The three young detectives stood over a body which lay beside an overturned chair in the back room of the snake building. Rear access hatches to a dozen snake enclosures stood open, but the uniforms had assured the detectives that the top cover of each snake terrarium was securely fastened down. Other than the body and the tumbled chair, the only thing out of order was the receiver dangling from a telephone on the desk.
Mike asked, “He didn’t call for help, did he?”
“Not that I know of,” Daisy answered. “According to the uniforms, it was the red panda girl who found him. Maybe the telephone got hit when the chair was knocked over. Or maybe he was trying to get to the phone.”
“Is this even a murder?” Ricardo asked. “He’s the snake guy. Maybe he got bit.”
“This doesn’t feel like an accident,” Daisy countered, lifting one of the man’s hands with her pen. “And, guys, look at this.”
An uncapped felt pen rolled from beneath the lifeless fingers, and large clumsy letters were revealed on the stained concrete floor. “I think he was trying to write ‘murder’ but ‘murd’ was as far as he got.”
“Okay,” Mike said, “we have three hours until the old man gets here. Let’s see if we can solve one on our own for a change.”
Working under one of the most insightful homicide detectives in the country was educational for them but rarely satisfying. Traditionally he arrived just as they were beginning to form an impression of the facts. Without asking what they’d discovered, he’d look around briefly before putting together all the clues they’d seen and some they hadn’t to come up with a brilliant and correct solution.
They took their photos, bagged the felt pen, dusted the phone and nearly everything else for fingerprints. When the coroner arrived, she refused to make any speculations as to cause of death, other than to note that the deceased had not been shot, stabbed or beaten.
“What about these two puncture marks on his wrist?” Ricardo asked. “Are they from a snakebite or could they be from a needle? Someone might have wanted it to look like a snakebite.”
“Could be a snakebite, could be a needle. I won’t know until I get him to the morgue.”
After the body was removed and the coroner had departed, the three young detectives divvied up the investigation. Mike would interview the man’s co-workers to see if any of them could be considered to be a suspect. Daisy would check out the man’s basement suite in his mother’s house to see if she could find any clues there. Ricardo was to go over the snake building with a fine toothed comb, plus check the phone records.
***
Two hours later they met outside the snake building. The crime tape surrounding the place seemed to have made it a bigger attraction to zoo patrons than the nearby hippopotamus pond. The detectives stood in the doorway and spoke in low voices.
“He bought a gun last month,” Daisy reported. “Perhaps he was afraid of someone.”
Mike said, “The elephant custodian said our vic was having an affair with the red panda girl, who used to date the grizzly man. Maybe the grizzly man was jealous. What did you find, Ricardo?”
“First, no calls were made from the snake building this morning. Second, all the snake boxes are closed and I could see a snake in every one, so I guess the uniforms were right–none of them got out. Only half of them had fresh water, so I think our vic stopped halfway through his morning routine, or was stopped. His water pail is in the middle of the room, sitting on the floor with a big wet spot around it. It could have been spilled. Not exactly signs of a struggle but I assume it may be significant. Since the back door is propped open, anyone could have come in. Did you find out who else was around here in the morning, Mike?”
“All the animal keepers arrive at five a.m. to feed their animals and prepare them for the day,” Mike said. “But no one admits to seeing anyone besides our vic around the snake building. The grizzly guy must have done his job because the grizzlies were still eating their raw meat but the elephants had no food in their enclosure. The elephant guy says they don’t get fed until the visitors are here to see it.”
“We should take the grizzly guy, the elephant guy and the red panda girl in for questioning,” Daisy stated. “I think we’re agreed that he was attacked and given some kind of toxin through two needle punctures.”
“Not so fast.”
He had arrived.
While the three young detectives stood near the doorway, he stalked around the room, looked at all the snakes, looked at the scribbled letters on the floor.
“It was an accident,” he told them.
Daisy shook her head, while Mike and Ricardo nodded. She said, “But what about the note–he was trying to write ‘murder’ so that we’d know it wasn’t an accident.”
“He wasn’t writing ‘murder.’ He was trying to write “Murderajee.”
“What’s that?”
“The name of the snake that bit him–it’s on the cage over there. He wanted us to know what kind of anti-venom to use, in case we got here in time. Too bad we didn’t.”
Bio – Amber Hayward is the author of a trilogy of speculative fiction novels, the Children of the Panther series, released by Edge Press. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in Canadian and international periodicals including Daily Science Fiction, Mystery Weekly and On Spec. Her short story, ‘In the Storm’ was the first prize winner of the Sheldon Currie Fiction Contest in 2010 for the Antigonish Review. In 2011, she wrote a flash fiction piece each day for a year. She is one of the owners of the Black Cat Guest Ranch near Jasper, Alberta and teaches writing workshops there and in the nearby community of Hinton.
