The Chrismystery: A Clarke Quickie

By: Brian P. BorckyCopyright 2011 by Brian P. BorckyPublished by Project Humanoid

For more information on the R.D. Clarke series and other work by Brian P. Borcky, visit http://www.detectiveclarke.com

This ebook has been priced as free by the author. Feel free to share and distribute as you see fit.

If you enjoy The Chrismystery: A Clarke Quickie, please consider purchasing one of the other books in Brian P. Borcky's R.D. Clarke Series.

I'm Detective Clarke - http://www.detectiveclarke.com/im-detective-clarke.html

Destined For Death (Clarke Quickie) - http://www.detectiveclarke.com/destined-for-death-clarke-quickie.html

Detective Clarke Meets The Reaper - http://www.detectiveclarke.com/detective-clarke-meets-the-reaper.html

Note: The Running of the Santas is a real event, though it has no connection with the fictionalized account provided herein. To the best of the author's knowledge, there has never been a serious crime connected to the actual event.

Chapter OneLife is, by and large, boring. We repeat the same ‘wake up, morning ritual, work, evening ritual, sleep, then repeat’

cycle for five or six days and then we get a day or two to have some fun – usually in the form of a weekend spent drinking beer and watching a movie on some sort of video on demand service or a sporting event where the hype is often more entertaining than the game itself. Even now, in a year where I went from Robert Clarke, twenty-six year old administrative assistant who still lives with his mom to R.D. Clarke, twenty-seven year old apprentice detective with a kickin’ bachelor pad, excitement comes in small, fun bursts – a first date, a vacation, capturing a serial killer who almost blows your head off – little nuggets of enjoyment in a bland, watery broth of monotony.

For me, one of the most enjoyable events comes two days after Thanksgiving, when the Delaware Valley Galleria – my local shopping mall – engages in the most fun event in the history of the world: The Running of the Santas, and I’ve been to every one of them.

What started as a small gathering of friends and relatives of workers in the mall (I was dating the assistant manager of a popular clothier at the time – think the opposite of New Army) turned into a collection of hundreds, then later thousands of people dressed as jolly old Saint Nicholas running from one side of the mall to the other, and then back again. The stores love it because the crowds that gather and the participants themselves form a customer base that rivals the Black Friday rush of the day before. The media loves it because it’s a feel good story to lift viewers’ spirits after a newscast filled with murder, plunging temperatures, sports heartaches (I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, after all), and a special report about which brand of fabric softener could be giving your children skin cancer. I love it because it’s a chance to put on a red suit with a pillow stuffed inside and a white wig with matching fake beard and have a good time.

I arrived at the parking lot bright and early – well, that’s half true – I arrived so early, it was not yet bright. Darkness aside, I was ready for the pregame festivities. It was 4:47 in the morning, with the Running of the Santas set to take place in exactly five hours and thirteen minutes. These five hours would be the most fun of the entire day, as scores upon scores of people dressed as the jolly old fat man conducted what has come to be known as the ‘North Pole Tailgate.” The tailgate is packed with all sorts of Christmas goodies – smoked ham, leftover Thanksgiving turkey, cookies and such, not to mention copious amounts of spiked egg nog – while the event maintains a wholesome image, it’s been my observation that at least a quarter of the Santas are blitzed by the time ten o’clock rolls around. Of course, I’m not the best person to be doing this unscientific study, because I’m often one of the drunken ones myself.

I was going to be a teetotaler this time around, however, as I didn’t come alone this year. My fellow Santa, a newcomer to the Running, was Karen Wagner. Karen’s a pretty girl, though a tad on the mousy side, but that’s mainly due to her sense of style (or lack thereof). Karen was originally a murder suspect in my first investigation, but I wound up exonerating her and we’ve maintained a casual friendship ever since, though I’ve rebuked any attempts on her part to make it anything more than that.

Karen and I parked at the far reaches of the lot, close to the main road, not too far from a ‘pin the nose on Rudolph’ game. Karen came dressed as Mrs. Claus – a faux pas, or to be more specific, a rookie mistake – people of all ages, sizes, races and both genders dressed up as Santa, not the Christmas themed costume of their choosing. In addition to her inappropriate choice of attire, Karen looked sleepy, her eyes glazed over a bit.

“How are you feeling?” I called out, far too energized and chipper for five in the morning.“Okay,” she said back, sounding sleepy.I motioned for her to follow me and walked over to a vendor who was selling different

blends of holiday themed coffees and teas – Karen ordered a pumpkin spice latte with an extra shot of caffeine, while I was a little more understated, opting for gingerbread cookie flavored tea.

“This is crazy,” Karen remarked as she took a tentative sip of the coffee, following it up by blowing into the tiny opening on the dome lid atop the cup to cool the beverage down. “I’ve never seen this many people anywhere this early in the morning.”

“Neither have I,” I added, “This is way more people than last year.”“Every year is bigger than the one before it, right?” Karen asked.I nodded. “And more fun,” I added.She took another sip and shivered a bit. “Little cold, isn’t it?” She asked. In fairness, her

costume consisted of a bonnet, a frilly white short-sleeved shirt and a tiny red skirt that ended far above the knee, the ensemble complimented with red heels and a pair of stockings that were designed to look like candy canes; to say she was underdressed for the chilly November morning would be akin to saying that the song The Twelve Days of Christmas is slightly repetitive.

“It’s supposed to be the Running of the Santas, not the Running of the Santas and Mrs. Clauses,” I said, trying to think of a nice way of telling her she came in the wrong costume, though I fear I made came off harsh – no surprise there, I tended to have at least one conversational faux pas in most of my interactions.

Karen looked around and saw that the parking lot was populated almost exclusively with people dressed as Santa, stopping to look particularly hard at people who seemed to retain a feminine shape despite their large stomachs and fake white beards. I took my own survey of the place and saw a few people, mostly vendors, not in costume, as well as two other people who made the Mrs. Claus mistake and a small child dressed up as a reindeer, everyone else

– well over a hundred people, even at this early hour – was Santa.“Oh,” she said, her cheeks turning red with embarrassment… or possibly hypothermia.“It’s a common rookie mistake, nothing to be ashamed of,” I explained, trying to do some

damage control. As far as costumes go, I was on my second Santa suit since the beginning of the event –

the first one being soiled and torn beyond repair after a particularly wild run three years ago. My second suit was a bit more expensive – the stitching held up a lot better and I expected to get quite a few years out of it.

“I’ll be sure to dress appropriately next year,” Karen noted. I was happy that she was already planning on doing this again – Karen wasn’t the social type, most of the groups she was involved with tended to slay dragons and other assorted beasts in a massively multiplayer online setting; I thought that diving further into activities involving real human interaction would be good for her. After more coffee, tea and idle chatter, we decided to seek out the food tent, easily located due to its sheer size and the sound of a few generators whirring next to it, cutting through the pleasant tones of a Christmas music marathon, which was currently showcasing that song where the dogs bark out Jingle Bells that’s cute the first three or four times you hear it and then unbearably annoying for the rest of your life.

Karen and I entered the tent, where it was a good thirty, thirty-five degrees warmer than it was outside thanks to a collection of heavy duty heaters, one stationed at each of the four corners of the tent, not to mention the hot plates, Sterno, and other heating elements being used for the food. I was a little stuffy in my heavy suit, but it looked like Karen was enjoying her break from shivering, so I decided to take one for the team and hang around.

The murder accusation Karen had weathered over the summer seemed to be the best thing that ever happened to her – she looked far more vibrant than she was when I first met her; she was dressing better, her hair had volume and shine it once lacked, her teeth – once neglected and yellowing, were now bright and clean. Simply (and crudely) put: Karen was hot… either that or I have a have a very perverted and wrong predilection for Mrs. Claus.

We both grabbed a plate from the largest of the food providers, which served buffet style and charged by weight, I grabbed a turkey leg and a generous helping of cranberry sauce, a small side bowl of pumpkin pie flavored ice cream to go with it. Karen – a stellar chef in her own right – went a bit understated with a vegetable medley, homemade stuffing and two gingerbread cookies shaped like snowmen.

I went to pay for both of us, feeling it was my duty as I had invited Karen to attend, but she waived me off. “I got it,” she declared, giving a twenty dollar bill to the man at the cash register.

“Karen, you don’t have to do that,” I protested, though I’m a cheapskate and could be moved from this stance rather easily.

“I insist,” she replied, “I owe you one.” That was probably true – Karen was the target of a well-placed frame-up job and would

have almost certainly been convicted of murdering her best friend’s girlfriend if not for me nabbing the actual killer. Still, she didn’t have to buy me lunch, er, breakfast – for a while there, I thought she did it too.

I ultimately let her pay and we were on our way to a row of picnic tables when I was hit by the sudden realization that I was eating a turkey leg for breakfast. Eww.

“Thanks,” I finally said to Karen, getting my head back on track as we took a spot at one of the tables.

I removed my hat and wig/beard combination and opened up the Santa suit to reveal a special t-shirt I had made by attaching one upside down shirt to another that was right side up, allowing me to stuff a pillow inside the upside down shirt, achieving the genuine girthy

Santa Claus look – there were plenty of skinny Santas around, but I was dedicated to my craft, dammit!

I primarily peeled off my garb because it was getting a bit hot inside the tent, but also because I’m a sloppy eater and didn’t want to mess up my costume. My decision paid off immediately, as a piece of Cranberry sauce fell from my plastic spoon and landed on my shirt before bouncing to the floor. I plowed through the meal anyway, finishing my generous serving by the time Karen was halfway done.

“Hungry?” she asked.“I always skip dinner the night before the Running,” I explained, “so I can build up an

appetite for the morning.” For the first time in seven years, I was acutely aware of the ridiculousness of it all, but I was having fun either way. This was also the first time I wasn’t at least three beers in by now, so that probably had something to do with it.

“Does anything crazy ever happen here?” Karen asked, trying to make conversation.“Yeah!” I said, enthusiastically, “Santas making out with each other, Christmas Carol

Karaoke, complete with dirty words inserted wherever it’s fun – it’s a wild time,” I revealed, making Christmas themed, but otherwise unspectacular drunken revelry sound far more shocking and noteworthy than it really was.

“No, I mean like fights or riots or something like that,” Karen clarified, “when a lot of people get together, bad things can happen – especially if alcohol is involved.” Spoken like a true introvert, though I can’t say she was wrong.

