Writing The Western Update VII: From The Mind of Detective Dante Egg, CMPD

I was having breakfast when I got the call. "Homicide. Hurry." It's always murder.

I got on the scene as soon as I could, but it was a hell of a place to get to. The body was still in the street. Young kid, in his teens. Shot. Dammit. It was just after 11AM on October 7th, 2011.

It happened in broad daylight, and someone must've seen something. I started asking around, but the locals wouldn't talk. Someone had shut them up, and shut them up good. I ran through all the nefarious characters I knew who might've had a hand in this. It would take a bad guy to keep a whole town quiet. A Big Bad guy.

It's times like this I like to go for a lonely walk in the rain and mull things over. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a desert. I headed back to the city and its noisy racket so I could think.

It all seemed so senseless. A minor character, with little backstory and no heroic sacrifice or parting piece of information. Who could do such a thing?

My mind circled back around to the name that kept coming up in situations like this: Andrew Sherwood, alias "The Author." He'd always denied it, but you couldn't look at him without getting the sense he was pulling the strings. It wasn't a stretch to see that people lived and died at his whims.

Last time I got close to him, he slipped through my fingers. Not this time.

He gave me all sorts of excuses yesterday, but now this was different. A kid was dead. I wasn't going to let him off the hook.

"Back again, Detective? What can I help you with?"

"Come with me."

"I didn't do anything!" he protested. "I've been on my computer all day!"

"Tell it to the judge. This one's got your fingerprints all over it."

I handcuffed him to a park bench while I did some sleuthing. I needed more than a hunch or we couldn't hold him for long. That was when I found the blog.

Here it was, all laid out in chilling detail, his thoughts and plans leading up to the crime. He'd been writing in it for months. This wasn't a random shooting. It was premeditated. Everything was right there in the outline. And there would be more to come.

When I went back to Sherwood to take him down to the station, I was in for a shock. The handcuffs were on the ground. The bench was gone. The Author had escaped again.

So now I'm appealing to you, the public, to catch this maniac. If you've seen Sherwood, or know where he is, drop me a line. I don't have to remind you, lives are at stake here.