Three men had been shot and killed in this very corridor.
Palo Muft was having a bad day and it had just gotten worse. His nephew was one of the three men shot in the university. He was the only detective that was not on any jobs during the shooting. The bright light of the sun mocked the darkness of the crime committed the night before, and somehow his white suit was invisible to any person. His suitcase of mysterious things seemed to be ten times heavier than it had been ten minutes ago. The university had been in lockdown for three days and Muft had been chosen to find the culprit in a week’s time.
In some ways, the criminal was smart. In other ways, he had no brains. He had left a lot of evidence for Muft to follow, but was smart enough to hide it all in almost every classroom. After searching for three days with his companion, Junal, a level 1 FBI operative, they finally found what they needed. A computer, with a thumbprint on it. The other detectives considered him crazy, but he knew what he was doing. After all, what would a man do with a thumbprint on a computer?
“We were trying to act like we didn’t know anything,” Muft had said to a local reporter.
This was not really true at all, but he knew that by doing this, the culprit would make a stupid move. Junal was waiting on the top floor of the university, although it was unclear why to Muft. The way things were, a man couldn’t be sure of anything.
They used the thumbprint, which they picked because they noticed it was black with lead paint. The fingerprint belonged to a student, Vlad Somtier, who’s explanation of the event went like this:
“I was playing around with the inside of the computer, trying to rewire it to a different server so that I could mess with the other students from my laptop.”
Muft was pretty sure that he was telling the truth, but just in case, he gave him a napkin to wipe the perspiration off his face. With the napkin, he compared the fingerprints to the one on the computer. They were almost an exact match, but not enough to where he could be traced to the crime scene or the computer.
“So he is lying about something….for some reason, ” Muft noted to Junal.
“Might he be scared because of something?” Junal questioned.
“Who knows? Intimidation can go a very, very long way.” Replied Muft
The predicament got worse the next day. With only one day left to find the culprit, he was going to have to work fast. Junal seemed to become more secluded, and Muft was muffed. The only way they could solve the crime was if they at least tried. There had to be some hidden key to this door.
At 10:30 AM on the last day, the chief called in.
“We have a suspect,”
The suspect was a senior man, Jerad Luds, but he was considered a threat because of his museum of guns. The man was not at home during the night of the shooting, and the CSI lab had found his fingerprints on a weapon of suspicion. Muft was surprised to find out that the man had worked in a mine all of his life, and that he had enough funding for the museum. To make the list of clues pointing to him, the other day he had just acquired a large some of money for no reason whatsoever.
Jerad’s fingerprint was almost exactly the same as the one on the napkin, but again it was not exact, as Junal’s data showed. The results completely baffled Muft, and aroused his suspicions. Junal was not being himself lately. It was not as if he were acting guilty, it was just he was seeming less full of life than he had been before the murder. In order to secure him, Muft got him an attorney.
The two suspects, Jerad and Vlad, were perplexed when they learned that both of them would be in the same trial. Somehow, they knew each other. Muft used this to his advantage, keeping them both in the same room for an hour. They exchanged angered glances over the period of time, giving Muft the idea that they were somehow involved with the case as opponents intending to win a race by foul play.
Muft had no idea what was really happening. Behind those angered eyes layed the slightest hint of amusement, which completely escaped the detective. They were in it together, of course, but not in the way Muft had thought. The murder was not done with strength, but with brains. This was the way these two worked, with cold, sly, unconventional hatred.
Meanwhile, Junal was sitting at home when he heard the slightest crack of a doorway. He knew they were coming, he knew why, and he knew that he had an important role in the uprising.
*poing*
The sound was as silent as a winter’s night, and Junal was gone. The mysterious person was there and gone in a matter of seconds, which was exactly as it had been planned.
Muft was distracted from work for a week because of Junal’s mysterious death, and the uprising began. It wasn’t like any normal uprising, that could be stopped in a matter of month’s. It created mass mayhem, and lasted for longer than anyone could remember. The Mobs were back, and they had new leader’s.
