One Last Case

It was 7:55 pm.  Alistair walked slowly around the lake, contemplating the weight of his most recent discovery.  He had arrived at Sherwood Park an hour early, to give him time to reflect, and to determine how to move forward.  “Should I push farther,” he wondered, “and attempt to uncover the secret of Operation FAST?  If I do, there is no guarantee that I will come out with my life.  Should I walk away now, when I’m so close?  No, that would not do.”  He involuntarily spoke the last bit aloud.  The soft wind coming off of the water reminded him of his childhood in England.  He could see his mother in his mind now, her perfect face glistening in the sunlight.  “What did they do to her?” Alistair thought with horror.  “What could be worth destroying that perfect package of beauty, caring, and boundless energy?”  Even though he didn’t know what Operation FAST actually did, he would not allow their crimes to go unpunished.  He would infiltrate the operation, and shut it down for good if it was the last thing he did.  He looked at his pocket watch. It was 8:15.  Moore was running late.  Alistair sighed.  He was about to sit on a nearby bench when he saw a man running towards him in the distance.  As he got closer he saw that it was Robin, and he was being chased by a figure in black!  The Detective ran behind a tree and signaled for Robin to run by it.  He ran past the tree, and a second later his assailant followed suit.  Alistair waited for the right moment and stuck out his foot.  The man tumbled a good ten feet, his head smashing into the ground.  Alistair held the man’s hands, while Robin interrogated him.  “Who sent you after me?” he asked.  “The.....Cent..er.. Spe...pecial....Needs,” the man muttered.  Alistair butted in, “What are they doing there?”  “I..don’t..know...top..secret.”  The broken man was now gasping to take in enough air.  “Just tell us how to get there and we will get help for you.”  “The sewers...No! Don’t call anyone!”  The man suddenly yelled.  Robin took out his cell phone and dialed 911.  The man tried to get up and stop him from calling, but Alistair grabbed him.  “You musn’t tell anyone about me...please!”  The man cried.  Suddenly, there was a small zap from the man’s head.  His eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped to the ground.  Robin in shock, dropped his phone, and the screen shattered on the ground.  Operation FAST must have implanted electrodes into their employees brains that could be manually activated if they gave them away.  Alistair looked at Robin.  As their eyes met, they knew where they must go.

The nearest Manhole cover was on the corner of Poplar Ave and the small street leading away from the park.  As Alistair walked by the street sign, he noticed that it was blurred over so it was illegible.  Under normal circumstances, he may have lost some sleep thinking about what could have caused the odd appearance of the street sign, but now he had no time to waste.  “Help me get this up,” Alistair said to Robin, pointing at the manhole cover in front of them.  When they lifted the cover an awful smell wafted over the pair. When the smell reached Robin, he backed away violently, as if the scent itself evoked bad memories.  “Does that smell remind you of the asylum?”  Alistair asked.  “I never thought I would smell that again.”  He said in an disconnected tone of voice.  “That is the smell of the restricted labs, where they sent me for two months.  Those months felt like years.  They poked and prodded me untill I didn’t know what I was and until I’d forgotten what I was before.  I can’t go down there with you.  I couldn’t stand it.  For all I know, I could have one of those electrodes in my brain.”  Alistair looked grimly at Robin, shook his hand and spoke.  He only said, “It was nice working with you Robin.  Good luck.”  Then he took hold of the ladder and descended into the darkness.

Alistair fumbled around in the darkness until he realized that he still had the flashlight from before.  He flicked it on and inspected his surroundings.  The sewer looked almost normal.  The strange scent was stronger down here.  It reminded Alistair of a mix of feces and disinfectant with a tinge of something volatile that he couldn’t identify.   He coughed, covered his nose with his trenchcoat, and began to inspect the wall for any clues on how to proceed.  He suspected that Operation FAST had some sort of secret lab down here, but he had no idea how to find it.  He looked closely at all the walls of the sewer.  Nothing.  He tried to follow the smell with no luck,  eventually ending up at the ladder where he started.  Alistair was on the verge of giving up when he heard a click from inside the wall next to him.  He started to run toward the wall, but before he could take three steps, the entire wall began to shift.  The secret door made a low rumbling sound as it slid open.  Alistair dashed behind a maintenance supply locker as he heard the voices of two men from inside the lab.  “Why did you take so long to tell me this?  Find Egeus’ corpse and bring it back.  We can’t have anyone finding out about us.”  “No sir we can’t, sir,” the man spoke feebly.  “I will find him John.”  “Yes you will, and I’ve already told you, call me Dr. Reid.  Nothing else.”  A man, presumably the second, ran past Alistair and up the ladder without noticing him.  As soon as the conversation ended, the secret door began sliding shut.  Alistair slipped through as the doors were closing and was in pitch darkness.  

