by TheMMMification » March 30th, 2012, 7:47 pm
It's been a while since I've posted a story, hasn't it?
The Case of the Disappeared Harbor Family
This story was for a school project that had been turned in a month ago. I've decided that this was awesome enough to share with you guys. Anyway, this story was inspired by Sherlock Holmes, if it isn't obvious enough. I dunno what else to say.
My name’s Sher Lock. I had been called down to the harbor. An entire family, besides a retarded 10 year old, had gone missing for a few days now. You see, I’m a sleuth. I solve people’s problems. None are easy. That just adds joy to the job though. I like the thought of sitting in a room for hours, writing down all sorts of crazy notes in a dictionary, going crazy, just to discover the answer of a riddle. I wish that I had an arch-nemesis that leaves clues everywhere that you have to solve or evil, devious things will happen. Where was I? Oh yes, solving the disappearance of a family. I had my favorite trench coat and fedora on while walking down to the harbor. Once on the steps, I look up, shifting my fedora so I could see better. The harbor was filled with people, who had crowded around the family’s home. The family was pretty famous. Police tape had been set around the entrance of the home.
A few policemen were near the entrance, keeping people from bursting into the house. Seeing me approaching, they greeted me and allowed me to pass. I stepped over the tape, approaching into the house. It was dark in there, and musty from dust, obvious signs of a fight, “It appears we have a kidnapping case,” I said to myself. I walked forward a couple of feet, but was stopped by the sudden rock of the house. The house was floating on the water, kept from floating away with a few $5 chains. I hated floating houses, I always have the feeling that the chains will snap and the house would float into the sea. I looked under the table and in the drawers and found nothing of interest. I started searching around in the other rooms. In the main room, there was the most dust, and some broken furniture was scattered around the room. This was most likely where the struggle happened.
I got down on my hands and knees and searched the room. There wasn’t any blood, the kidnapper probably took care in trying to keep them uninjured. After the floor was checked out, I went over to the fireplace. There was nothing but ash, it seemed. However, I noticed something sticking out of it. I stuck my hand in there and pulled it out. It was a partially burned note. Most of it was illegibil, but the only thing that could be read was ‘I, Fred, shall kidnap a husband and wife and use them to’. I got up, and found myself facing a large dent in the wall. I whipped out a ruler and measured the dent. Its circumference was about as big as an average man’s head. The police chief walked in.
“Hey Sher. I heard you were investigating the disappearance. What have you found so far?” the chief asked, uncertain of what was going on. “Well,” I started, before getting out a pipe, “I firmly believe that this was a kidnapping. There are signs of a fight everywhere. The house is filled with dust, and there’s a magnificent dent in the wall right next to me.” I put the pipe in my mouth and imitated smoking with it. The police chief walked over to the dent in the wall and stared at it. “I guess you’re right, but we now have a criminal to find, along with a missing family.” he said. “Oh, it’s not that bad. It makes things more interesting. Have your guys found anything else?” I told him. The chief looked back at me, saying “Besides the 10 year old boy, no.” “Lemme have a talk with him.” I said, wiping my spit off the pipe before continuing to imitate smoking. “Are you sure about that? He’s mentally retarded, he’ll be hard to understand.” “Nonsense, I’m pretty good with talking with retarded people.” “Well, oka- will you please stop doing that!?” he commanded in frustration. He was talking about my imitation of smoking. “I have to get myself off tobacco some way, pretending to smoke is the only way to do it.” I said rather angrily. I put the pipe back in my pocket and walked out of the house, the chief tagging along. “Where is he?” I asked back at him while walking.
“He’s being cared for at the police station.” he answered back. I said nothing, I was thinking about the evidence I found. ‘Why’d they get kidnapped? They’re not rich.’ I wondered. I remembered about the burnt piece of paper I found. I pulled the evidence out of my pocket and showed it to the officer, still walking. “I also found this. The guy’s first name is apparently Fred. Is there a whole lot of Freds in the town?” I asked the cop. “I’ll do a check at the Station.” he said to me. He quickly told me something else “Is that guy insane?! Who’d write their name on the plans for kidnapping someone?” I put my hand on my chin, trying to think of a good reason for writing your name on a plan to kidnap someone. I didn’t reach any conclusions. “I guess we need to make a reservation in the loony bin.” I replied.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A little while had passed. I was waiting in the police station. Why was I waiting? The kid had fallen asleep and they couldn’t get him up. I groaned. The truth is, I was only good with retarded grownups. If I had to deal with a retarded kid, or just a kid for that manner, I would be in trouble. I’m pretty bad with kids. The only reason I’m not married is because every woman I date wants a kid. While I was waiting, the chief was searching the town files. Thankfully, at the point I was about to fall asleep, an intern told me that the kid was awake. I leaped up with joy and quickly ran into the kid’s room. Inside the room, the kid was sitting on a bed. There was a chair right next to the bed. I sat on it, and asked the kid questions related to the disappearance of his family. About 10-15 minutes later, I walked out of the room, and into the chief’s office. “So, how was the questioning, Sher?” he asked. I groaned and sat down on a chair. “It was horrible. It was hard understanding that kid.” I said. I pulled out my notes of the talk and showed him them. He said “Well, it can’t be that-” he paused to look at my notes. His expression changed dramatically “Whoa! I can’t believe this!” he said out loud, surprised. On my notes, there were many question marks on the words and there were conflicting sentences everywhere. “Ugh, there’s always a problem when it comes with kids. Some are afraid to tell me what happened, some can’t give specifics, and this one has a serious speech impediment and issues with memory.” I said, pretty unhappy.
