It’s an all-in-one af­fair, your build­ing.

It tow­ers im­pos­si­bly high, thou­sands of feet over any other in the city.

Some days, you sit higher than the clouds, re­flect­ing on life, the sun stream­ing in through the gi­ant floor-to-ceil­ing win­dows, cast­ing the most del­i­cate of shad­ows across the dark hard­wood floor of your of­fice, fill­ing the nooks and cran­nies of your in­tri­cately carved im­pos­ing wooden desk.

Other days, you re­main on the ground floor, im­mersed in the sea of cu­bi­cles, jok­ing with your col­legues, and be­ing more-or-less nor­mal.

You could be nor­mal. Nor­mal enough. You’d like to, even. You’d keep the odd ec­cen­tric­ity, of course, but you’d as soon drop the rest.

But you can’t drop it. You can’t be nor­mal. They won’t let you to be.

The De­tec­tive would­n’t be The De­tec­tive if she were nor­mal.

The De­tec­tive would­n’t be any­one.

The De­tec­tive would­n’t ex­ist.

And she must.

It’s time to go down­stairs.

Where else would you put the morgue?

It’s an all-in-one build­ing. Po­lice­men on ground. Morgue be­low. Hos­pi­tal above. Ten floors of ac­coun­tants, but they’re like sand: they get every­where, so they’re sprin­kled all around. You think there’s prob­a­bly one hid­ing in your closet, but you haven’t been able to prove it. It’s a shame, though, since you usu­ally are great friends with ac­coun­tants.

Dozens upon dozens of floors are ded­i­cated solely to be­ing creepy un­fin­ished of­fice space (you never know when you may need such a thing, and you’ve al­ready made plenty of money rent­ing it out to the cre­ators of hor­ror movies).

A cou­ple hun­dred more floors are rented out; some apart­ments; some shop­ping malls; some pub­lic parks.

Yet, con­ve­niently, the el­e­va­tor ride down the thou­sand floors takes but sec­onds.

You love this build­ing. You should.

You de­signed it.

Base­ment one. One of dozens.

The Morgue.

You have a feel­ing about the body.

You ap­proach the bier, where it sits alone, and stand, re­gard­ing it in si­lence.

You snap your fin­gers. At once, stooge nu­mer two ap­pears by your side.

“Wat­son, what do you see?” you com­mand.

She hes­i­tantly ex­am­ines the body.

“Some scrapes. Cuts. Still bleed­ing. It–It’s freak­ish.”

She looks away.

“Is there, or is there not, a bul­let wound through her chest?”

She looks at you, con­fused. “Her chest, sir?”

“Wait; are boys the one with the… you know… the out­ies? Or the in­nies?”

Wat­son blushes, but still man­ages to look at you like you’re in­sane. “O-outie, sir.”

You are un­con­vinced. Ap­par­ently, they do, in­deed, con­sider you to be a girl. It’s a sur­pris­ing thing to re­al­ize.

Per­haps you’re more “nor­mal” in their eyes than you thought you were.

But you let it drop; there’s big­ger fish to fry. For in­st­nace: “Ma’am.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I thought I told you not to call me ma’am.”

“Yes, sir.”

You roll your eyes. You pre­ferred ma’am.

“If the killer had a gun, and the killing was in­side… What are the scrapes from?”

Wat­son moves, ever-so-slowly, closer to the body. She forces her­self to eye it crit­i­cally.

“There’s some­thing strange about the scrapes, sir. I’d think it must be car­pet­burn, but…”

You raise an eye­brow.

“The car­pets in there… they would­n’t burn like this. This is like–like lit­er­ally the top layer of skin was peeled off.”

“And these cuts,” you say, point­ing at the still bleed­ing gashes in the body’s skin. “They’re rather clean, no? And–al­most–or­derly? Al­most but not quite in straight, par­al­lel lines?”

“This was­n’t a strug­gle,” she says de­ci­sively.

“No shit Sher­lock!” you ex­claim; she gri­maces.

You were ac­tu­ally go­ing to com­ment on how aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing the still-bleed­ing cuts were, but you like her con­clu­sion, and it is, in fact, cor­rect, even if that car­pet would have left those type of burns and those cuts could have come about in a strug­gle.

It’s all in the hair. The mid-length hair was per­fect at the crime scene, and is still per­fect now. Not a drop of blood, not a tan­gle.

You don’t blame the killer. It would have ru­ined the aes­thetic.

Even if wrong-footed, Wat­son made a clever at­tempt. Time for a pro­mo­tion, it seems.

You’re afraid you might loose a stooge. Can ju­nior de­tec­tives still be stooges?

Prob­a­bly.

You tend to make the rules around here, af­ter all.