“There’ve been a few shoving matches,” I recalled, conveniently leaving out the fact that I was involved in one of them three years ago, “but nothing big.” I cracked a wide smile. “It’s a fun way to meet new people and get into the Christmas spirit: there’s nothing bad about this thing,” I explained, following up my statement by gnawing a big hunk of meat from my turkey leg.

Boy, was I about to be proven wrong.

Chapter TwoThe lining up process started around twenty minutes to ten, Santas lined up in order of

their estimated skill level – the fastest runners first, the slowpokes last. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack, more toward the back than usual, as I didn’t want to overwhelm Karen, who had to run in a fairly short skirt and heels – black sneakers were the preferred footwear in the event, but again, she didn’t get the memo; it was almost as if the guy who invited her did an incredibly poor job of explaining things. Nah, couldn’t be that.

The sea of red – probably close to two thousand Santas deep with the mass influx of late arrivers, was amassed in a cordoned off section of the parking lot by the west entrance, right next to a major department store and a casual dining restaurant – both of which opened their doors early to accommodate the crowd – there were probably two or three spectators for every Santa, and most stores (and the mall itself, naturally) opened its doors early, at seven o’clock.

The grand marshal of the event this year was Richard Dale, a local weatherman whose voice boomed throughout the parking lot through a public address system, which made me harken back to the first event, where the mall manager gave instructions to the two or three dozen of us runners through a bullhorn. Television cameras made their debut in the third year and the rise has been meteoric ever since.

“Are you ready for the Seventh Annual Delaware Valley Galleria Running of the Santas?” Dale asked, receiving uproarious cheers in response. I looked around and spotted no less

than four television crews and heard at least one helicopter whirring overhead – doing the event sober this year made me really lament how commercialized it had become; a corporate sponsorship was probably right around the corner – the Christmas Tree Shops should be all over that one.

I stood up on my tippy toes, but couldn’t see the front of the pack over the red hats with white poms. I jumped straight up in the air and caught a quick glimpse of the starting line, marked by a green string of tinsel, which would be broken in half by the pack of Saint Nicks to start the festivities.

“We’re going in Ten! Nine! Eight!” Dale shouted out. The adrenaline started to pump. This was the moment where the media hype disappeared and the fun returned.

“Seven! Six!”I snuck a look over at Karen – her nose was red and she appeared to still be cold, but she

seemed excited and the redness added to the holiday theme.“Five! Four! Three!”The crowd started to chant along at ‘five.’ I remained silent, but I distinctly heard Karen

chanting along.“Two! One!”I bent my knees slightly and engaged my legs and thighs, it was go time.“And we’re off!”The Christmas classic Here Comes Santa Claus replaced Richard Dale’s voice on the

loudspeaker and the pack started to move. We slowpokes in the back still had to wait a bit until the herd advanced some more, but it wasn’t long. As line after line of running Santas took off, Karen grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze… that was unexpected, and cold, very cold.

As taken aback as I was by the hand grab, my first instinct was to remove my white Santa gloves and give them to Karen, whose frigid digits felt like they would break off if I squeezed back. I realized we’d soon be indoors and that there was no time to give her the gloves anyway, as we were off, sprinting in a path sectioned off by more garland, keeping the Santas contained toward the center of the mall floor while shoppers patronized businesses on the sides.

We ran at a moderate pace, more of a jog really, Karen giggling like a schoolgirl the whole way through – glee being one of the most common side effects of this event. There are few choice moments where things slow down to a crawl, worries evaporate, and we are left with sheer joy. The Running of the Santas is always like that for me… well, was always like that for me – someone had to ruin the fun.

I started to feel like something was up when we slowed down to a stop. I reflexively pulled my hand away from Karen once we stopped moving and I was taken out of the moment – I liked the girl – she was nice, beautiful, considerate, the whole nine, but I simply wasn’t interested and didn’t want to send the wrong message.

If taking my hand away didn’t cement my status as a jerk, what happened next would – I started pushing and slithering and nudging my way toward the front of the pack, leaving Karen lost in a maze of people dressed exactly like me. As I advanced, the murmurs about what was happening started to grow louder. I was pretty close to the source of the bottleneck when the alarm started to go off.

WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP!I expected the fire sprinklers to switch on and prepared to get wet, but it never happened.

I looked around, trying to get a hold on what was going on and eventually keyed in on the conversation around me, people muttering about a bunch of Santas breaking the tinseled rope and heading for stores, followed by gawking and an eventual stop as the ‘Running of the

Santas’ became the ‘Standing of the Santas as they watch some of the Santas break from the line to rob some stores.’ That name is definitely not going to catch on.

I pushed my way out of the line and over toward the stores everyone seemed to be watching: A clothing store called Far Out Threads, a big name video game emporium, a jewelry shop called Howell’s, and Gadgets & Gear, the last of the four being an independent electronics store that mostly sold cell phones, though I’d gone there once to purchase parts to make tiny, easily concealable cameras.

I took a few steps toward the stores – all four of them lined up in a row, all of them seemingly normal from the outside – making it about halfway between them and the pack of my fellow Santas when I heard a male voice behind me yell “Stop!”

I looked back to see a security guard walking toward me. He was a young, severely overweight man; short with long, scraggly brown hair and a bushy beard: he looked like a pro wrestler from the 1970’s or 80’s, the kind who would boast about not being able to be body slammed.

“What’s going on here?” I asked as I turned my head back to the crowd, where I spotted actual police officers pushing their way through.

“Don’t move, keep your hands where we can see them!” called one of the cops, who I didn’t recognize – my dad was a cop forever, plus all of his friends were (or still are) cops too, so I know more than my fair share of police officers.

I did as the man said and started to slowly turn to face the officers when I was hit from behind, the momentum of the blow sending me to the ground. I looked up to see another man dressed as Santa stumbling toward the crowd; he must have accidentally bumped into me and knocked me over. An instant later, three more Santas flew past me as I climbed to my feet, all four of the fleeing Santas disappearing into the similarly dressed mob. The police and mall security gave chase, though all but a few of them quickly gave it up, realizing that they were practically looking for a needle in a haystack – or, more accurately, four specific pieces of hay in a haystack.

Two of the remaining police officers came over to me, one of them aggressively putting his knee in between my shoulder blades, a tactic that’d prevent me from moving my arms with any real effectiveness.

“You involved with this?” one of the cops asked. I couldn’t lift my head up to see which one.

“With what?” I said weakly, the pressure of the cop’s knee severely limiting the amount of air in my lungs.

“Don’t play dumb with me Santa!” The cop yelled. These guys were probably newcomers assigned to the grunt work of babysitting what is usually a fairly well behaved pack of people dressed as the fat man in red. It was time to play the family card – a tactic I often used growing up until I realized the trouble I got out of by telling everyone my father was a cop paled in comparison to the trouble I wound up in when I was summoned to the desk of Officer Dad.

“Do you know who I am?” I asked, painfully aware that the statement made me sound like a colossal douche.

“Kris Kringle? Jolly old Saint Nicholas?” the cop kneeling on me asked, his sarcasm suddenly making me feel better about my own cockiness.

I utilized what little range of motion I had in my position to remove the hair, beard, and hat. “I’m R.D. Clarke, I’m an apprentice detective. My father is Jerry Clarke.”

“Who?” One of the guys said, much to my dismay. Usually, mentioning my dad’s name would gain me a lot of clout with law enforcement – he was royalty to the ones he knew, but as time progressed and his time away from the force grew with it, that clout was diminishing

somewhat, especially amongst younger cops.“Just let me up! I’ll answer whatever you need me to,” I said, my ego soundly thrashed.I felt a release of pressure and was able to stand, my first observation when I got to my

feet being the sheer mass of the crowd of gawkers that had seen the entire debacle go down – those dressed as Santa Claus and normal shoppers alike.

“What’s going on here?” one of the cops – a tall, thin man with olive skin and thick black hair asked.

“I wanted to see what was making the line stop, so I pushed my way to the front. I was walking to the stores when you guys stopped me and the guy running by knocked me down,” I explained. “I’m sure you’ll look at the security footage,” I added, “you’ll know if I’m lying.”

The thin cop looked at the other cop and the mall security, all three nodded.“He’s right,” one of the other cops added, looking at me, “I’ll still need to get a look at your

identification,” he stipulated. I dug into my pocked and produced my wallet, from which I pulled my ID card, furnishing it for the annoying cop.

“Clarke, Robert D,” the thin cop read aloud.“That’s me,” I confirmed.“You live at 3503 South Avenue, apartment L?” Thin Cop asked, omitting my town of

residence from the question.“Yes, sir,” I said.“If your story doesn’t shake out, we’ll be paying you a visit,” Thin Cop said, trying to sound

threatening. He handed my ID back to me. I slid my ID back behind the plastic window in the wallet and then jammed the whole thing back into my pocket. With my hand still in my pocket, I grabbed my business card and gave it to the cop. The white card had the company logo and prominently featured the letters CDA (for Clarke Detective Agency) in bold black with a yellow outline, and simply read “Robert D. Clarke, Apprentice Detective” along with the office address, my business phone number and e-mail address. One of the coolest things about being promoted from administrative assistant to detective was the ability to hand out business cards.

“That’s where I work, sir,” I said, imagining ‘sir’ was a new, unspeakably vile obscenity, “send someone by if anything I said doesn’t shake out.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” he said, cocky to the bitter end. Satisfied with having the last word, the man turned and sauntered away, motioning for the rest of the police and mall security to go with him, the group complying like trained animals.

“Thanks for your understanding, sir!” I shouted, emphasizing the last word heavily, still pretending.

Undeterred by the intrusion of official law enforcement types, I went on just as I would have if I wasn’t so rudely interrupted, blending in with the scores of gawkers and waiting for the cops to finish taking statements from the people working in the stores that had been robbed, waiting for an opening to investigate them myself.

I decided to start with the video game store, figuring I could kill two birds with one stone and plank down a preorder for that new first-person shooter I had my eyes on. My presence didn’t seem to be welcomed by the staff – a gangly kid with greasy black hair and thick glasses, a fairly pretty girl with a figure a bit on the full side, long brown hair pulled back tight, and an angelic face, and the guy I sized up as the one in charge – a tall, stocky sort who was the only one wearing a shirt with buttons on it; he had orange hair and a matching beard: he looked like a Viking who had just joined the cast of The Office.

