They think they found him.

They haven’t found the mur­derer. They’d never be able to.

“He’s just the dri­ver.”

No, they in­sist. He’s the mur­derer.

They even have a con­fes­sion.

That seals it for you. Clearly not the mur­derer.

The mur­derer would never ad­mit to it. Nei­ther would the killer.

“This is not the mur­derer. This is not even the killer. This is the dri­ver.”

No, they say.

You tell them to let the guy go. They refuse.

Who made them Chief De­tec­tive?

Oh well.

This will be more in­ter­est­ing any­way.

“Get him out of here,” you say, in a voice that bro­kers no ar­gu­ment.

“We’re not let­ting him go.”

You need to work on your bro­kers-no-ar­gu­ment voice.

“I don’t care where you take him. Just take him away. Get him out of my of­fice. Steb­bins–”

You al­ways wanted an as­sis­tant named Steb­bins.

“Stay.”

They leave. He stays.

He starts poorly: “He’s clearly guilty–”

“He’s not. But it does­n’t mat­ter.”

Steb­bins al­most protests, but in­stead de­cides a puz­zled coun­te­nance is the or­der of the day.

You clar­ify. “He was hired by the mur­derer-in-charge. He’s con­fessed. Why? The mur­derer will have a way of clear­ing him.”

More puz­zled.

You’ll spell it out. You’ll even use small words.

“The mur­derer will get him off. When they do, we will find out how. Once we find out how, we’ll be led back to the mur­derer them­self.”

Then again, the mur­der­er’s a ge­nius.

They’re prob­a­bly smarter than that.