The Facts of the Case

 

These were the facts: the trail had gone cold but not for lack of clues. No, there were too many clues to illuminate one path and this was the problem, that all of them seemed to sing out to him at once. Seemed to slide together easy like puzzle pieces only to sprout extra appendages once locked in place, refuting their truth, refuting their function in the big scheme of things.

 

At times, it seemed everything was just floating. Ships tossed to and fro in a sea of nonsense and coincidence.

 

At times, it seemed everything was bleeding together. All the days, all the faces, all the lives, all the voices with one voice always above them all, drowning out the chorus, drowning out even his own marriage and family: that of the little girl.

 

At times still, it seemed the answer was on the tip of his tongue, the edge of his memory. Just around the corner in a dream. Like every dream though, once he rounded the corner the answer would melt away. He would wake once again lost, a lowly cog unaware of the machinery's grand designs.

 

Sitting on a stool, Detective Rick Blurhardt swallowed down aspirin with a whiskey shot, thumbed the temples of his head and took to scooping sleep from his eyes. Fat rain started to splat down on the sidewalks as the barkeep flicked the neon sign on. It sizzled, lighting up the darkness but only enough to expose the extent of the darkness, the overwhelming immensity of it.

 

The detective mumbled to himself: Fuck you, Rick.     Grabbed the bottle behind the counter himself to refill his medicine.

 

The truth was out there. The little girl was out there. The killer was out there.

 

These were the facts of the case: he was too stupid to figure it all out. To connect the strings. To see the trees for the forest and the forest for the trees and to believe that one damn thing had anything to do with the other.