“Can I help you?” asked the Viking in the dress shirt. I looked at his name tag and learned his name was Erik. You can’t make this stuff up.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, verbally stumbling out of the gate, as I often did. “I was wondering what

was going on around here.”“You a cop?” Erik asked. I took my eyes off of him for a moment and sized up the

situation: everyone seemed really tense, though for good reason, I suppose.I shook my head. “I’m an apprentice private detective,” I announced, producing a card,

but Erik shook it off, so I slid it back into my pocket.“You’re messing with me,” Erik declared, “you don’t look like a detective.”I looked down at myself. I had forgotten how I was dressed – more specifically that I

looked more like someone who’d be investigating whether or not little Johnny was a good boy or a bad boy this year than whatever had happened here.

“I had a small office up in the North Pole,” I quipped, “I was the best, I brought down a syndicate that was lookin’ to fix the reindeer games.”

“Very funny,” Erik snapped back, “are you a comedian?” I shook my head, ready, willing, and able to engage in a battle of wits with this clown. “I

already told you I was a detective,” I noted. The other employees laughed, probably happy to see the doofus in charge getting taken down a peg.

“Well go detect somewhere else,” Erik shot back with a sneer, thinking this line was somehow funny. This time, the rabble surrounding us didn’t so much as crack a smile.

“I can tell you’re not going to cooperate with me here, so I’ll just be on my way,” I relented, deciding to forego my pre-order and buy a copy on Amazon, my little way of sticking it to the man – I’m spiteful like that.

I must’ve been standing around lost in thought for too long, as Erik cleared his throat and gave me a death stare. “If you don’t mind, this is one of the busiest days of the year for us and the police are already screwing it up enough,” he said in a tone of voice that had an amazingly stimulating effect on the part of my brain that makes me want to punch people. I ignored my brain and saw my way out, feeling like my alibi was stronger than ever – if I had robbed this place, I would’ve shot that guy where he stood.

I walked out, ready to go to the gadget shop when I was poked on the shoulder blade. I turned around to see a small, skinny man who looked to be in his sixties or early seventies; he was wearing a red sweater, thin glasses, and a pair of tweed pants – in short, he looked like a grandpa.

“Can I help you?” I asked.The man nodded, I got a kindly vibe off of him. “I overheard you saying you were a

detective, is that right?” he asked.I nodded, catching my attire as the nod went downward and feeling bad about my clothing

choices. Then again, this whole event was supposed to be nothing more than innocent fun.“Fletcher Howell,” the man announced, extending his hand. I gladly accepted the

handshake. “I’m the owner of Howell’s jewelers, right next door.“R.D. Clarke,” I replied, “pleasure to meet you sir.” I felt a slight sense of relief that there

were still people in the retail business who didn’t outwardly hate everyone they spoke to.“Likewise,” Howell responded. “Would you mind coming into my store for a moment?”I nodded and followed him into the shop. It was a small place, not much more retail space

than one of those kiosks you see more and more lately – the kind with people flying remote control helicopters and people trying to sell you cell phone plans with the same tenacity a trapped tiger will employ in an attempt to chew its own leg off.

I took inventory of the store and they appeared to be hit pretty hard – most of the display cases were smashed open and now contained nothing more than the pieces of black felt the merchandise was once staged on – a certain Santa’s sack was going to be filled with something a little more valuable than toys.

“Looks like you got cleaned out pretty good,” I noted.

Howell nodded, “they did a number on me,” he admitted, though he didn’t sound too upset by that notion.

“What can I do to help?” I asked, “I’ll be honest, I don’t think the odds of you getting that jewelry back are too good.”

“Of course,” Howell responded, still sounding refreshingly upbeat for a man who was robbed all of five or ten minutes ago, “I’m not worried about the loss of assets – that’s what insurance policies are for.”

I realized how cynical my job had made me when’ insurance fraud’ was the first thing that popped into my mind after the kindly old man looked on the bright side of the situation.

“I understand,” I said, keeping my suspicions to myself, “but if you’re content to let your insurance handle this matter, I’m not quite sure what I can do for you.”

Fletcher Howell cast a wide smile, the kind a grandparent would wear when watching their small grandchild make an innocent, harmless mistake. “Maybe I’m a part of a dying breed, but I don’t think money is the be-all end-all in the world.”

Again, I think it’s an indictment of my own mental state, but I felt there was a chance I was being put on.

“I’ve been in this mall for eighteen years,” Howell said, “and that Running of the Santas is the greatest thing in the world as far as I’m concerned. I want you to find out who messed with it and make sure they go down.”

I smiled, realizing that I’d finally crossed paths with someone who shared my enthusiasm for the event.

“Given the way you’re dressed, I figured you felt the same way about it I did,” Howell explained.

“You’d be right about that,” I said back, “I’m one of the few and proud that’s been at this thing every year.”

Howell cracked a big smile. “How about that!’ he roared, voice booming, seemingly too loud for the little old body that contained it.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Howell began to stipulate, “I’ll pay you whatever your normal rate is, but it’s great to know that I’ll have someone working on this that has passion on his side.” Being an apprentice detective, the only thing I should have done – from a legal standpoint, the only thing I could do – was to thank him and refer him to my overseer.

“I’ll do it,” I said. No one will ever use the phrase ‘a stickler for the rules’ to describe me, that’s an absolute certainty.

“Great!” Howell responded. I liked the man; I sure hoped he wasn’t involved in this somehow.

“Let’s start by going over exactly what happened,” I requested.“I was watching the people go by when four of them broke out of the pack and ran over

here. One of them came in and pulled a gun out from under the suit, used it to crack open the racks and stole all my jewelry. She emptied the register after that, and ran out when the cops were harassing you. Sorry if that doesn’t help – it was quick and nothing really happened that I’d consider out of the ordinary in a robbery,” Howell explained.

I was fixated on one word in his statement. “She?” I asked, surprised.Howell nodded. “Struck me funny too,” he explained. “Guess we’re a pack of sexist,

chauvinistic pigs – the gals can rob jewelry stores with the best of the guys, it seems,” he added.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” I announced.“Good,” Howell concluded, “I wish I had more for you to go on, but it was very quick and

very nondescript – you know, besides the fact that I was robbed by a woman dressed as Santa Claus.”

“I’ve done more with less,” I boasted, “but if you can get me a copy of the footage from the security camera, it might help out – there could have been something you missed in the moment that I’d be able to sniff out.”

Howell nodded. “I’ll get that to you as soon as I can.”“Great, thanks,” I replied.“Thank you,” Howell responded. I walked out feeling rejuvenated – damn it, Fletcher

Howell and I were going to save Christmas.

Chapter ThreeI decided my first step on the path to saving Christmas would be to investigate the other

two stores that got hit, fairly certain that their respective proprietors would be somewhere between Fletcher Howell and Erik the White Collar Viking in terms of cooperativeness. My next step was Gadgets & Gear, a curious little independent store that thrived amongst big box electronics retailers with competitive pricing and a unique policy of buying used equipment, which they then turned around and sold either in store or on online auction sites.

I introduced myself to the only person working there, a tall, handsome man with a rugged five o’clock shadow and brown stubble atop his head that wasn’t much longer than the hair on his face. The man introduced himself as Roger Duff, the owner/operator of the store.

“I was checking our active auctions when some guy dressed as Santa Claus ran in the store screaming something about having a bomb in his sack,” Duff explained while I refrained from laughing – which I took as a sign of maturity – the sophomoric R.D. Clarke of ten years ago would have cackled maniacally at any mention of the word ‘sack.’

“He ask for money, valuables?”Duff nodded. “He made me clear my cash register, stole some of my merchandise too.”

Judging by his demeanor and tone, Roger Duff was taking this robbery much harder than my new best friend Fletcher Howell was. “I wasn’t only checking auctions just now, I was also delisting some stuff.”

“You keep the merchandise you auction on display for sale?” I asked, though I couldn’t see how his business practices related to my case – it was mostly to appeal to my own curiosity.

“Yes we do,” Duff said. “The mark-up in store is generally more than we’ll get at auction, so we only put the stuff that we’ve had for a while up for bid. We’ll still keep the stuff on sale here until someone puts a bid on it online, after that, we hold it in the back,” Duff said with a frown. “Unfortunately, some of the stuff that was stolen was bid on overnight, so now I have to cancel those – it’s only two items, but those people aren’t going to be very happy about it.”

“I see,” I said, ready to change the subject to more pertinent matters. “Now back to the robbery, they didn’t raid any of the stuff you have in the back, did they?”

Duff shook his head. “The guy seemed like he was in a hurry, like he was going to get whatever he could as fast as possible and be done with it.”

“How much do you think he made off with?”My question was met with a shrug. “I’m not sure of an exact number – I haven’t had a

chance to go through a full inventory, and since most of my merchandise is made up of things I bought and planned to resell, it’s more of a ball park figure than anything, but he definitely got about two hundred dollars from the register and probably a few grand in merch – a bunch of little digital cameras, a few tablets and smartphones – I had two new Apple iPads I just got the other day, he grabbed both of them quick.”

I cleared my throat, ready to move forward into the actual meat of the crime, “Was there

anything distinctive about the robber, other than how he was dressed?” I asked, skimming for leads.

Duff shrugged. “He talked in the Santa voice, I thought that was pretty weird,” he said.I took out a tiny legal pad and half pencil I kept with me at all times and scribbled down

the fact – Santa voice – not that I thought it’d mean anything, though it certainly set this one apart from the Howell robbery, where the perpetrator wasn’t even the right gender to accurately portray the jolly man in red.

“Anything physical?” I asked, “I understand the robber was wearing a Santa suit, but was there anything distinctive – a lazy eye, a limp, something like that?” Boy, I was really hoping for a miracle there – I could see it now: The Limpin’ Santa Bandit With A Lazy Eye, film at eleven.

Duff shook his head on that one. “He had brown eyes, but that’s about all I can tell you – white guy, brown eyes.”

‘White, brown eyes’ I scribbled down on the pad. That narrowed the suspect pool down to about a billion people, but I’m an optimist, so I consider that five or six billion people scratched off the list, including most of the populations of China and India.

“Nothing else?” I asked.Duff frowned and shook his head, “Nope,” he explained. “I can get you a copy of the

security video if it helps,” Duff offered, “but I don’t think it’ll be of much use to you.”I nodded. “Thanks, that would be great,” I said, taking one last look at the place. The store

itself was fairly unremarkable – if not for some empty shelf space, one wouldn’t have much evidence that a robbery had taken place; the store lacked the smashed shelving and broken glass of Fletcher Howell’s shop.