After a moment, industrial lights came on.  They seemed to be in need of repair and flickered constantly.  He was in a gigantic room with metal walls.  At the side opposite from Alistair was an arched entryway with a sign that read “The Center for People with Special Needs - Castle Apartment Labs - restricted access only.”  Wrapping through the sign was a caricature of a three headed dog.  Alistair was so surprised by the massive scale of the room that he had forgotten about the voices he had heard before.  The mysterious John Reid was nowhere to be found.  Alistair began to think.  The first thing he had to do was find out what the purpose of Operation FAST was and what they did to their subjects.  If there were innocent people alive here, he had to try to free them.  Alistair made for the arched doorway.  On the other side of the arch, he found he was in a well lit hallway with a number of doors leading from it.  Past a door marked “lockers” there were, big surprise, rows of lockers as well as some people wearing lab coats.  Moving with purpose so as not to attract unwanted attention, Alistair opened one of the lockers, finding a lab coat inside.  He picked it up and wasted no time putting it on over his trenchcoat.  He looked down at the name tag on the coat.  It read “Quillian Harrison”.  Alistair wandered through the facility until he’d committed its layout to memory.  When Alistair went down to the lower levels he was shocked.  The labs were deserted. Operation FAST must have been shut down years ago.  He found some audio logs that had been left by the scientists who’d worked there.  

Apparently, Operation FAST was originally founded in secret to study the minds of the insane for the sole purpose of increasing scientific knowledge.  The original founders wanted to use potentially unethical methods to increase the efficiency of the experiments, and they were afraid that if the public knew about the project, they would shut it down.  The first patients, like Robin, were selected carefully from many asylums around the world.  The subjects guardians gave permission for them to take part in the studies.  Shortly after its creation, one of the project’s creators, Dr. John Reid slowly took control of the facility.  He began tricking people who he wanted to study into going insane, later forcing them into his lab.  There he would mess with their brains using drugs he developed.  It seems he was trying to create an army of brainwashed henchmen to take over the world.  Many of the scientists who tried to leave were turned into henchmen, and implanted with electrodes, hence Egeus.

There were no innocent people left in the lab.  They had been killed or turned into henchmen in the years previous.  Among those to have lost their lives to this lunatic’s quest was,  most assuredly, his mother.  It was time to get his revenge.  He found the still-active lab controls in a room nearby.  Alistair quickly got to work rigging the lab to self-destruct.  Dr. Reid was, apparently, a paranoid man because he had actually built a self-destruct option into his lab.  Even in this desperate hour, Alistair found his whole situation comical.  He was underground in the secret lab of a madman who had tried and failed to take over the world, and he was in the process of setting a self-destruct sequence.  He finished and the countdown began. Ten minutes to get out.  He ran upstairs as fast as he could.

Alistair headed through the lab and made it back to the huge entry hall where he’d first arrived.  He began working on the door controls when he heard footsteps.  He turned and faced none other than Dr. Reid himself.  The doctor walked slowly towards him speaking softly.  “Don’t worry dear detective, or should I say Quentin?  How long have you been lurking around, trying to ruin my accomplishments?  You’ll never see your antique shop, or any other part of this wretched city again.”  Alistair observed the Doctor’s figure.  There was a bump on his right hip.  A pistol.  Alistair ran as fast as he could toward the Doctor in an attempt to grab the gun.  The Doctor was too quick.  He pulled it out and aimed it at Alistair’s head.  THe detective pushed the gun away from his head as Reid pulled the trigger.  Bang!  The gun went off, and hit the door control panel.  It sizzled and but the door didn’t budge.  They were locked in here together.  The doctor was still distracted by the misfire and Alistair managed to grab the gun.  He pointed it directly at the Doctor’s head and spoke.  “Your experiments are over.  This whole facility is about to go up in flames.  Nothing will be left of either of us or your legacy.”  The Doctor’s eyes opened wide, “No!  You couldn’t have...I...All I’ve worked for...” The Detective continued cooly. “I could end your suffering now,” said Alistair, but I’ve seen what you did to hundreds of innocent people.  I’m going to make you wait to die so you can feel what it’s been like for the families your victims.”  Alistair did not know where the sudden rage had come from.  He’d never felt such focused anger at one person before.  He went on.   “I know because I waited for my mother.  Countless others and I waited for our kidnapped loved ones in vain because of you, you son of a bitch!  Alistair looked at his watch.  One minute left.  This was it.  He stared the evil man down just to pass the time.  thirty seconds.  Alistair felt sweat dripping down his face.  It seems strange, but in a way, he was happy.  The Detective had solved the case of his life.  Ten... Nine...Eight.  The doctor disappeared, and everything turned white.  Alistair heard a gun go off somewhere and he knew that he’d done it.  He had finished the evil man’s reign of terror.

