Good morning all. I had a very productive Monday but I’ll tell you I could have used another five minutes this morning. I hit the snooze button as many times as I could, but still the sun came up. Coffee will be a distinct necessity soon. First let’s get into our morning prompt. fingers wiggled and limber? Brains at least half awake? Excellent. Let’s go.
That turned out better than i thought it would. No clue what happened to Mr. Everett, but I do want to find out…
Tuesday, May 3rd: Papers were strewn across the floor.
Papers were strewn across the floor. That was almost more shocking than the corpse. Mr. Everett always kept his office neat and tidy. All papers were filed at the end of the day, if not before. In face he had a policy never to leave anything unwarranted out on his desk. Mr. Everett was a creature of habit.
He arrived each morning at ten til eight. He set the coffee on to brew. While the communal pot was running through it’s cycles he picked up his mail from the letter box where his receptionist stacked it and brought it inside to his desk. He then sat down, and turned on his computer. By the time it was ready for his password input, the mail had been divided into three stacks. The first included items he could safely dispose of, the second things he could answer right away and the third, included items he would need to follow up on before a final decision could be made.
As the computer accepted his password, he took the stack to be disposed of to the paper shredder and pushed it through. Once neatly disposed of, he went to the coffee pot, poured his morning cup, black always, and took it back to his desk.
Anything that could be dealt with in his mail, would be, the final stack set aside for later dealings. Then he moved on to his computer. Every item whether contract, inter office memo or spam was dealt with until his in box was empty of new mail.
He would work until ten fifteen at which time he would refill his coffee and hand the items that needed to be dealt with to Ms. Watson, his secretary. He would then return to his desk until lunch time. Lunch was always a ham and Swiss on white purchased from the office commissary and paired with a water. He took exactly twenty eight minutes to eat it before returning to his desk. He would then work until 2:15 when he would take another coffee break and return to his desk for the remainder of the day. The routine never varied. No paperwork was ever left out of place.
But now paper was scattered like fallen leaves in the autumn and when we investigated the body, examining the crumpled form. Two things were immediately obvious. The first was that he had been shot in the forehead, the burn marks around the wound testified to the probability of the gun being placed directly against the forehead. The second piece of information immediately evident was that this was not Mr. Everett.
It was has office. There was no reason why he shouldn’t be in place as his personally set schedule demanded. But he wasn’t here. A quick call to his hope informed one and all that he had left on time. He encountered no obstacles on the way and when the cameras were checked he arrived precisely on time as always. The investigating detective watched him set the coffee to brew, coffee that now filled the office with an acrid stench as it was left to burn. But then the tape clicked off. It did not click on until the moment the next wave of personnel approached the doorways. To Ms. Watson’s dismay, her scream had been immortalized for evidence, as had her stagger back from the doorway and subsequent vomiting into the trash can. But of the tidy Mr. Everett there was no sign.
Ten til Midnight 