I handed Roger Duff one of my cards, “I know it’s a longshot Mr. Duff, but if you remember anything else, give me a call,” I requested.

“I will,” Duff responded, “and if you ever have any electronics you need to unload, I can help you out with that,” he added, ever the salesman.

“I’ll do that” I lied, knowing myself to be fully capable of putting my old crap on eBay in the hopes that someone with limited technical knowledge would overpay for my junk to give it as a Christmas gift to a distant niece or nephew, no middle man required.

I said my goodbyes and moved over to the final store on my checklist: Far Out Threads, one of the dozens upon dozens of niche clothing stores in the mall, with new ones popping up every other week. This one specialized in retro hippie fashions – stuff with flowers, bell-bottoms, tie-dye, and the like. The clearly shaken women at the counter were chatting amongst themselves when I came in. The woman on the left was a tall, blonde woman with pale skin and an overall lanky build, it looked like she had been crying. The other woman, who was behind the cash register when I walked in, was equally thin but much shorter with stringy brown hair and seemed to be slightly more composed than her co-worker.

“Can I help you?” The shorter woman asked. I couldn’t help but pick up a hint of suspicion in the clerk’s voice, either because she was just robbed by someone dressed similar to me or she had accurately pegged me as someone who would never come into this store unless I was there on non-shopping business.

“My name’s Robert D. Clarke, I’m an apprentice detective,” I said, going with first name, middle initial to make myself sound more official – an important step, considering what I was wearing.

“Apprentice?” The short woman asked.I nodded, “Yeah. I’m looking in to the robberies for one of the victims, I was wondering if

you could tell me what happ…”“Where’s the person you’re studying under?” the short woman asked.

“Um…” I said, totally stymied. I always announce myself as an apprentice detective and I’m rarely called out for it, most people are more fixated on the word ‘detective.’

“You’re an apprentice, right?”I nodded, “I’m working under Detective Jerry Clarke,” I said, telling the truth even though I

could have told her I was working under Detective Gordon Shumway and it’d mean the exact same thing to her.

“Are you supposed to be doing investigations unsupervised?” the short woman asked. As much as I hoped my suspicions regarding Fletcher Howell were baseless, I wanted even more to find out that the short woman behind the counter was guilty of something that’d get her locked up for the rest of her life.

“No ma’am, but he’s not here right now. Given the immediacy of the moment, I thought it’d be prudent to handle things on my own,” I responded, thinking it sounded good for something that I completely pulled out of my ass. Truth was, some of my best work was done away from the eyes of my father – one case in particular before I was even an apprentice detective.

“Do I have to talk to you?” short woman asked, impatience growing with every word.I shook my head, neglecting to inform her that she wouldn’t have had to speak to me

even if I were a full-fledged private detective.“All right then,” she said in a manner that made me hate her more than I hate war,

injustice, and the Dallas Cowboys, the last of which is really saying something. “If you’re not here to buy something, I’d appreciate it if you’d please leave – we’ve had a rough day today.”

I said nothing and walked out of the store, playing out scenarios of me verbally handing the tiny witch her ass, but they’d exist as fantasy and fantasy alone.

Chapter FourStill fuming from my encounter with the no-so happy and peaceful clerk at the hippie

themed store, I sauntered to my car and started on my drive home. I was about five minutes away from the mall, the Christmas music playing on the radio helping cool my nerves, when I realized that I had left Karen Wagner stranded there – in all of the excitement, I had simply forgotten she was with me.

I took the first available (somewhat) safe U-Turn and sped back to the shopping center, grabbing my phone while I drove and noticing I had four missed calls, all from Karen. My repeated attempts to redial her were all fruitless, but I continued to lean on the gas and hope I didn’t get pulled over.

Once I got back to the mall I decided to do a perimeter sweep of the parking lot looking for Karen, my optimism raised by my knowledge that her decision to dress as Mrs. Claus instead of Santa would make spotting her easier, though that in turn made me feel bad about the grief I gave her for her outfit all over again.

I got most of the way around the mall when I turned a corner and came upon a strip of the parking lot used as a bus depot. I spotted Karen just as she was about to walk onto a bus and leaned on my horn. She snapped her head around, noticed me, and stepped away from the line of people boarding the vehicle. Karen walked over to my car with a disappointed look on her face, like I had kicked a puppy… her puppy… off of a cliff.

The scene of someone dressed as Mrs. Claus climbing into a car driven by someone in a Santa suit was catching more than a few eyes, as I spotted a few people pointing and a few mouths making the motion you’d perform for an ‘aww.’ The mood inside my ancient sports car – the hood up for the winter – wasn’t nearly as tender.

“You’re a jerk!” Karen said before I could even remove the parking brake.

“I know,” I replied as I drove away from the bus stop. “Listen, I’m so sorry I forgot about you, I got tied up in the robbery that happened – first the cops were thinking I was involved, then one of the store owners hired me to look into the thing, and then one of the store clerks treated me like garbage so…”

“Stop,” Karen requested.“All right,” I replied, doing whatever I could to appease her after my morning of

monumental jerkiness. We drove in silence most of the way, nary another word being uttered for the next ten minutes of a trip that usually lasted about fifteen, depending on traffic and such.

I was trying to connect dots in my head regarding the case as I quietly drove in a stop and start fashion down a congested highway, both to get right on the job for Howell and to attempt to forget about how much of a thoughtless jerk of a friend I had been today. In addition to waiting for the security tapes, I figured I could take a look around Internet forums regarding the Running of the Santas (yes, such forums existed) to see if anyone posted an eyewitness account that could be of some sort of use – surely, the robberies would be the biggest topic of conversation on those message boards.

I turned off the highway, that part of the trip taking the usual fifteen minutes it would take to complete the entire trek thanks to the extra traffic. Karen lived in an apartment complex called The Fortunate Son, located just up the block from a famous fast food restaurant known for serving billions. The Fortunate Son held a lot of bad memories for me, so there was an understanding whenever we would hang out and I was picking her up and dropping her off that I would meet and leave her at the door.

“You know why I’m pissed, right?” Karen asked not long after we left the highway.“Of course I do, I replied, “I left you at the mall.”“Well yeah,” Karen acknowledged, “but that’s just the beginning of it.”“Huh?” I asked.“How many times are we going to do this?” she wondered aloud.I stopped at a red light and looked over, “Judging by the way your first Running of the

Santas went, I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to do it again, but you’re more than welcome.”

“Damn it R.D., are you that dense?” Karen asked, the first time I’ve ever really heard anger in her voice. I wasn’t really that dense, I was desperately trying to avoid the elephant in the room, even as it began its stampede toward me.

I was struck so funny that I completely missed the light turning green until a chorus of horns snapped me out of it and I passed through the clear intersection in front of me.

“I guess I am,” I said, playing dumb.“I woke up at three in the morning, I froze my ass off, I cosplayed for you!” She shouted. I

took a moment to place the word ‘cosplay,’ a term with Japanese origins describing the practice of publically dressing up as manga (comic book) characters – the act (and term) was far ahead of me on the Geek-O-Meter but was right in Karen’s wheelhouse.

“I thought you were having fun,” I revealed.“No!” Karen shot back. “I was cold, I had two and a half hours sleep, I was surrounded by

drunk guys who kept asking if I wanted to see their candy cane: I was miserable!”“Wow,” I said, genuinely dumbfounded, “I thought you were having a good time – I’m

sorry.”I kept my eyes on the road, but heard a loud sigh coming from my right. “You’re a detective R.D.,” Karen stated, sounding tired in more ways than one, “don’t tell

me you can’t figure this out.” I had figured it out a long time ago, but was trying to skirt the issue.

I went silent once again – not out of courtesy this time, but because I really didn’t want to breach this issue.

“Where are we going?” Karen asked. I wanted to feign ignorance and give her some reply about going to her apartment, but I decided to spare her the dumb act.

“I think you’re great Karen, and my life’s way better for having you in it, but I just can’t see this going where I think you want it to go,” I said, amazing myself with my candor – I had a bad habit of playing fast and loose with the truth around Karen, stemming back from the first time I met her, but she deserved better.

She deserved better than me, too.“Why?” she asked. I think that was the question that made me dread having this

discussion more than any other.“I think you’re great,” I repeated, not knowing what to say and falling back on the crutch of

a compliment I had used before.“Don’t tell me what you think of me!” She snapped, “that’s not what I asked!”A thousand things ran through my head, most of them variants on the tried and true ‘it’s

not you, it’s me,’ but none of them seemed like the right thing, so I remained silent.“Come on R.D., the least you can do is tell me why.”“I don’t know,” I said, thinking it sounded like a cop out.“That’s a cop out,” Karen concurred, affirming my unspoken opinion.I grit my teeth and briefly thought about faking some sort of medical ailment, but realized

that would be both immature and ineffective. “It is a cop out, but it’s true too,” I said, hoping I sounded as genuine as I was being. “You’re one of my favorite people in the world, I swear you are, but I just can’t bring myself to make this anything more – it’s not because I don’t like you enough; I wish it was because then I could explain myself better, but it’s nothing I can put into words.”

I hoped my apologies meant something. I snuck a few looks at Karen whenever it was safe to do so while driving, but her face provided no cues and she wasn’t talking anymore.

“I’m sorry I can’t explain myself any better than that,” I said as we approached her apartment, not wanting to end the day on such a dour note.

“It’s… it’s fine,” Karen said disappointedly. I decided to leave things at that, realizing that I’d probably only make things worse and I’d done enough damage for one day. We were approaching the Fortunate Son apartments anyway, so I pulled up in front of the main entrance to the complex.

“Sorry you had such a bad time,” I announced, trying to accomplish the difficult task of maintaining eye contact with Karen while totally avoiding a glimpse of the building behind her. “I’ll see you soon?” I added, an optimistic lift in my voice.

“No,” Karen announced. “I don’t think so.” With that, she opened the door and walked toward the building. I felt absolutely horrible about the whole thing – Karen Wagner was too good for me, and the only one who didn’t know it was her.

I pulled away with every intention of drowning myself in my work, hoping that being a good detective would make me forget how awful a person I was.

Chapter FiveAs much as I’d like to admit that I stayed true to my convictions and lowered my nose to

the grindstone in light of startling new information that made me realize how much of a jackass I was, that simply did not happen. Upon getting home I wallowed in my own self-loathing for about a half hour, forty-five minutes, then proceeded to eat a roast beef and

provolone sandwich on wheat bread and nap for three and a half hours – all in all, this was shaping up to be a real banner day for ol’ Detective Clarke.

