time the victim had locked the door, she wasn’t hurt. Secondly, yes, I did say ‘herself’ because the person I’m regarding as the victim is a woman.”
“What?”
“Was the Sushi Czar a transgender?”
Henderson and I were talking at the same time.
Archangel raised one eyebrow. “Okay, here’s the thing. Weitzman is a man. So he’s dead, but that fact just makes him a dead man, and not a woman.”
“Right, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” Henderson had a facial expression that said, ‘You dumbass.’ If he wasn’t desperate to wrap up the case, he might have strangled the PI.
“At the same time, he’s not the victim. Actually, he was the one who was assaulting a defenseless victim.”
“What? If he’s the attacker, why is he the one who dropped dead?”
“You heard Kelly saying that at least five women were raped in this neighborhood in the past month. All of them were assaulted at relatively late hours at night by a man with no face, with the rapist still being unidentified so far.”
“Are you saying Thomas Weitzman, the Sushi Czar, is the rapist?” Henderson gasped.
“Yes, he was. You need to run some DNA tests and so on with the ghost mask, but I’m positive it will link with Weitzman,” Archangel said.
“But…why?”
“I don’t know why he started raping women. Some people turn to crime just for the excitement, even when that’s the stupidest idea at the worst time. And it’s a little bit too late to ask him questions since he’s dead.”