Riddle 13

Questions and answers fired past me in a way almost perfectly mimicking bullets. Except you couldn't dodge these bullets, you could only hope that they missed their intended target. I wasn't able to return fire, as only Cheri had a conveniently metaphorical gun and she wasn't aiming to kill. Then I kinda forgot where I was going with this metaphor and glanced over at my partners. Nazo had that same deadpan expression on his face, while Cheri was answering the cops current question. I decided that I should perhaps pay attention to this, lets face it, rather important dialogue. And as always my timing was impeccable.



"Does the M.E have a cause of death?"

"Yes sir, death by cyanide poisoning, assumed to be ingested."


By breath was caught in my throat. It wasn't easy to force a big guy such as Robin to ingest a pill, and
there was no sign of a struggle. I looked over the crime scene in my mind, and saw no cup or other
objects that Robin would have ingested something from. Two words were uttered from my mouth and
Cheri's mouth at the same time.

"The toilet..."
Dave's eyes lit up with a light that would put most stars to shame. We all moved to look at said

bathroom appliance. Then the stares of three pair of eyes hit the ground in disappointment. The toilet
wasn't working. A quick check to the front of the door proved that there wasn't an out of order sign on
it. All of a sudden a middle age man, who I recognized as the M.E., walked up to Dave and gave him a
slap on the head. He held up a few pairs of gloves to the rest of us.

"You really should know better Deputy Curtis."

At least the newly identified Deputy had the grace to look sheepish. My mouth dropped to the floor.
"Deputy? As in the second most important person of the local police department deputy?"

"Yeah, though I must say Cheri's father is far superior to me. Did you know that he turned down a job in
the capital in order to keep his small town safe? A example to us all..."

I turned my observing gaze to my Watson, only to get a rather stony stare in return. I wisely turned my
head away from her while putting my latex gloves on, my team doing the same. We checked and double
checked and triple checked the whole toilet, looking for clues. In the end we had found nothing more
than what we had started with, the dead body of a good man. Tired, we all stepped outside of the stall
to catch our breath and think a little. Nazo, who hadn't joined us on our toilet inspection, decided to let
his opinion out on the lack of evidence.

"Shouldn't we be talking to the people in the eating area to hear what the people saw? I mean the
criminal might still be there."

Deputy Curtis's face flushed.

"That was going to be our next course of action. Remember you can't rush perfection."

"I'm not rushing perfection I'm rushing you."

The deputy then abruptly almost waltzed out of the room, with the obvious intention that we were
going to follow him. As if we didn't know where the damn door is. As we followed our Shepard I leaned
over to Cheri and whispered.

"Should this guy really be the second in command of a whole police department?"

"No, but keep quiet otherwise he might remove us from our already precarious position. The same goes
for you Probi."

Nazo rolled his eyes, but he still, although reluctantly, nodded his head. Cheri then reached over and
gave him something that I couldn't really see. When we got back into the room where the police were
keeping the customers, an invisible, yet determined, smile plastered on our faces.