I woke up to the shaming realization that I had taken a nap in a Santa Claus costume – attire no one should ever be unconscious in unless they’re alcoholics who really, really like the Salvation Army. I immediately decided to change and shower, wondering if the events of the day meant that this would be the last time I ever wore my Santa suit. Aided by the mind-clearing stream of hot water splashing against my body, I concluded that the answer to that question probably had a lot to do with whether or not I could close this case.

Freshly showered and dressed in my civilian clothes, I dove into the forums devoted to the Running of the Santas, finding a lot of accounts of the day’s festivities, most of them centered around people who had stories about being stuck in the line for twenty minutes before being released from the mall one by one, being subject to pat downs as they were leaving. It seemed like every time I refreshed the page, there was a new indignant post about people who “JUST LEFT AND I’M FILING A LAWSUIT AND I HAD TO SIT IN LINE FOR THREE HOURS AND GET PAD (sic) DOWN BY SOME RENT A COP AND THIS IS AMERICA DAMN IT,” it was like some sort of caps lock form letter. Bits of usable information were few and far between, as seemingly every post was some sort of angry rant, all of them bleeding together at some point.

There were a few calmer posts, more on point as far as what I was looking for, but the information in them seemed to be suspect at best – including one that swore one of the Santas was a seven-foot tall black man who jumped over a security barricade after running out of the video game shop. Surely, a detective of my caliber would have spotted this.

Another, more reasonable post, seemed to hold some water.‘Some guy broke out of the line, but the cops stopped him, told him to freeze, and these

four guys ran out while they were concentrating on him,’ it read. Well, I was certain that was the truth, though the new perspective of me distracting the police long enough to allow the perpetrators an escape route was an unsettling one, another blow to my self-esteem in a day full of them, to be certain.

Another post seemed to be more beneficial: ‘The weirdest thing was the shoes. One of them was wearing lime green sneakers.’ I tried to jog my memory on that one. I was fairly certain that the Santa who plowed into me and knocked me down was wearing traditional black boots – the kind I saw Sgt. LeToussier wearing after his arrival in the mere minutes that followed Santa’s departure from the Fraternal Order of Police’s Christmas party back in 1991 – boots impossibly similar to the ones Saint Nick was wearing. That was probably my first piece of detective work – using the sarge’s footwear to uncover the dirty little secret about the jolly old fat man in red.

My own memory of the incident wouldn’t really do much to further my progress, so I turned back to the forum and utilized the search function to bring up all mentions of ‘green sneakers’ that appeared within posts on that particular forum. I didn’t meet with a great deal of success in that endeavor either, as most of what came up was remarkably similar to the original post or just happened to have the terms ‘green’ and ‘sneakers’ in there somewhere, but were otherwise completely unrelated to the robberies.

I decided to keep on digging, thinking that persistence would be what ultimately paid off in this situation – and I was right. On page eight of the search, I found a post made by someone with the user name JingleGuy, who had posted in a meet-up thread “I’ll be there with my green sneakers on.”

It wasn’t exactly a written, detailed confession, but it was enough for me to deem JingleGuy worthy of a much closer look. Unfortunately, all I had to go on was a user name on a forum, as the person behind the post had nothing in their profile worth using – no real name,

e-mail, Facebook or Twitter links, nothing of the sort – a fact in and of itself that made him even more suspicious in my eyes.

In my estimation, one of the indicators of a good detective – a good anything, really – is the ability to know when you’re in over your head, and I was most assuredly sunk on this one. There wasn’t much I could do beyond sending an e-mail to the board administrator explaining who I was and why he/she should consider giving me all the pertinent registration information for JingleGuy – information, I fully realized, was probably fake anyway – I had a bad habit of signing up for things as Herman Munster, with an address of 1313 Mockingbird Lane – committing fraud was a small price to pay for a good joke. The best I could realistically hope for was an IP address, and even that could be masked with relative ease.

However, in a move of smart detectivery (which I have now decided is a word), I called an expert on the subject. Quentin Gardner is my tech guy, he’s my guy who has connections, he’s the guy who would make a far better detective than I would if he wasn’t so damn busy doing things that make him a lot of money. Quentin is a Super Blogger, which I’ve taken to defining as being one of the seven people who makes a good living writing on the Internet.

“R.D.,” Quentin said, sparing me the trouble of announcing myself, though I’m certain his intention was sparing himself the trouble of having to listen to me announce myself – Quentin was not one for what he considered to be needless social interactions.

“I’m going to need your help,” I declared.“Go ahead,” Quentin replied quickly. It’d be taken as rudeness by most people, but I had

known Quentin long enough – all my life, to be exact – that I knew better. Besides, we’d both saved each other’s bacon when we toppled a prolific serial killer known as The Reaper a few months ago, so we were closer than ever.

“You hear about what happened at the mall?” I asked. Quentin knew about my fondness for the Santa run, so I didn’t have to waste any of his valuable time specifying what thing and which mall.

“Yeah.”“I’m looking into the robberies for one of the store owners that got hit and I think I have a

lead, but I’m not sure about how to follow up on it.”“Where do I come in,” Quentin asked, forever focused on the nuts and bolts of the

situation.“There’s a forum called Run Santa Run, I want to dig up some dirt on one of the people

who posts there.”“Got a suspect already?” Quentin inquired. I took his interest in the case as an indicator of

how strong our bond was, as he normally couldn’t be bothered to even feign interest in most of my escapades.

“Well,” I said, pausing after, “kind of – more of a person of interest than anything.”“So a suspect,” Quentin replied, trying to skip the semantic gymnastics that he so

despised.”“Sure, a suspect,” I relented.“I’ll see what I can dig up for you,” Quentin said, hanging up before the last syllable was

finished. Having reached out to my contacts, er, contact, I went back to the forum and continued to

run through its contents with a fine toothed comb, moving away from the green shoes search and shifting my focus over to the various ‘post your pictures’ threads on the message board, scanning one blurry snapshot after another looking for the elusive green sneakers.

My hard work and persistence paid off around the hour mark, when I found a picture of a guy dressed as Santa, but with the fake beard pulled down below his chin. The de-bearded Santa was wearing the same green sneakers described in the accounts, though that wasn’t

the only thing that stood out about the image – I was unsettled by something – or to be more accurate, someone – in the background.

Me.I was there, no more than ten feet behind the guy, staring off at something in the distance

while Karen Wagner stared at me in a manner I can only describe as ‘longing,’ reminding me of how much of a jerk I was, not that I needed my memory of that fact refreshed.

I brushed aside the blows to my self-image so I could turn and face the brunt of a new assault: there was a good chance that one of the robbers was right in front of me and I somehow missed him. Of course, I had no way of knowing what JingleGuy and his cohorts were planning – or if JingleGuy was even one of the perpetrators, as it all could have been a coincidence – one can’t condemn a man just by his choice of footwear. Still, once I got on a roll beating myself up, I was hard to stop.

I kept on searching for pictures featuring the man I suspected of being JingleGuy – the man of average height, a tad above average weight, which I assumed to be natural due to the fullness of his face and not an illusion created by a padded suit. I was on the high end of normal as far as girth goes and I often flirted with the idea of going sans-padding, I had a feeling JingleGuy was doing just that.

The man in the green shoes had brown eyes and the removal of his fake white beard showed a thick, bushy brown goatee, so I assumed that’d be an accurate descriptor of hair color and could possibly finger him as the robber of Gadgets & Gear because, as we all know, brown eyes are exceedingly rare.

Why yes, I was grasping at straws, thank you very much.I decided to print out a copy of the picture to show to Roger Duff, the proprietor of

Gadgets & Gear, hoping he may be able to confirm this guy as the robber, information I could then turn around and give to the police to get a suspect’s face out there. I did a Google search for ‘Gadgets & Gear store’ and found a few places by that name, which led me to have to do a bit of legwork in finding the right one.

The site prominently featured an image of the man I spoke to in the same shirt he was wearing at the store, identifying him as Roger Duff, founder. I made a note of his name and located the ‘Contact Us’ button at the bottom of the page, which turned led to a deceptively complicated page of its own filled with solicitations for their buying and reselling service, which I expertly navigated in order to find a convenient mailto link at the bottom of the page.

Mr Duff,This is Robert D. Clarke, the apprentice detective who spoke with you earlier this

morning. I’ve done a little digging into the robberies and came upon a person of interest who may or may not have been the man who held you up. I’ve enclosed a picture of this potential suspect.

Thank you for your cooperation.

I looked over what I had written – short and concise, I concluded – then added a p.s. with my phone number. I almost added my email address as well before realizing that it was already a part of the message.

Once my communique was sent, I attached the picture to another e-mail, which I sent to myself, using the message to download a portion of the picture to my phone. Wanting to cover all bases, I texted the image to my cousin Eddie. – although he worked in homicide, I figured Eddie would be my best bet as far as getting the picture of one of the potential robbers in front of the right set of eyes.

‘Possible suspect in Mall Robberies, pass it on –RD’ read the text message.

With my messages sent out, I decided to move on to lunch, although the clock indicated it was more of that gray zone in between lunch time and dinner time. It was about quarter to four, but being that it was late November, that meant it would be getting dark in about an hour. I opted for one of my old standbys: the microwavable burrito, which joined ramen noodles, Campbell’s Chunky Soup (or if I’m feeling dangerous, canned chili), and microwave popcorn as my four basic food groups. Yes, I’ll be dead before fifty, but I’ll have saved a ton of money on food.

I popped two of the cholesterol laden delights onto a plastic plate and tossed them into the microwave for ninety-three seconds. It may seem odd, or even a possible indicator of mental illness to use such an odd number as the time, but I swear on my life that these things are still frozen at ninety seconds and hot enough to melt your teeth at ninety-five.

I was halfway through my second burrito when I heard my phone ring. I started feeling nauseous – surprisingly enough, this feeling had nothing to do with the abhorrent food I was eating, but instead came from the sense of dread caused by me fear that this was Karen calling with more damning evidence of my jerkiness.

I looked at my phone and it was my dad; I should have known better, I didn’t expect a call from Karen anytime soon, if ever again.

“How’s it going Dad,” I answered. The call surprised me a bit, as I worked with the old man and ninety percent of our conversations happened within the office. I’d seen him last two days before, when we both went to my Uncle Steve’s house for Thanksgiving.