“Is there anything important you got from him?!” asked the Chief nervously. I looked back at my notes, then back at him. “Well, I noticed that the kid had quite the bruise on his face. It was in an oval shape, as if someone smacked him with the side of their hand.” suddenly, I noticed something in my notes that I hadn’t seen before. I got excited. “Wait, the only non-conflicting part in his testimony was, and I’m literary quoting this, ‘I get smecked and buwned’. I think he meant ‘I got smacked and burned’.” “But, when we checked the boy, we didn’t find any signs of harm besides the bruise.” “Have you checked the boy’s clothes?” I asked, getting excited. “We did a quick check. They were quite dirty, so we changed him into new clothes.” “Let me check those clothes. I just know they will be a clue to this case!” “Fine, if you think so. Hey Johnson! Fetch us that retarded child’s clothes!” The policeman did what his commanding officer told him to do. I looked at the shirt and pants, flipping them around. The back of the shirt and the left side of the pants were burned.
“Chief, I don’t want to offend you or anything, but this place is full of stupid people.” I said jokingly. “Hey!” the chief yelled at me, offended. “Seriously, the guys at your place mistook these burn marks for dirt!” I said out loud, making sure everyone in the station could hear, while pointing at the burn marks on the 10 year old’s clothing. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle...” the chief said softly, his mind blown. I continued speaking “Now, with this evidence, I can deduce what happened at the crime scene!” I closed my eyes, the crime was playing out in my head.
“It’s night. The family is in the main room, doing an activity or something. The retarded 10 year old is closest to the entrance. The kidnapper breaks in and grabs the boy. He sees the fireplace and threatens to throw the kid in if they don’t give themselves up. The dad at first seems to negotiate, but he makes a surprise attack. The kidnapper knocks the man away, and smacks the kid in the direction of the fireplace. The kid gets out of the fire and runs off somewhere, where he puts out the fire on his clothes. The dad and the kidnapper struggle for a while. The kidnapper bashes the father into the wall, causing that dent and knocking him out. The mother and here two daughters are afraid of fighting the man and give themselves up. After he’s tied them up, he burns his plans in the fireplace to get rid of the evidence. He then ran off with them, to who-knows-where.” I opened my eyes, and cleared my throat. I continued once again,
“This kid had been right up close to the kidnapper. There’s no way he could’ve completely forgotten such a mind-scarring experience. There must be something hidden in his testimony!” I put the clothes back in the officer’s hands and started reading my notes more carefully, looking for how it all related together. The police chief just sat there, dumbfounded “Uh... you think I should tell you about the Freds that are in town currently?” he asked. Without looking up from the notes, I answered with “Yeah, sure.” He picked up a piece of paper, and started telling me “Well, there are 5 Freds in town. There’s Fred Turner, Fred Garson, Fred Fenton, and Fred Derson.” I look up from my notes. “Let me see that.” I said. He gave me the notes. I took a special look at Fred Garson and Fred Derson. I looked back at the notes. “I just found a hidden part in the testimony!” I said, getting up due to the excitement of solving the case
“There’s a part where the kid said that the kidnapper’s name was ‘Fed Arson’ and there’s another part where he said that the kidnapper was ‘Fren Daron’. These are so close to the names ‘Fred Garson’ and ‘Fred Derson’ that the kidnapper was either Fred Garson or Fred Derson. Not both, the kid never said that there was more than one kidnapper.” I laughed happily, the case was getting closer to a finish. “Could you please calm down Sher Lock? I know this is very exciting for you, but it isn’t that exciting for me.” said the police chief, trying to calm me down. “Sorry.” I said, jumping back down on the chair. The police chief took out a pen and crossed out the non-suspects on the list. “Well, we still have to find out which one of these guys is the bad guy.” “Well, all we have to do is find out which one is crazy. After all, the kidnapper showed signs of craziness in the evidence.”
