It is Wednesday Story Day again. Last week we saw that Frank Plano had an idea to set up some kind of Agatha Christi drawing-room finale to trap the killer of the Severides. Jason McDonnell was all for it and encouraged him to proceed. The reading audience (that’s you) overwhelmingly commented on how much fun that would be. I, of course, have reservations since this is a dialog only story and there will be a number of suspects gathered. I wonder if I can keep the parties’ discussions separated without using the “said,”convention. (For those who don’t know, I challenge myself to produce cogent conversation and storyline without dialog tags.) “The hell with it,” my brain screamed. “Let’s do it.” Off we go. It appears Frank sent out letters to each of the suspects along with a subpoena requesting that they show up for a deposition in the Severide murder. The location is Jason’s office and we see everyone gathered in the conference room. Everyone that is except Lucas who is present from the hospital by video conference. Time for us to join the party as we were sent a subpoena too.
“Ladies and gentlemen. I want to thank you for being here on such short notice. Yes, Sheriff, you have a question?”
“I do, Frank. I thought this was going to be a deposition. Why are we all here? Depositions are supposed to be one on one.”
“Good question, Seth. The judge who authorized this gathering decided that there would be some information shared that all of us would want to hear. You are right. This is not your normal deposition. You see, one of you is responsible for the death of the Severides.”
“That is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. I know all these people except for that guy over there.”
“Right you are, Mrs. Murphy. By the way, that guy over there is Henry Wiscosill. He is a Pharmacist from Kenosha.”
“Hi, everybody.”
“Yes, well, as I was saying. One of you has blood on their hands and we are going to expose you today.”
“Excuse me, Frank.”
“Yes, Alice. What is it?”
“Didn’t Harriet hire Jason McDonnell here to find out who killed the Severides?”
“Yes, he did. What is your point?”
“Why is Harriet here? Surely if she hired a lawyer to find a killer then she is innocent.”
“Would be a good point, Alice, except for one thing.”
“One thing?”
“She hired Jason to prove Lucas innocent. She said nothing about finding the true killer.”
“Mr. Plano. I think you are splitting hairs.”
“Why’s that Trish?”
“If Jason proved Lucas innocent he would have to identify the killer.”
“Notice I said, “true killer,” Trish.”
“What does that mean?”
“It would be very easy to craft a scenario that points to a suspect but not the killer.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Tell me. Aren’t you going to get five million dollars from the estate of your parents?”
“Yes, so what?”
“Could be motive.”
“I didn’t even know about that insurance policy.”
“So you say, Trish. So you say.”
“You leave my sister alone. She had nothing to do with our parent’s murder.”
“Says the lad who was asleep while his parents were lying dead in the next room.”
“You accusing me?”
“No Lucas. Just stating the facts. I think the whole world thinks you did it. The whole world except for Jason and me.”
“As sheriff of this county I demand we stop this foolishness and if as you say, you know who killed the Severides just spit it out.”
“Nicely said Sheriff but it’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
“The person responsible for this deed believes they are not answerable to normal rules and morals. This person believes they are above the law. In fact, they have such a solid alibi, a conviction will be all but impossible. No, we need them to come forward and tell us why they hired contract killers to eliminate the Severides. We need them to explain why they took the law into their own hands. We need this soldier of the Lord to come forward and claim the proper credit for eliminating this smear of offal from the Earth.”
To be continued