“You can’t resist taking on cases you’re not ready for, can you?” Dad asked, indicating that he had found out about my latest side project, which I wasn’t planning on letting him find out about. The old man frowned upon me taking on my own side cases – it was technically illegal and I have a bad habit of almost getting killed when I do it.

“Who told you?” I asked, “Eddie?”“No,” Dad responded curtly, “I got an angry e-mail from a Ms. Harriet Carlson – she is not

a big fan of yours.”“Never heard of her,” I countered.“She’s a regional manager for Bellflower Clothes & Apparel, parent company of Far Out

Fashions: ever heard of them?” Dad asked. Unfortunately, I had.“Yes,” I replied, sounding like I had countless times in my youth when I was caught doing

something I shouldn’t have done.“In my defense, she was hostile and uncooperative.”“Robert, she had just been robbed,” Dad shot back. My father always called me Robert

even though most people went with my initials, “what did you expect her to do, bake you a plate of cookies and kiss you on the cheek?”

“I was trying to hunt down the robbers.”“Which is the duty of the police department,” Dad explained, having an answer for

everything. Problem is, most of them were right.“I signed on with one of the shop owners, he’s an old school guy running the business by

himself and he doesn’t want the cops sitting back and taking forever to solve this thing,” I explained, attempting to tug at my dad’s heartstrings by sharing the plight of a fellow small businessman.

“It’s not your place Robert,” Dad explained without hesitation. “As your boss, as the person you’re apprenticing under, I have to tell you to drop this case,” came the order.

I sighed, making sure to do it with an artificially high volume to really hammer home my displeasure. “Fine,” I said “I should have run it by you in the first place,” I admitted, “I’m just really passionate about the Running of the Santas and I wanted to be in on bringing down the guys who ruined it.”

“I understand,” Dad said in the same short tone he’d used over the entire conversation, but this was as close as I was going to get to warmth from him, “and if you want to refer the guy in for a consultation, I’ll hear him out, but I don’t want you working this case on your own, we clear?”

“We are,” I said, voice low in defeat.After exchanging pleasantries, we finished the conversation and I went back to my

burritos and self-pity, always a winning recipe for a horrible evening. I moped my way to my computer, where I planned on writing a message to Fletcher Howell in which I would deliver the bad news and refer him to my dad, who’d most assuredly decline his case with the excuse that it’s a matter best handled by the police.

All-in-all, one of my favorite days of the year had turned out to be one of the worst -- the only days I’d classify as less pleasant were handful throughout the year where I was nearly killed.

I checked the clock and it was only four in the afternoon. ‘Don’t get cocky yet, there’s still time,’ I thought, realizing I had eight hours remaining to somehow meet my demise.

Chapter SixThe time left on the clock wasn’t there solely to serve as an enhancement tool for my self-

pity and general moping, it allowed me to realize I still had a chance to get to Fletcher Howell today, so I made a trip back to the mall to cancel the arrangement in person, knowing full well that staying around the house all day would do nothing but compound the sorrow I was feeling for myself. It also helped that I didn’t have an e-mail address or phone number for him.

With the thousands of people dressed as Santa gone and the news of the events that had transpired earlier in the day probably enticing some potential customers to find other shopping options, the traffic around the mall was light, comparatively speaking, which meant that I sat in gridlock for a mere fifteen minutes, only to take twice that amount of time finding what I deemed a suitable parking space – this was another aspect of my personality I most assuredly did not get from my father, who would park in the next county if there was an open spot there. My dad was the kind of person who always had to be making progress, even if it meant the time spent walking was longer than the time that would be spent finding a good parking space.

I raced to the jewelry store, hoping that I’d find Fletcher Howell there so I could break the bad news as planned. Unfortunately, the space had already been sealed by the sliding bars of doom. As was the case with several things in our first meeting, this was suspicious at best.

Not wanting to waste a trip, I voyaged over to the food court, where I made myself a nice sampler plate consisting of another burrito, popcorn shrimp, a large cup of frozen strawberry lemonade, and a five dollar roll of sushi – the price probably didn’t speak well to its quality.

This failure of a trip did nothing to improve my sour mood, which led me to seek refuge in one of the far corners of the food court, a sparsely populated section that appeared to house a few uniformed people eating lunch/dinner alone – almost exclusively mall workers – and now, me.

I was completely content with eating to forget my problems when I noticed a familiar, albeit unwelcome face: Erik, the unpleasant employee at the video game store who, as his name suggested, resembled a Viking. Erik didn’t notice me and I planned to keep it that way, so I lowered my head and turned my eyes upward to see in front of me.

Erik wasn’t the reason for my secrecy – it was the man sitting with him. More importantly, it was the footwear of the man sitting with him: green sneakers, impossible to miss when

you’re looking for them. Interest piqued, I tried to look up enough to get a decent glimpse of the man’s face without allowing Erik a similarly good look at mine.

I grabbed my phone, pulling up my camera to get a comparison shot of the man in his Santa suit from earlier in the morning. Cross referencing the image on the phone with the man in front of me left me with no doubt in my mind: this was the man in the picture.

Now, whether or not the man in front of me was indeed one of the robbers this morning: that was the question of the day for sure. With apologies to my dear, dear father, I decided to ignore his orders and follow this guy around, hoping to dig up some dirt on the mysterious man in the gaudy footwear.

I scarfed down the remainder of my decidedly eclectic meal, wanting desperately to put down every last morsel before Mr. Green Shoes got up and went on the move. I was able to finish everything but the frozen lemonade, which was impossible to consume quickly, a lesson I learned after suffering one of the most intense brain freezes of my life. Trying to maintain a semblance of stealth while it feels like your head is trapped in a shop vice is not the easiest thing in the world, but Erik and Mr. Green Shoes did not seem to notice me; then again, Mr. Green Shoes didn’t know who I was and Erik saw me briefly while I was wearing a Santa costume (sans fake hair and beard), so I shouldn’t go too far in patting myself on the back.

The effects of the headache were about a minute or two removed when the pair left their table. I calmly and discreetly gathered my trash and dumped it in a nearby bin. I wasn’t paying complete attention and the lid of the sushi tray dropped onto the ground, but I didn’t want to waste time picking it up, employing the rationale that helping to ensure the mall’s janitors remained gainfully employed was in keeping with the Christmas spirit.

I didn’t throw out the frozen lemonade – the cup was still half full, plus I have a mental crutch where I feel more confident when I have a barrier from the rest of the world, be it a pair of sunglasses, a cup of coffee, or something else of the sort. I’d start keeping a running tally of my mental defects, but who has that kind of time?

The tailing job wound up being fairly boring, as the two spent time walking around the mall and window shopping, leading me to conclude that they were either friends or a couple, though I leaned toward the former, given that they refrained from any affectionate gestures, but that could have been to avoid the scorn of those less forward thinking than myself. The most likely answer was that I was reading into the situation way too much.

After looking in at a good half dozen, maybe as many as ten stores from the outside, the pair finally walked into one, a candle shop sharing a name with one of the professional baseball teams from New York City.

Two people were working in the store: an older woman with gray hair and round, thin glasses and a young man, tall and thin, with nearly shoulder length hair pulled back in a ponytail and a well-kept beard. Erik and Mr. Green Shoes walked into one of the far corners of the store, where they were sampling the green candles (the store separated its stock by color.) I hanged back a bit by the exit, turning my body so that I wasn’t directly facing the subjects of my tail, but could still keep an eye on them with a sideways glance.

I spotted the tall, thin store clerk coming at me as I made one of my glances toward Mr. Green Shoes. “Is there anything I can help you with?” he asked in an artificially pleasant tone.

I shook my head. “Nope, just looking,” I responded, trying to sound hushed and polite. I didn’t want to come off as rude, but ensuring Erik and Mr. Green Shoes didn’t hear me was my paramount concern.

“We have a great selection of Christmas themed candles over there – Holiday Wreath is one of our best sellers right now, I highly recommend it,” the thin clerk reported, pointing directly at the space between Erik and Mr. Green Shoes (which had officially replaced JingleGuy as my nickname for the man) while speaking with an ‘I work partially on

commission’ accent.I shook my head subtly. “No thanks, I’m just looking for a Christmas present for my

girlfriend, something she can use all year round.” While speaking, I peeked around the clerk to see Erik and Mr. Green Shoes, who were heading for the checkout counter, with Green Shoes holding two candles that matched the color of his footwear perfectly.

“Might I recommend something from our botanical delights section,” the persistent clerk offered, now pointing at a section of pink candles, “I highly recommend Springtime Meadow,” he added, though that sounded like more of a feminine hygiene product than a potential present for a nonexistent girlfriend. I spotted Mr. Green Shoes paying cash for the candles – no small feat given the overpriced wares surrounding me – and beginning to walk out. Not wanting to lose them, I turned and walked away, keeping a few steps of distance between us.

“Sir!” the overly helpful clerk called out. I turned quickly, noticing out of the corner of my eye that Mr. Green Shoes and Erik turned as well. I decided in that moment that I was doing all my shopping online from now on, this resolution coupled with a fervent hope that others would join in on my crusade to drive all pushy salespeople into unemployment.

“No thanks,” I muttered quickly, “I’ll just get her a gift card or something.” My nonexistent girlfriend wasn’t going to be happy.

I turned slowly, just in case Erik was still looking in my direction, but the pair had already moved on deeper into the mall. I left the mall walking slightly faster than my standard pace, not wanting to lose the tail. Luckily, it’s much easier to follow a target when they are wearing gaudy, easily noticeable sneakers.

The pair’s next stop came soon after I regained the tail, as Mr. Green Shoes stopped at an ATM near one of the exits. Being close to the exit made me worry about the endgame of this surveillance mission – I wasn’t sure how I was going to follow them beyond the mall unless I had the incredible fortune of happening to have parked next to the car they were going to use.

I decided to head for the exit, where I weathered the late November chill and watched the pair through the glass automatic doors separating us. I was a little ways from my car and not in the best of shape, but the best plan I could think of would be to run to my car as soon as I knew they were headed outside. My odds of success were slim at best, but this was my last chance to bust this case open before giving it up on the orders of the boss.

With Mr. Green Shoes finished at the ATM, the pair did indeed head for the exits. I turned tail and began to run as fast as possible to my section of the parking lot, suddenly glad that I didn’t mind waiting and searching for a parking space within reasonable proximity to the mall – if my dad had parked where he usually parks, the chances of regaining the tail would have gone from incredibly slim to absolute zero, I also would have gotten to the car just in time for Groundhog Day.

