first published on 6/4/14 at malaker.32hertz.com
first draft
It’s another hot July night in Carbondale PA. The humidity feels like a wet towel wrapped around my head. In this city, it seems to snow until May and then these old brick buildings just seem to hold in the heat as they bake in the hot summer sun. Carbondale is an old coal-mining town and these buildings were not built for the wealthy and well-to-do they were built for the over-worked and under-paid and that describes me. My name is Detective Edmund Rhodes and I am a private investigator. Mostly, I do small jobs like finding lost pets or lost people, this city is full of people that would like to go missing. Thankfully, I suppose, there is not a lot of violent crimes in Carbondale and most of my living comes from women paying me to catch their husband cheating or the other way around. Tonight I am trying to get to the bottom of why my office window fan won’t work. A couple of hard whacks with a magazine and the rusty old blades start to slowly whirl around again bringing in the smog and cigarette smoke from the street below as the fan comes to life.
I take a moment to enjoy the cooler air pushing into my office. I sit down at my desk and I notice the headline of today’s paper “Woman Murdered By Her Son in Sick Satanic Ritual!”. I grabbed the paper to read on. According to the paper a woman named Betty Creapoltsky was killed last night while at her home in Carbondale that she shared with her son Jack Creapoltsky. When police arrived they found no evidence of forced entry but they found her son Jack in the home crouched in the corner covered in blood. It is not known at this time if the blood is his. Jack Creapoltsky was in a catatonic type state at the time and was unable or unwilling to speak. He is the prime suspect at this time according to police. Nearby residents suggest the victim Betty was often very abusive towards Jack publicly and privately since he was a child and could have contributed to the outburst of violence that took place. As of right now, however, no one knows exactly what the motive for this bloody and horrific murder was.
I put the paper down in disbelief. I thought about how I was just thinking that there are not too many violent crimes in this area. I wondered what kind of person kills their own mother. What kind of world creates a person that kills their own mother. I must confess, I thought about how great it would be to have a case like this knowing full well that it will go to one of the kids fresh out of school with their high tech equipment and training, and good for them too they deserve it. The cost of colleges today in America is ridiculous and the kids need every chance to pay off their loans.
I pour myself a cup of cold stale black coffee that’s been in the pot since last night and prepare to look over the work schedule for tonight when the phone rings. A woman introduces herself as Nancy Creapoltsky. She’s Crying!
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