“That’s easier said than done. Most people that are crazy don’t seem crazy on the outside. For example, one guy here seemed to be normal, but then it turned out he thought sheep were god.” “Well, isn’t there a list anywhere of their traits? One of them might be obviously crazy.” “Well, we do have some information on these two, ever since the creation of the Crazy Watch Police. Lemme see here...” he pulled out two pieces of paper, one for Garson, and one for Derson. He started reading them “Okay, here’s what Garson commonly does. He eats everything with pepper, and he tells disturbing jokes out of nowhere, but he’s been known to do well at business meetings, he knows his math pretty well, and nobody has ever thought of him as crazy. Consider highly sane.” he cleared his throat and continued reading “Now, with Derson, he.......... always changes the subject in conversations to nonsensical gods........... he believes in a crazy religion created by the tabloids........ he yells at all women who talk to him....... consider medium crazy....... okay, we’ve found our crazy here, I’m gonna try to get a search warrant. See you soon!” I got up, in a pretty good mood “See you!” I skipped my way out of the door and went on with my day. On the next day, I got some mail in my mailbox. It was from the police chief. It basically said that he had gotten the search warrant, and I should meet up with him at Derson’s house in an hour.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It had taken me a while to walk to Fred Derson’s house, because it was pretty deep in the city. He was pretty stinking rich too. He had a mansion that had bronze encrusted outer walls, silver encrusted doors, and gold encrusted door knobs. The police chief and three cops were there. The 3 cops had their pistols ready. The police chief himself carried a shotgun. “So, how was your day?” I asked him “Don’t try to start up an idle chat. This is serious.” he said in his fancy police tone. “Just trying to make sure you’re calm. Everyone knows how trigger happy you are.” he was obviously not amused, but he didn’t say anything. We stood there looking at the crazy’s mansion. I took out my pipe and pretend smoked for most of the time. The Chief eventually decided it was time to go. “Okay, you and me are going in. They’re staying out there. I’ll call them if we get in trouble.” he told me. “Yeah, let’s do this!” I yelled out, pulling out my pistol and putting a bullet in the chamber. I always kept it with me, and I always kept it loaded. These streets had all sorts of bad guys, some of which wanted to take me down.
The chief broke the door open, and we walked our way into the house. At first, it seemed like nobody was there, but then we heard some yelling. It came from the closet. I opened it, and found a door in there. Normally I’d say something funny here, but this was serious. This guy could have a machine gun and grenades with him. We opened slowly, and saw quite a sight. There was a room which contained the innocent, tied up family and their kidnapper, Fred Derson. There was a circle with a crazy symbol drawn on the floor, and the mother and father were in the center. The girls were off to the side. Just outside of the circle was Derson, with a ceremonial rod. “Hah, it appears that we have some onlookers who will see the revival of the god, Rockblagh. Fear, my future pupils, fear!” I walked forward. I lowered my gun.
The police chief cocked his shotgun. I asked Fred “What are you going to do with them?” he quickly responded “I’m gonna sacrifice this husband and his wife with a chant so they’d be teleported into the god Rockblagh’s essence, so he can be revived so he can return the Earth to what it truly is. These kids will be his snacks. ALL HAIL ROCKBLAGH!!!!!!” I looked down, put my hand to my forehead, and shook my head. If I was to rate this guy’s craziness, I’d put it as ‘must go to an asylum’. I looked back up, just when he did his crazy chant. Rather than stop him, I waited. The chief was about to shoot, but I gave him a look that said “Don’t shoot, or you’ll be dead meat.” Fred continued on with his chant, his voice growing louder and louder. He eventually stopped. We waited 12 minutes, I timed it. The wait was broken by him yelling “Arrrrgh!!!” he got on his knees, angry.
“Seems like Rockblagh doesn’t exist.” I said, mocking him. He took this in a pretty angry way. “This is all your fault, I’ll get you for this!” he yelled out, raising his ceremonial rod. The Chief aimed at him again, but I said “I got this. No need for gunfire.”, which made him change his mind. Fred Derson charged me. I jumped out of the way. Fred smacked into the wall, getting knocked out. I waited a few seconds, waiting for him to get back up, but he didn’t, he got himself knocked out. I turned to the father of the family. “How’d this guy kidnap your family?!” I asked. “I dunno.” said the father. I just shook the wonder off and untied the family, while the chief handcuffed Fred. We walked out of the house, Derson over the cop’s shoulder, and the family at my side.
Word had gotten around that we had found the family’s kidnapper, and a crowd of people were at the door. Policemen kept them from trampling us. I looked to the left, and noticed a group of ladies trying to get my attention. They were my biggest fans, at every bust I was involved in, they were there, hoping that one day I’d go out with one of them. However, they weren’t my type, but that didn’t stop me from doing a pose to let them know that I see them. This time, I pulled out my pipe and kissed it in the place where you put the tobacco. I then inhaled through the pipe, and exhaled the kiss out. Several of the ladies swooned and fell over. I smiled and got in the taxi. Through the window, I saw the retarded son reunite with his family, and the chief putting the cultist in the police car and driving him off. Then, the taxi driver drove me off to the news station, where I’d get interviewed about this case. “Just another case,” I murmured to myself.