I got to my ancient sports car even faster than I hoped I would, but found myself to be so exhausted that I struggled with putting the key in the door. I managed to get in soon enough, then fired the old girl up and backed out as quickly as possible, foregoing the seatbelt entirely. I sped back to the area around the exit I’d used, then slowed down, acting like someone looking for a parking space, though I guess the fact that I blindly drove past several open spots kind of gave away my ruse.

In a stroke of sheer luck, I managed to pick up Mr. Green Shoes as he was walking to his car, also green, in the far reaches of the lot. Erik wasn’t there with him, so the two must have split up. I reasoned that since Erik worked at the mall, it was likely that he parked closer, so luck was apparently on my side when Mr. Green Shoes didn’t get a ride from his buddy.

I wasn’t completely out of the woods yet, though – I still had to linger about suspiciously until Mr. Green Shoes pulled out of his spot and went on his way. I drove past him and backed

into an empty patch of the lot, double parking, though I suspected this wouldn’t be a problem seeing how I’d only be there for a minute or two; I probably should have righted myself to be safe, it wouldn’t have been the first time I was pulled over by a traffic cop while tailing someone.

I was left alone and pounced as soon as Mr. Green Shoes left his parking spot, trailing a bit behind him as he exited the lot. The green car was heading in the direction opposite from the way I usually drove and I stayed a reasonable distance away, but not too far, considering I didn’t know the area we were approaching well enough to compensate for losing the tail.

I was interrupted by a ringing phone – it was Fletcher Howell, strangely enough.“Hello,” I said, staunchly avoiding the far more professional ‘Clarke,’ or ‘This is Clarke,’ my

father and cousin respectively used as their go-to phone answering statements.“Mr. Clarke?” Howell said, perhaps confused by the ambiguity of my greeting.“Yes Mr. Howell, this is Detective Clarke,” I clarified, “I actually stopped by your store to

talk to you, but you weren’t there, so I’m glad you called.”The tail weaved its way onto a main highway, Interstate route 95 to be exact, heading

south.“I closed the place down for the day after the robbery. I have half a mind to shut it down

for good, to be honest.”“Sorry to hear that,” I replied.“Don’t be, Mr. Clarke,” was the prompt response, “I’m seventy years old, I’ve been in

business for too long, it’s time to retire, but that’s not important; I’m calling you to make payment arrangements.”

I leaned on the gas and turned to the passing lane, struggling to keep pace with my target. Apparently those green shoes were filled with lead.

“Yeah, about that…” I responded, ready to get to business – I was in the midst of a high speed tail and wanted to get off the phone and direct my full attention to the road. “Unfortunately,” I continued, “I’m going to have to remove myself from the case.”

No response at first, which I didn’t mind as I had to navigate in between a few cars to get out of the left lane. Mr. Green Shoes had slowed down a bit, and I had to follow suit as to not pass my target.

“Why’s that?” Howell asked.“I discussed the situation with my employer, he discouraged me from pursuing cases

independent of his agency,” I revealed, thinking this explanation sounded far better than ‘dad told me not to.’

“I see.”“He advised you to seek him out for a consultation, so we still might pursue this for you,” I

advised.“I’ll look into that,” Howell stated.Delivering the notification to Howell meant I was effectively off the case, which meant that

I should’ve pulled off the highway immediately and went home, but something compelled me to remain on the road, remain on the case, at least until I found out where Mr. Green Shoes was going.

The chase passed across state lines, meaning I was breaking federal laws in addition to the laws of two states – well, the state of Delaware and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to be totally accurate. It was plainly obvious that the only smart thing to do was to turn back, which only served to further fuel my insanity and drive me forward toward my target.

Mr. Green Shoes made his first stop at a tiny liquor store just over the state line, leading me to think that he may be on his way back north to Pennsylvania. Many people living within a reasonable proximity to the border – my own grandfather amongst them, before he died –

often traveled just over the state line to buy cigarettes by the carton in a money saving move that exploited the lower taxes (and nonexistent sales tax) Delaware shoppers enjoyed.

Alas, my prey exited the store with a black plastic bag that indicated his purchase was most likely an alcoholic beverage of some sort. Mr. Green Shoes walked calmly back to his car – if he had any indication he was being followed, he didn’t demonstrate it – and headed further south, further shooting my crossing the state line to buy cheap smokes theory full of holes.

I followed along for what turned out to be a quick five minute spring across local roads, ending when Mr. Green Shoes parked in front of a small, mostly nondescript suburban residence: a two-story single home with a tiny yard surrounded almost entirely by a hedge that prevented me from seeing inside. The house stood out as being one of the few homes on the block that didn’t have a single decoration hanging up – no lights, no animatronic Santa or Rudolph, no menorah, nothing.

The house itself boasted a white exterior with a dark brown door, similar to at least a few dozen other houses within a ten mile radius – the perfect place to hide out if you were so inclined, I’d imagine. I parked in an empty spot a few houses down and utilized my vehicle’s mirrors to keep Mr. Green Shoes in my sights without drawing too much attention to myself. The target stepped out of the car and began to walk toward the house, but out of the view of my mirrors. I decided I was far enough away to risk turning around and sneaking a peek, observing the suspected robber with an equally suspect choice in footwear as he entered the residence.

Given the random, spontaneous nature of my investigation to this point, it should come as a surprise to no one that I had absolutely no idea what to do next. Do I just walk up and knock on the front door? Maybe greet Mr. Green Shoes with a friendly ‘Hi! You don’t know me but I suspect you of an armed robbery and followed you back here from the scene of the crime.’

Nah, that’s too crazy of a tactic, even for me.I decided to keep driving, circling the street and turning into the alleyway, which was dark

in the absence of the streetlights on the other side of the homes. I drove back up, finding it harder to identify the house from the back than I anticipated given my unfamiliarity with the area, the generic paint job and the dark of night setting in. I found the right one eventually and was met with another challenge: the back yard was surrounded by a large fence, five or six feet tall by my estimation, and contained four dogs – pit bulls it appeared, but it was dark and I could have been wrong. Regardless of breed, I suspected they wouldn’t welcome my intrusion with friendly licks and a leg humping or two.

An intrusion from the back was out of the question, but I happened to recall not being able to see the fence from the front, which meant there was a possibility of snooping around the side yard and finding something – what I could possibly find there, I don’t know, but I didn’t come this far to leave without evidence, that much was certain.

I drove past the pooches and back up to the end of the street, where I turned and made my way to the front of the house I had spotted Mr. Green Shoes enter, completing a full circle of the block. I parked in the same spot I had parked in when spying through my mirrors, but exited the car this time.

My repertoire of stealth is exclusively limited to things I learned playing Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, the Metal Gear Solid series, and other video games where avoiding enemies is paramount, putting that research to good use by crouching down and duck walking my way across the side of the house. Even if my efforts to go unseen failed, I still had a chance to distract anyone who spotted me with my ridiculous style of movement long enough for me to beat a hasty retreat while they tried to stop laughing.

I stayed against the side of the house, standing upright to keep my hamstrings and knees

from being overworked – in addition to being a mediocre detective, I’m also somewhat out of shape. I ducked when approaching windows, naturally, thinking to myself that it would have been much better to investigate this case in the summer, when it’d be much nicer outside, with the possibility to eavesdrop through an open window.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, so I had to creep past the closed windows, almost bumping into a garbage can in the process. I started to walk by the receptacle, thankful that I hadn’t accidentally kicked it and blown the entire covert operation altogether. As I calmed down, a second, sneakier thought crept into my head, so I went back to the garbage can and slowly, carefully removed the lid – these were the classic metal garbage cans and not the newer, quieter plastic variety, which would have been significantly easier to maneuver. Setting the lid down as gently as possible, I turned back to the open trashcan and slid a black trash bag out of it, carefully avoiding the sides as if I was playing the board game Operation.

I’ve never been able to untie garbage bags without deafening rustling and ripping, so I decided to not even try. Instead, I grabbed my car keys and used the sharp edge to puncture a hole in the bag and work my way up. As I cut a thin slit along the length of the bag, a red hat with distinctive white trim fell out and hit the ground, strengthening my resolve. I put the key back in my pocket and shoved my hand into the bag, pulling more Santa gear out of there, two complete suits in all. I noticed another garbage can a few feet away and suspected that it contained two more suits.

I never got a chance to check, as I felt a pair of arms grab around my chest. I struggled and squirmed until I was met with a punch in the face by someone – I think it was Mr. Green Shoes, but I can’t be sure, it was too quick. The punch rang my bell, but it didn’t put me out. I was going to struggle more, but the sight of a gun stopped me clear.

“Stop,” commanded the man with the gun. I shook myself free of the cobwebs and confirmed that this was indeed the man I had been tailing, still clad in his green shoes. Not wanting my blood to join the Santa suits in reddening the lawn, I followed Mr. Green Shoes’ orders, walking in the house with the butt of a gun digging into the small of my back.

Chapter SevenThe inside of the home was completely dark and had a distinct smell I can only describe

as ‘funky.’ I was wondering at first why they were keeping it so dark, but I then realized that there was no electricity whatsoever inside. I was led to a room where another man was sitting at a table that had a candle (not one of the ones I saw purchased), a bottle of liquor and a battery operated AM/FM radio on it. There were four chairs in the room and a gigantic pile of money and stolen goods on the floor.

The guy sitting by the table was of average height and weight from my estimation with a shaved head and a black goatee, he was wearing a plain gray sweatshirt and blue jeans: as generic a look as possible, though I suspected this was by design. Going by his general build, I suspected this could have been the guy who plowed into me back at the mall, but there was no way to be sure.

“Sit,” ordered Mr. Green Shoes. I complied and took refuge on one of the chairs, only to look up at my captors, all of whom shook their heads.

“The chairs are for us,” Green Shoes explained.I took the hint and sat down on the floor in one of the corners, resting my back against the

wall, which would make it easier to spring up and defend myself in the event that an opening arose – I had a .22 caliber pistol strapped to my ankle and though it’s a joke in the gun community, it was easy to use for a beginner-level shooter such as myself and would serve

me better than no weapon at all. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, though: I had to take a life in self-defense once before and didn’t like it one bit. Even more worrisome, I didn’t see any such opening being created here – I was outnumbered three-to-one at bare minimum, with at least one of those three being armed.

Hindsight being 20/20, turning around as soon as I ended the call with Fletcher Howell seemed like a really, really good option. ‘Too late now,’ I thought, acclimating myself to floor level, noticing that the two expensive candles purchased at the mall had been lit and placed on the floor, where they did a great deal to cut out the funky smell above.

