C.S.I. #3 by Kyle Hemmings

We scoured the neighborhood for clues. Who could have murdered a shy reclusive teacher of post-structuralist phonetics, named Hermaine Zedt? God, it was getting so hot and ugly-humid downtown by The Kick. Little kids played dropball, catching the sun in the slit between their runny lips, their noise, all high-wing vowel and soft plosive. We spoke to Hermaine's landlord, an old woman who had trouble hearing and remembering the last significant question. Finally, she admitted to Hermaine keeping a huge red sheepdog with eyes so human they could see through you.

“Oh yeah?” said my partner, J.T., who lit his cigarette, some brand with a German name.

She rambled on about a man who came to visit Hermaine. She spun a finger next to her head. “The guy had problems. After awhile he only barked or whined behind closed doors. Had my suspicions about her too but she paid the rent. I remember the young woman yelling the night of her death, ‘down, Wanton, down.’” Wanton, she then explained in a voice reminding me of damp basements, was the name of Hermaine’s dog that she put to sleep. “Is there anything else?” said the old woman in a voice reminding me of birds in the attic.

“Yes,” said my partner who never slept on his beats, “you mean her dog was already dead when she said this?”

“Yes,” said the old woman in a voice reminding me of the spaces between my dubious parents without prints.

 Later, in the car I asked J.T. what he made of it.

“Simple,” he said, “the phrenic is schizophrenic. Wanton was the name Hermaine gave to her boyfriend because she loved the dog she had to put down and this was her way of keeping him forever. The boyfriend came to believe he was a dog. When you act the part, you become the part. I mean look at the leash marks around her throat and the smile that is still there.

“You're right, Einstein,” I said. Now tell me another one. Like the dog that once dialed 911 just to get its fifteen minutes of fame on YouTube. The owner never found and the mutt is still a suspect.”

“Remember it well,” said J.T. in a voice of absent minds as he closed file keepers, “I was the one assigned to the case.”