500: An Anthology of Short Stories

The terror was a wildfire, spreading through the shanty town so rapidly that every scruffy, down-on-his-luck, poverty-stricken inhabitant knew within the hour that any one of them could be next. A deep foreboding descended upon the settlement like a shroud of gloom.

“You sure the pattern’s the same as the other two? No deviation in the method or routine?” Detective Solomon asked the policeman who had called him to the scene. “Find any clues or tracks?” he queried.

“Just the usual. This,” the policewoman stated, holding out an evidence bag to the detective. “It’s what seems to be a red cherry,” she said. “It was placed inside the victim’s belly button,” she added.

“Interesting…” Detective Solomon said as he rotated the clear bag to look closely at the tiny fruit. “There’s another letter carved into the berry,” he told the policewoman.

“Here, at the top of the fruit,” he indicated, pointing to a tiny marking that looked like an A.

“This makes it the third letter, doesn’t it? The first two letters seem to indicate that the logical conclusion we could come to is that the word being spelled out is death,” Detective Solomon theorized. “The problem is: I think it’s way too pat. Something about this doesn’t feel right to me,” he admitted, instinctively reluctant to accept such an obvious assumption.

Three nights later, his instinct was proven right with the discovery of the fourth body.

“Where did you find it this time?” Detective Solomon brusquely asked the policeman standing guard over the grotesque corpse. It was another vagrant, this time a male. He had been garroted, the stark red line running across his neck a flagrant proclamation of the manner of his murder.

“It was placed inside his right eye socket, Detective. The victim seems to have lost that eye years ago, according to the forensics expert who examined the body a few minutes ago.” Detective Solomon only briefly glanced at the dead man’s hollow eye socket before focusing on the planted fruit. It was a small green grape.

“The letter appears to be an R. It certainly dispels the notion that the word the killer is spelling out is death. D-E-A-R. Dear? Dear what? Dear who? Is the killer actually trying to write a note using the corpses of his victims as his method of communication?”

Detective Solomon spoke aloud, trying to make sense of the enigma. It was his usual habit to do this to help crystallize his insight. And then it hit him like a bolt of lightning. He knew who the killer was.

“So you watched Minister Dearborn kill the victims, and you were the one who placed the clues?” Solomon asked the legless beggar seated on his wooden wheeled platform.

“Yeah. Nobody sees us. Ah was invisible ta him, but he wasn’ ta me. Knew ah had ta let yer know somehow who da murderer was without revealin’ ma own identity.”

“So why come forward now?”

“Gettin’ all them fruit was hard, man!”