Good morning all. We have a foggy one today. It’s not unusual for this time of year. While it will clear up by mid morning it always gives the morning a vaguely dreamlike quality and it is easy to imagine that you are still asleep even as you move through the world. Or at least it does to me. Perhaps the morning prompt will clear a little of that feeling away. Let’s see. Timers set and off we go.
Not what I was expecting when I saw the prompt, but that is part of the fun of these.
Thursday October 8th: The watch face was cracked.
The watch face was cracked. Looking at it Austin tried to determine the time. After all the man was wearing the watch in the attack. ‘And it isn’t a digital watch,’ he thought.
He knew the coroner would get back to him with a time of death soon enough but in the detective stories he read as a child battered watches often provided clues. This was the first time he was able to use a wristwatch in a murder and it seemed a shame not to check.
‘Technically that step tracking watch helped out last year,’ he reminded himself as he tilted his head for a better angle. That had shown when the victim’s heart stopped beating as the heartrate was no longer capable of being tracked. Along with the exact time of death, it showed them routes and locations. They had been able to walk in the victim’s footsteps. In the end they coordinated his data with his killer’s. The killer wore an identical watch and hadn’t taken it off during the murder, the collision of paths as well as the timing quite clear.
This was different. It was an old-fashioned wristwatch. He recognized the watch as being similar to the one his grandfather always wore. It was a perpetual motion so wearing it helped to recharge it. He was certain there was some winding involved, but he had never paid too much attention to the details. He just remembered the term perpetual motion and found it intriguing as a child.
The victim didn’t look much older than he was. He wandered if this watch was a family piece. He managed to see through the cracked face and the blood caught in the cracks. ‘Twelve past eight,’ he thought. ‘Assuming it was set for the correct time and was running properly.’
Almost everyone he knew set their watches five minutes fast. ‘Not that I know many people who wear watches any more.’ Most he knew checked their cell phones for the time. Watches were an affectation, treated as masculine bracelets more often than time pieces.
He straightened and let his gaze sweep over the rest of the scene. He had the man’s identity. He nodded to the medical staff and they moved in to take the man’s body away. Items, including the watch, would be taken into evidence, but first they would take the body.
He stepped back and made a mental note to ask the victim’s family about the watch. It was one of a long series of questions, including what he might have been doing out here in the first place. There was a running path but he was dressed in a suit and tie, complete with well polished dress shoes. The bottoms were scuffed proving they were routinely worn and not new, but they were polished and pristine. The line caused by the bending of the toes as he walked was the only mark on the shoes.
‘Definitely not something to run in.’ he decided. Other than the loop of the running trail, there was little out this way. It wasn’t even a spot frequented by drug dealers or illicit couples hooking up. It was too open for either pursuit.