Alistair walked through the white background.  Eventually he found that he was back in the meadow.  He ran towards the familiar sound of water in the hope that he’d find his mother again, as he did the first time he visited this strange realm.  As he walked, the noise from the waterfall got louder.  The same giant trees came around him.  He saw someone in the distance.  It was Robin!  Alistair ran up to him and waved, but his friend took no notice.  Robin looked straight through him as if he wasn’t there and muttered under his breath, “Alistair, how could they kill you before we knew the truth!  The birds are beautiful.  I love it when they EAT ME...the truth, isn’t it wonderful?...Too bad we’ll never know.”  It seemed as if some of the experiments Dr. Reid had done on him had taken their toll.  There was no telling how much of their time together he would remember accurately.  Alistair continued towards waterfall.  Running now, as before, he saw the bullies from his childhood.  They smiled and waved happily to him.  When he reached the waterfall he jumped towards his mother.  Instead of falling through her image, he landed in the meadow with her by his side.  She brought Alistair close, looked into his eyes, and mouthed the same words as before, only this time he could hear her.  “You did it.” She said.  “My son, you did it.”  He leaned in to hug her and everything melted away.

Operation FAST

Alistair sat on the ground in the hidden room just as he had for the past hour.  Shortly after Mr. Moore left, he did a quick search of the room, assumed the position, and began to think back on their conversation.  He was onto something.  Robin Spartacus Moore did not create this room himself.  Something much more sinister was behind this place.  The first clue he uncovered in his inspection of the room was on the wall in the corner.  Rusted over, he found about fifty tally marks.  This room had at one time been used as a holding cell.  He rushed over to the handle of the door that he pushed in to gain entry to the chamber.  It too was rusting, but the shape and not the condition of the handle was what captured the Detective’s eye.  The metal that made up the handle curved to form the mirror image of the letters “CS” when viewed from the front.  Whoever created the room was both clever and full of themselves.  They couldn't bear the thought of creating something without putting their initials on it and yet, didn’t want to be traced in connection with the room.  Before leaving, Moore mentioned that he had spent part of his life in an asylum.  Although the idea that the man’s past might be connected to that of his mother did enter Alistair’s head when Moore mentioned the asylum, he quickly shook it off as nonsense.  Now, still sitting against the wall, Alistair couldn’t help but feel that he may have been right.  He noticed a thin ray of light shooting down from the ceiling in the middle of the room.  He shook his head to make sure that he was not seeing things.  The light was definitely coming from above.  The sun must have been blocked from reaching the hole at the angle it was at an hour ago.  With the passing of time, it had moved and let the light in.  It was strange that there was a hole in the ground deep enough to get into the chamber, but it was probably just a coincidence.  Before leaving the tunnels, Alistair went over to look at the spot where the light hit the ground.  Alistair’s whole body shook.  The light illuminated a list of numbers that appeared to be some sort of code -- preceded by the letters “CS”.  He had stumbled into something great.  Whether it was the good or bad kind of great had yet to be seen.  He made a quick exit from the tunnels, walked back to his shop, and went to sleep.  He would work more on the case tomorrow morning.

Alistair began work unraveling his newfound mystery at six o’clock.  He brewed himself a cup of Tea, and began to inspect the evidence.  He was so captivated by the case that he forgot to open his shop at 8.  “First thing’s first,” he thought.  “What did the series of numbers mean?”  It did not take him long to discover that he needed to divide every two digits by 7 and then multiply the result by 3.  The new number stood for the digit of the alphabet (1-26) and they started over with 27.  The results were stunning.  The code was list of insane asylums with their locations.  The first on on the list, the “Center for People with Special Needs” appeared to be the headquarters for something called, “Operation FAST,”  whatever that stood for.  So the the “CS” probably stood for the C and S in Center With People for Special Needs.  “Why didn’t they just use CPSN?” Alistair wondered.  About halfway down the list he nearly fainted after decoding the words “Bostall House.”  Now he knew that his mother was somehow connected to the plot.  He scrambled to his feet, stopping for a second to look at his watch.  It was 1pm.  He rushed out the door, sprinting towards the bowling alley, and hoping all the way that Robin Spartacus Moore was working today.  Alistair was close to uncovering what had really happened to his mother that day when she left him for good.  Victory seemed just close enough to grasp!

