It's Hard Being An Optimist

It’s hard being an optimist. Damned hard, because you always think everything is going to go swimmingly, even when you’re halfway sure it won’t.

I’m an optimist, a good one, too.

Things rarely get me down or depress me and when they do, it doesn’t last long. A day or two, maybe three, and then my blasted optimism bursts through again and I think ‘yeah – this is gonna be Great!’ Yeah, it’s gonna be Great with a capital ‘G’ and everything.

Take today, for instance.

A couple of months ago I entered a writing competition over on Authonomy. No prizes. No glory. Just the chance to strut your stuff and maybe get some accolades. Fun, right?

Well, here’s the entry I made:

* * * * *

The Locked Room

“Mom!”  Ellen Tyne raced into her parent’s kitchen.  Dad was still at work, but good news wouldn’t wait.  “I got it!  I got the job!”

Mary Tyne looked up from the pie she was filling.  Catching her daughter’s excitement, she smiled, her eyes twinkling, “Honey!  How wonderful!  I’m so proud of you.  When do you start?”

“In two weeks,” Ellen sobered.  “I’m going to have to go shopping.  I’ll need clothes and shoes.”

“You’ll be fine.”  Mom went back to her pie, “Dad and I will lend you some money, if you need it.”

Ellen made new friends at her job.  One, a woman in her mid-thirties, took Ellen her under her wing, like a big sister.  Eventually, Ellen invited Sami to her new house for dinner.

“Hi!”  Ellen said with a smile, “Come on in.”

Hours later, Chris Benson stood in the middle of Ellen’s living room, staring at the massive bloodstain on the floor.  In places, streaks marked the edges in long lines.  Thousands of blood and tissue splatters and droplets had sprayed over the carpet, furniture and walls.  Some reached the ceiling.

He had seen the body.  The girl’s mother wouldn’t recognize her.  Her face had been crushed, pulverized until the eyes fell from their sockets.  The nose was gone; the jaw shattered.  When the ME turned the head to examine the side, the entire lower face sagged.

Benson sighed.  It was easily in the top ten of gruesome scenes he’d attended in his eighteen years with the homicide squad.

“I don’t get it.”  Steve Klein, his partner, picked his way through the debris strewn through the room. “Locked door, locked windows, no way out, but…  How?”

They both stared at the steel framed door officers had broken open with a battering ram.  The antique thumb bolt and slide latches at the top and bottom of the door hung free, torn from steel and wood.

“I dunno, but we know she didn’t do it to herself.  We’ll have to find out.”  Benson surveyed the room again, “Anything from forensics on her purse or ID?”

“Nothing.  Just fingerprints, some hairs, fibers and,” he gestured at the dark stain, “Jane Doe.  I wonder what she did to deserve that.”

Benson grunted and headed to the door, “No one deserves that.”

Behind them, the forensics team continued their work.  Outside, Benson surveyed the rural neighborhood.  “Those folks are out of town, according to the patrolman.  Next house is a hundred yards that way.  They wouldn’t have heard anything.”

“Who called it in?”

“A neighbor who said they heard a fight, but I don’t think so, looking at the layout.  I think our perp called it in, and then stuck around to watch.”

“Where?”

“Probably used a cell phone and there’s a diner down at the junction.  It’d be a ringside seat.  Let’s check it out.”

No one at the diner remembered anything, but promised to call if they did.

Back at their office, Benson drew a floor plan from the measurements Klein had taken, and they began to talk.  How did such a grisly murder happen inside a locked house?

Hours later, her fingerprints gave them her name:  Ellen Tyne.

The next morning, Benson tossed an envelope on Klein’s desk.  “Here’s the ME’s report.  Eighty-six knife wounds, all but six, our bleeders, are superficial.  Burn marks on her breasts and thighs.  No rape, no gunshot, killed by a crushed skull.”

“Shit.”  Klein’s chair creaked.  “How long before we get toxicology?”

“Another week, ten days,” Benson looked at his hands.  “Fingerprints are recent.  She worked in the mayor’s office.  We’ll have to start there.  Maybe it was some nutcase with a grudge.”

They started looking into the backgrounds of everyone in the city offices. 

Their efforts turned up one lead interesting enough to make Benson lean back in his chair and stare at the water stain on the ceiling.  He recognized the name from one of the first cases he had ever worked.  After thinking about it, he picked up the phone, dialed and asked one question.  With the answer, he nodded and said, “Check it, would ya?”

“What are you thinking?”  Klein asked.

Benson told him.

“Yeah?”  Steve grimaced and muttered, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”  He stood up and paced to the window and back.  “What was the motive?”

“The girl said no, and meant it.  That’s my bet.”

An hour later, the phone rang.  “It was, huh?  You can back it up in front of a jury?”  He listened,

“Okay, we’ll get a warrant.  Thanks.”

When Samantha Anders got home from work that afternoon two men were sitting in a car in front of her house.  They made her nervous enough to drop her keys.  Before she straightened again, they were standing on either side of her.

“Ms. Anders?  I’m Detective Benson, this is Klein.  We have a search warrant.”

They found what they were looking for wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the garbage barrel in the garage.  The harness was there, along with the dildo.  It was unique enough in size and shape they were confident the ME could match it to the anal and rectal injuries Ellen had suffered.

Back at their office, Benson stood in front of the drawing.  “I even know how she got out.”  He tapped the paper.

“No way!  It was locked!”

“Bet you a steak dinner.”

“You’re on.  How, Sherlock?”

Benson explained and handed over the latest forensics report that included items taken from Ellen’s garage.

When he was done, Klein shook his head in admiration, “Just that simple … a putty knife, glazing putty, cleaning fluid and paper towels, all right there in Ellen’s garage.”

“Yep, and the fingerprints are Samantha’s.”

That night, Klein treated Benson to a steak dinner.

Eight months later, the jury convicted Samantha Anders of murder in the first degree, a rap she had beaten in another similar case, fifteen years earlier.

* * * * *

For that, I didn’t get one single vote. Not one. (Well, okay. My niece voted for it, but I suspect it was a pity vote. She denies it, of course, but hers was the lone vote for the poor orphan story and she's a sweet girl - always rooting for the underdog, even when it's buried. Seeing the run of the tide, she's the kind of person who will throw a lifeline to a drowning swimmer, even if there's no hope of rescue.)

As for me, I still don’t get it. Personally, I think that’s a pretty nifty little story in under 1,000 words. It doesn’t still hurt, burn and rankle as much as it did, but it does, a little.  Yet it is what it is. Folks thought the other story entered against mine was better.  Okay. That’s their opinion.

Determined not to open myself to disappointment / hurt / embarrassment again, I (internally) declared I would never, ever, ever do anything like that again! So what have I done? Doh! Agreed to participate in another competition just like the one I entered before.

"Why?" You ask intelligently?

"Beats the hell out of me!" I answer honestly. But I know the answer. It’s because I’m an optimist. And a bloody good one, too.

Have a lovely day!

Best~

Philippa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories

Check out my writing at Authonomy: https://www.authonomy.com/user/6ec5f342-afe1-407e-bcf8-8636684c8ac4/ (yeah - cool name, that!)