A Detective's Guide to the Perfect Crime

I

MARGO JAMESON's small figure was highlighted by the moon as she delicately slinked beneath the yellow crime tape. She glanced around nervously, hoping that no one would recognize her in the dark. She shuffled around forensic investigators in their white lab coats, and officers in their dark blue uniforms. All lit up by the red and blue lights of the surrounding squad cars.

Men and women crouched around the cabin with tweezers and those little paint brush things. Ever so often, a bright flash from a camera would announce the finding of something resembling evidence. But that wasn't what Margo was interested in...

No, she was going inside. She wanted to see the crime scene itself. Where, allegedly, two people had been killed.

Dodging officers exiting the cabin, Margo stepped up onto the porch. She was fully aware that the only thing keeping her from being arrested for trespassing was the uniform she'd taken from an unlocked car.

"Ahem." Margo startled at the sound. "Gloves." The man behind her stated simply. His salt-and-pepper hair peeked out from beneath his hat, betraying his age.

"Oh, right, s-sorry." Margo searched the uniform frantically for blue latex gloves to match everyone else.

The officer thinned his lips as he waited impatiently. "Here." He shoved an unused pair towards her.

"Thanks." Margo sighs with relief.

"Newbies." He snorted before being called away by the technicians on scene.

Margo forced her feet to carry her over the door's threshold. The smell of death practically beat into her head. Slumped in a chair in the corner of the small living room was a rather petite woman. Her off-white paisley nightgown was stained with coagulated blood. Margo's gut twisted furiously when she saw the baby bump hidden beneath her clothing.

"Twenty-three." An officer beside her sighed. "Her name was Lindsey Macintosh." Margo watched as a body bag was carefully opened on the floor and the woman lowered in. "Then we have this guy over here." A man was being zipped into another bag. His pale face was the last thing Margo caught a glimpse of. "We're guessing murder-suicide."

"Mm." Margo nodded. She really didn't care. She knew the details. She just came to watch how it was all handled. And to pick up clues of her own...

"I'm officer Daley, by the way." He extended a hand to the unfamiliar woman.

Margo panicked for a moment. "Uh... Jenkins." She spits out the name. "Paula Jenkins." She'd come too far for a slip of the tongue to mess her up now.

"Are you a new officer?" Daley asked, inspecting the half-size-too-big uniform that draped on her figure. Margo felt that she may as well've been wearing a tent.

She shrugged. "Yeah. Just got out of training."

"Ah." The man seemed none too concerned with the dead bodies as he stepped nonchalantly out of the way. "I don't know why the academy is sending newbies to a homicide. They usually wait to send you out on stuff like this."

Oh god, I'm already screwing up! Margo shrugged uncomfortably, hoping to save herself. "They're short handed I guess..." she felt almost bad lying to someone. But she reminded herself that his blue uniform, all highly decorated with medals and his golden badge, with its stupid symbolic embroidery, it all reminded her that this, this, was where she'd worked so hard tonight to be. Among the ranks of betrayal and traitors. Navy blue uniforms that sparked an unwarranted sense of trust in complete strangers.

But Margo, unlike most, knew their inner workings. She knew how quick they'd write off a clear murder as something as simple as 'suicide' if it meant a convenience for them and a chance to escape from lingering media. And that's what she was here for. Not to converse, not to make friends— even if they were as good-looking as Officer Daley— but to find the truth they would never search for.