“What should we do with him?” asked the guy with the goatee and the generic clothes, having gotten up to stand in a semicircle with Mr. Green Shoes and another guy: a tall, skinny blonde kid who couldn’t have been much more than seventeen or eighteen years old, probably the one who wrapped his arms around me when I got popped.

“Let’s throw him out back, let him play with the dogs,” Skinny Kid suggested, a disturbing amount of glee in his voice. My stomach knotted up – I did not anticipate that one of my favorite days of the year would end with me being eaten alive by a pack of hungry pit bulls.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mr. Green Shoes shot back.“Yeah,” chimed in Generic Clothes, “no one has to die.” He was my favorite of the three.“Besides, his screaming would draw attention to us,” Mr. Green Shoes noted – rational,

but not exactly an uplifting thought, I still preferred the pacifist in the gray sweatshirt.“We have to something,” Skinny Kid said, voice raised. He was currently third on my list of

favorite abductors. A distant third.“We do,” relented Mr. Green Shoes.“He figured this out,” Skinny Kid added, “he’ll go to the cops if we don’t do something.”“He’s right,” called out a fourth voice from another room, this one somewhat familiar,

though I couldn’t quite place it. “What we should do,” Skinny Kid began – and I wasn’t looking forward to his next

suggestion, given the first – “is tie him up and burn the place down. All the evidence will go away in the fire: the Santa suits, him, all of it.”

For the record, this was the first time I’ve ever been described as ‘evidence.’ It would also be the last, I feared.

“We can’t kill him!” protested Generic Clothes, my new best friend.“We can’t not kill him,” countered Skinny Kid, whose usage of double negatives was

another reason to hate him – not as strong a reason as his insistence on killing me in increasingly painful and disfiguring ways, but a reason nonetheless.

“He’s right,” the familiar disembodied voice said from another room. “Blake, he already made you.”

Mr. Green Shoes, who I now assumed was named Blake (though, I secretly hoped Greenshoes was somehow his last name), frowned.

“You sure?” Blake Greenshoes asked.“Yeah, you idiot! You were hanging out and posing for pictures before the Running, and

you wore those stupid green shoes,” the voice called out. As the speaker lost control and became more emotional, I began to piece the voice together.

“Roger Duff?” I speculated, identifying the owner of Gadgets & Gear as the unseen voice. Indeed, the proprietor of the secondhand electronics shop emerged from the next room over.

“You and Erik were both in on this?” I speculated aloud.Duff appeared confused. “Erik?” he asked.“He’s a buddy of mine who works at the video game shop by your store,” Blake

Greenshoes clarified. “I was hanging around with him before I came here – that must’ve been

where he found me.”I nodded. “Followed you from the food court all the way here,” I admitted, hoping my

candor would endear me in some way.“You hung around the mall all day?” Skinny Kid asked incredulously. Before Blake

Greenshoes could answer, his youthful co-conspirator turned quickly and punched him out of nowhere. Though larger than his attacker, the shot had knocked Blake off-balance and sent him to the floor. Skinny Kid took advantage of this and leapt on top of him, wailing away with punches with blazing speed. Generic Clothes had seen enough at that point, diving on Skinny Kid to break up the brawl.

Seeing this as my last opportunity to save myself, I grabbed my gun quickly – a task made easier because I’d kept my hand by my pant leg the entire time I had been sitting on the floor – and used the wall to push myself up. I fired a shot at Skinny Kid, who I pegged as the biggest threat, given his proven aggression. I made contact and Skinny Kid began wailing and clutching at his left leg, where the bullet had hit right below the knee.

“What the hell man!” Roger Duff shouted, “you shot my little brother!”I trained my gun on the gadget dealer, who I suspected to be the ringleader of the

operation. “If anyone else has a weapon, drop it!” I commanded, making brief eye contact with Blake Greenshoes, knowing he had a gun trained on me earlier but had dropped it when he was sucker punched by his aggressive co-conspirator.

Before Blake could even sit up, Generic Shirt kicked the gun over. “It’s fake!” he yelled as he kicked, “all our guns are fake!”

“Why’d you have to tell him that?” Skinny Kid yelled through his screams. I suddenly realized I wasn’t up against a group of master criminals here. This idea was further reinforced when Generic Clothes feinted.

“Look man,” Blake Greenshoes said, his hands over his head in surrender. “Let us go,” he pled, “don’t hurt us, and we’ll give you whatever you want.” The balance of power had certainly shifted, that much was for certain.

“I want the four of you and anyone else who might have been involved to turn yourself in to the police, I’ll even dial 911 for you.”

I pulled out my cell phone, only to be bum rushed by Roger Duff the gadget salesman. Duff correctly guessed that I wouldn’t shoot him point blank, but he wasn’t much of a fighter and I was able to sidestep his charge and push him head first into the wall, knocking him silly.

“Blake,” I yelled at Mr. Green Shoes, “control your friend and no one else has to get hurt.” The man who led me to the group of robbers jumped on his accomplice, holding him down, though the knock on the head appeared to take quite a bit of Roger’s resolve away from him either way.

Having overcome the odds and single handedly taken out four inept robbers, I reached for the phone and dialed the police.

Chapter EightI was a mostly good kid when I was growing up – I had to be, my dad was a cop (later a

private detective) and my mother worked for the school district for many years, both of them remaining plugged in to their former worlds after leaving to start their own businesses. I never had a chance to get away with much mischief, my folks were too good at sniffing it out.

The biggest trouble I ever got in was in the tenth grade. This was about a year post-Columbine and I taunted someone with the old ‘you’re bringing a knife to a gun fight’ line, which went against the school’s zero tolerance policy against terroristic threats. Facing

expulsion, I had to sit and talk with the principal, a procession of counselors, and most threatening of all, my dad.

I had the feeling of a man being led to the gallows when I talked to him. Luckily, he was able to keep me from being charged with a crime, though I had to finish out my academic career in a public school – which was just fine by me, that’s where a lot of my friends were anyway.

My dad talked to me in his office – my parents were separated already and I lived with my mom for the most part – and to this day I can easily recall the feeling of terror while I sat at his desk dreading the moment he’d walk through the door. Jerry Clarke wasn’t much of a hitter, his old man was and he didn’t take a liking to it, but I’d rather take a beating than some of the talking-to’s he gave me. I wound up being grounded for three months, which became a summer where I basically spent every day interning in his office, which would eventually lead to the job I held today: life works in strange ways.

Here I was again, some ten, eleven, twelve years later, summoned into the very same office on a bleak and rainy Monday morning, feeling the very same sense of dread.

I wound up waiting about fifteen minutes, knowing the only reason for the holdup was my dad’s desire to make me stew a little bit. The radio was left on, tuned to the all-news station instead of the usual sports talk. The robbery was the top story, with details emerging about how Roger Duff, his business struggling, organized the robberies not only for the loot they gathered, but also as a form of insurance fraud, covering for a business about to go belly up. In addition to the four people I encountered – all either members of Duff’s family or employees at Gadgets & Gear – the police found a fifth conspirator, Duff’s wife, who confessed to robbing Howell’s Jewelry Store.

Dad entered as they were finishing the story and switched off the radio; he was wearing a poker face, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. I had no indication of what kind of lecture was to come as Dad kept the emotionless look as he took a seat at his desk. My father wasn’t overly big or tough looking in the typical sense, but he carried himself in a manner that made him seem imposing, and if you shook his hand you’d know he was deceptively strong.

Even though he was the boss and never subjected me to a dress code, Dad always wore a suit, a layover from his days as a detective, and kept his recently graying hair styled in a regulation military cut. He never had facial hair, not as long as I can remember.

“You’re a grown man Robert, so I’m going to spare you the lecture and ask what the hell you were thinking.”

“I happened to spot the target at the mall. I wasn’t going to pass up a lucky break like that.”

“You were off the case!” Dad fired back, his logic slicing through my passion like a hot knife through butter.

“You can’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing if you were in my shoes,” I countered.

“I wouldn’t have taken the case in the first place!” A counter to the counter.I nodded. “You probably wouldn’t, have” I surmised. “I disobeyed a direct order, and you

have every right to be angry.”There was no response from my dad, who looked down at his desk, nostrils flaring.“Robert,” he started, “I’m suspending your apprenticeship indefinitely. Effective

immediately, you’re an administrative assistant again. We’ll revisit the apprenticeship in time.”“Come on!” I shouted back.“You would’ve gotten killed if those people were halfway capable!” Dad countered, “As it

was, you shot a nineteen year old kid! You’re lucky you’re not locked up right now!” He was right, I was told there were no plans to charge me for anything, but it was touch and go for a

while.“But I solved the case!” I protested, knowing it was fruitless.“Should I throw you a parade?” Dad replied sarcastically. “That’s three times in less than

a year you almost got yourself killed. What kind of a father would I be if I let you keep behaving like that under my watch?”

I stopped cold. I accepted the risks to my own wellbeing that came with the job, but never thought about what it would mean to the people who cared about me.

“I understand.” I conceded. “I’m giving you the rest of the day off. Clear your head and I’ll see you tomorrow morning,”

Dad said. I left without another word.My dad’s office was in the back corner of a larger office space, connecting to a larger area

which housed my desk. I briefly flirted with the idea of tipping the desk over, but thought better of the idea and calmly grabbed my coat from the back of my chair. I left the office and retreated down the hall to the elevator, which I rode down one floor to the lobby of the California Building – the office complex that housed the Clarke Detective Agency – where I was surprised to find Fletcher Howell, a wide smile on his aged face.

“Good work Mr. Clarke, good work indeed,” Howell noted.“Thanks,” I said soullessly. “I’m glad I spotted you, I wanted to give you this,” he said, holding out an envelope.“I can’t take that,” I said.“Ridiculous!” Howell replied, thrusting the envelope at me like a dagger, poking it into my

midsection. I decided to take it, avoiding an embarrassing death by paper cut.“Thank you,” I said, walking away from Howell as I did. I didn’t want to be mean to the

guy, but I was in no mood to talk. I opened the envelope after arriving at my car but before starting the engine, it contained

five one hundred dollar bills and a golden locket with a ruby heart at the center – not a bad take for one day’s work, even if it did get me demoted. I pocketed the cash and threw the locket in my glove compartment. Maybe one day I’d avoid destroying my personal relationships long enough to give it to someone.

I doubted it, but maybe.###

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