💾 Archived View for cosmic.voyage › Cilix › 16_prime_suspect.txt captured on 2023-11-14 at 08:22:38.
⬅️ Previous capture (2022-01-08)
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We got away with it. Or so I thought. The problem was that the category "we" got a lot more complicated after that. Maybe it's better to say /you/ got away with it. Was that your plan all along, Judy? It turns out I wasn't quite at the bottom of the police inspector's list. I was second-to-last. He was leaving the prime suspect of his investigation until the end. You, Judy, you were his prime suspect. He told me as much after we finished talking. He told me he would go visit you the next morning, just to tie up loose ends. I figured I better get to you first. I waited for a couple of hours after he left, then I headed straight for your place. I don't know why I felt the need to run to you. I knew you would be fine with the inspector, if my story could hold up so easily, I was sure yours could too. I sensed some kind of danger, though. So I went running. I was right, you were in trouble. When I got to your house, with that familiar smell of honeysuckles choking me, the inspector was already there. Guess his interview with you couldn't wait after all. He wasn't alone. He had some kind of crew with him. They didn't look like police officers. They were lounging around on your front porch, smoking cigarettes and laughing about something. He was surprised to see me. I knew right away I had made the wrong move. I could see my story unravelling in that strange look he was giving me. "Good evening, Mr. Jules. Is there anything I can help you with?" I froze. I didn't know what to say. I tried to make up some story that I was just passing and spotted him from a distance. I pretended I didn't know whose house this was. I could see he didn't buy it, but he played along anyway. "Well, Mr. Jules, this is the home of Judy Walsh, the widow of the recently deceased Walsh that we spoke about just this afternoon." "Oh, I see", was all I could muster. I was looking at my feet, looking at the other men looking at me, looking at the greenhouse, where the honeysuckles were devouring carbon-dioxide, spewing oxygen and thickening the air, looking anywhere that wasn't the inspectors gaze. "Would you like to see her?" he asked me, with a slight grin.