The Girl With the Chocolatey Hair (Part 2)

As the darkness enveloped him, Alistair’s thoughts began to drift. He temporarily forgot about his quest for the chocolatey haired girl, focusing instead upon his own problems. Recently, it had occurred to Alistair that he did not fit in with the rest of the town. Somewhere in the back of his mind he had always known, but it was only in this pure darkness of the sewers, in which he could not even see his own hand, that he allowed his thoughts to form into ideas. Sometime, after this case was closed, and everyone in the town recognized him for his ability, he would get away. Get away to a place where no one could bother him.

The darkness around him shifted to a quiet meadow. Alistair lay still on the ground, looked up at the blue sky, and listened to the soft chirp of birds. In the distance he heard the steady sound of flowing water. Without complete control of his body, he began to walk slowly toward the sound. Barely realizing it, he entered a thick forest. Trees the size of small office buildings surrounded him. Running blindly now at the ever growing sound of rushing water Alistair saw familiar faces taking shape in the trees around him. Voices of his enemies back from grade school echoed in his ears. They pointed and shouted as he ran by, “Look everyone, it’s Mr. Detective!” They laughed hysterically. “It’s a shame, really, that he’ll never have any friends.” Alistair could not remember having feelings so intense after moving to the States. The noise was deafening. It could not be long before he reached the water. He rounded a corner and saw it: the Waterfall. It was twice as wide and deep as any that he had seen in his lifetime. He had no time to stop himself, he was going to go over. As he looked out over the edge he saw his mother smiling and waving at him in the cascading water ahead. She mouthed something to him that he did not quite catch. The was no ground underneath him any more. As he fell, he felt more at peace than he had since he watched his mother drive to the asylum and out of his life.

The pitch darkness of the tunnels returned, and with it, Alistair’s normal frame of mind. He had to find the chocolatey haired girl. Than he could find that forest. Alistair climbed through the small shaft until it opened up into a ten foot wide tunnel. He began to search for clues with his flashlight. After nothing presented itself, Alistair turned to go back to the orphanage. As he moved his flashlight, he saw something glint. On closer inspection, it seemed to be some sort of contraption. He twisted a small handle and pushed it in. A small section of the wall slid away to reveal a chamber with a somewhat startled man inside. “Who are you?” The man asked. “I’m Alistair Oxley, the town detective, and who might you be?” My name is Robin, Robin Spartacus Moore,” the man replied. Alistair went straight to business. “Have you seen a girl named Annalisa with chocolatey hair? I’ve been sent by her friend Xiu Li to find her.” Moore’s expression changed upon hearing his words. “ We can’t talk about this with that door open, come inside.” Alistair walked inside the chamber and the wall closed, leaving no trace that the small chamber existed. Mr. Moore began to speak, “I live a simple life, but my past is filled with trauma. My parents sent me to an awful asylum when I was young, and I’ve never truly recovered. I managed to escape by learning how to take care of myself and tinker with things. Because of my past, I cannot resist the urge to help young people in need when they come to me. Annalisa escaped from the police shortly after they picked her up. I happened to be nearby, and she asked me for help. I created this room for her to hide out from the authorities again. I came down here to check on her, but she’s not here anymore. I wish I could help you find her, but I’m on my lunch break. I have to get back to my job at the bowling alley, a man’s gotta eat right?” Moore opened the door of the chamber, and turned to look at Alistair. “See you around detective; And hey, good luck.” With that he left.. Alistair had a questionable story, and no lead. Great.

The Girl With the Chocolatey Hair (Part 1)

The next day was remarkably uneventful. That is, until mid-afternoon. Alistair had just finished cleaning off a particularly nice coffee table dating from the 1870’s when he heard the jingle of the doorbell. “Can I help you?” Alistair asked, as he inspected his new arrivals. The two teens, a boy and a girl looked up when he spoke. The girl stepped forward. She introduced herself as Xiu Li Zheng. She told Alistair that her friend Jane Patterson, also known as Annalisa, decided one day to live in to live in tunnels under the city. Eventually, the police found out about her hiding spot and took her away. While there was no doubt that Xiu’s story contained something tragic, Alistair couldn’t help but let his amusement show in his expression. Xiu turned red, “What are you smiling at? I need help!” “Sorry, I was just thinking to myself,” replied Alistair calmly. The story was absurd and it sounded as if the police had taken away the orphan with just cause. However, he had not gotten a chance at a case like this in a long time. After a minute of consideration, Alistair turned to Xiu, “I’ll help you. The first thing I must do is question any people that may know where the police took this Annalisa.” Xiu Li jumped a foot in the air and hugged the other kid, whom Alistair assumed to be her boyfriend. “Thank you so much, I didn’t know what I would do if you wouldn’t help me!” Alistair picked up his bag of detective supplies, and walked to the door. He looked over his shoulder, gave Xiu a wink, and was of. The rest of the day was spent thinking about his next move. He would begin tomorrow.

The next morning he woke at 6:20 and began his case. His first stop, the orphanage where Annalisa had lived, and then underneath. As he walked across town, Alistair realized how still the sky was. It seemed quite obvious to Alistair that the eerie weather could mean only one thing, a huge storm was headed towards the little city. As the orphanage came into view, he realized that not one airplane had flown overhead during his whole walk. Strange, he thought, as the airport ten miles south of the city was generally quite busy. Although Alistair did not know why, he felt that the lack of any flight around him did not bode well for his rescue operation today. He shrugged and entered the orphanage.

Alistair walked through the halls of the orphanage, peering in offices, looking for the man known as “Christophe Moreau.” Xiu Li told him that Mr. Moreau may have an idea of where the police took Annalisa. Eventually, he came to an office with a plaque that read “C. Moreau.” Alistair knocked on the door. When no one came to the door, he let himself in. Inside the room, a light flickered from the fixture attached to the still ceiling fan. The air inside the office had a dead feeling about it. Alistair hit the switch to turn on the fan. No luck, it was broken. He scanned the rest of the dimly lit room. There were a number of papers scattered across the desk. Upon examination, Alistair found that many of them were pictures of what he assumed to be family of Mr. Moreau. One of the drawers of the desk was slightly open. when Alistair opened it, he found it empty, except for as note that read, “Gone to investigate sewers.” Moreau must have been in a hurry to run to the sewers seeing as he didn’t even bother to put the note on his desk or to use correct grammar.

Alistair quickly located the entrance to the sewers in the girl’s bathroom. Armed only with a flashlight, some trusty equipment, and his wits, he descended into the claustrophobic darkness, wondering all the time why he couldn’t be satisfied with another line of work.

The Dream

The light filtered in through the shutters, were they blue? Brown? Green? One eye opened, his nose twitched, the other eye opened. It all seemed so familiar. Alistair looked at his hands expecting to see calloused hands that had spent years sanding and polishing antiques. He was surprised to see plain, soft, almost naive skin staring back at him. He took a deep breath, preparing to sigh, when the pleasant scent of British berries in the summer reached him. When he finally did exhale, it did not come out as a groan to express the pent up boredom that he had assumed he was feeling, but a calm “mmmm”. It was this unwilling sound that dictated to him that he was happy, and safe.

After finally getting out of bed, Alistair looked at his surroundings. He was not at Jacks Jems. In fact, he was not even in America. He was in the house he grew up in, just west of London. Slowly he began to piece the evidence together as he always did. He remembered this summer very well. How could he forget it? This was the last week that he saw his mother. As he walked toward the door leading to the rest of the house, he heard footsteps. For a moment he didn’t want to see the face of his mother again. He soon gave in. The first thing he saw when he opened the door was his mother making eggs for breakfast. She looked at him with a huge, loving smile, “Good morning!” she said. Ms. Oxley also spoke in a sing-song voice, which helped to create the constant illusion of happiness that she always carried with her. After breakfast, Alistair began to read a random book from his favorite detective novels. Today he sat down to read “‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He figured this was as good story as any starring his personal favorite and inspiration, Sherlock Holmes. A few hours after he finished the story, he began to tell his mother about it. At first she listened patiently, but than she started to point out random items on the wall, asking, “Alistair, dear, are you sure that mirror was there yesterday?” This freaked him out because it was radically different behaviour than he had come to expect from his mother, who usually wasn’t bothered by such trivial things. Over the next week, Alistair would witness the most horrifying spectacle of his life. His mother would slowly degrade until she could not look at anything without shrinking into a corner with intense fear. Alistair would not be able to do anything to help her. After she would go, had gone away, he would spend many days and nights trying to find a way to do for others what he could not do for her. Just because he could not fix his mother’s disorder did not mean he could not solve the problems of others. He would become a detective.

The Mysterious Mugging

A cool breeze passed over Alistair as he sat atop the tallest tree in Sherwood Park, eyes glued to his favorite pair of antique binoculars. After that fateful run-in with the car, he decided that he would let cases come to him with ease. This allowed him to spend more time enjoying life, instead of continuously wondering if he would ever get another chance to do the investigation work that he longed for. Hence, on this day, he was doing just that. Alistair could not remember any occasion in recent times when he had been as relaxed as he was now, engaging in his favorite pastime, people watching. Earlier in the morning, there were not many people in the park and he had taken to watching a bright red cardinal build a nest in the next tree over. Later, the sun was out in full blast and many people milled about eating ice cream and generally chatting happily. He stayed up in the same tree until twilight. Just as he was considering settling for the night in the tree, he looked over toward Castle Apartments to the southeast, and some thing caught his eye. After moving the binoculars down and quickly refocusing them, he saw two people engaging in some kind of violent activity. After a short time, he saw hit the other in the chest, grab an item that they were holding, and run off into the night. Leaping with more energy than The Detective knew he had at this time, he ran towards where the victim was still standing. By the time he reached the the spot where the event occurred, the victim was gone. It was almost as if the mugging had never occurred. In his annoyance, Alistair began to argue with himself. “It doesn’t look like anyone is here, and nothing is disturbed, said one part of him. The other insisted that, “I saw it through my trusty binoculars!” He spent a while searching the scene of the crime for evidence. Finding none, he slowly walked back toward his treetop paradise. As he prepared for bed thirty feet in the air, he remembered thinking that he saw the crime at twilight, and wondered why he had taken his eyes so seriously.

The Case of Nonexistance, or rather, the Case That Never Was

Still in a good mood from the Detective’s triumphant return yesterday, Alistair got straight to work looking for a new case. “What better way to think of an idea for a case than to take a walk?” he thought. After ringing up a present the mailman bought for his daughter, he set off.

As he walked down the street, bundled up from the snowflakes that filled his vision, he saw the old blind man at it again. This time he was collecting money for the Salvation Army. As Alistair walked by, he dropped his loose change into the bucket. Just as he had last time, the blind man shouted. “What’s Pantophobia?” he yelled into the snowy sky. At first, Alistair continued walking. As soon as he processed what the blind man had said, he ran to the church in search of a library.

In the back of the church, Alistair stumbled upon a jewel of a book collection. As he thumbed through the ancient volumes, he couldn’t help but wish he had some of them in his shop. Finally he found what he needed, a book entitled Phobias: The History and Science of Fear from Hippocrates to Freud to the Present Day, by Helen Saul. As Alistair looked through the pages of the book he thought about his single mother in England. He hadn’t seen her since he was just over twelve. The last glimpse he saw of his mother’s face was right before she got into the car that took her to Bostall House. Although Alistair had not quite understood why his mother left at the time, he now knew that what had started as a small fear in the back of his mother’s mind grew until finally she was scared of everything. She had developed Pantophobia. He slammed the book shut. He had blocked out those old memories when he came to America. He tried to escape his past, while also helping others, hence the detective agency.

Having accomplished nothing but remind himself of memories he worked hard to forget, Alistair thought it best to leave the little room at the back of the church. He picked up the book, and stood up. Just as he started to leave, an open book on a desk caught his eye. He looked at the title: How to Live Without Parents: From One Orphan to Another. “Interesting,” thought Alistair. He had a soft spot for orphans, understandably. “Could it be an orphan from the orphanage run by the church sneaking out to read? No matter. He had no need to deprive an innocent young one from discovering the mysteries of books.

Walking back to his shop, Alistair could hardly see one foot in front of him. He was trying to be cautious, but the snow was so thick that no matter what he did, he was blinded. He didn’t even notice at first when the headlights began to come towards him. At the last second he jumped off to the side and rolled along the ground, just as a car whizzed past his head. Still shaken, Alistair got up and continued on his way home, realizing that he didn’t always need a case to be happy. He realized how lucky he was to be living in such an interesting place, with full health of body and mind. From now on, he’d just let work come to him when it pleased. One thing would never change though. When mystery arrived, the Detective would be there to greet it.