The One I Knew

Chapter 1

*Picture is of Molly Quinn cast as Malissa Smith!*

The morning light glared down upon me. I shielded my eyes with my hand as they dug up the coffin. A young man discovered the muddy, newly dug grave this morning.The other officers lifted up the foul smelling coffin. They used an axe to chop the lock off and threw it open. I fought through the crowd of people to see the victim. In there lay a young and beautiful Malissa Smith.  Her eyes lay open, unseeing of the world around her. She had her mouth opened wide, which gave me the conclusion that the murderer had surprised her. The young girl wore a light yellow dress with ruffled sleeves. When she was alive it must have looked radiant on her, but now it was only a faded dress on a dead girl. Her curly, dark red hair lay around her head like a halo.

 Finally my eyes came to rest upon her wound. The blood around the gash glistened a bright red in the sunlight. The stab wound was very deep, most likely causing deep internal bleeding. The gash was the only thing that could be seen as the cause of her death, to a normal person’s eye. My eyes noticed the littlest of detail, such as her lipstick smeared lips, broken ankle, and the slight bruising handprints around her neck. I also noticed how her wrists were bruised and her hands looked distorted. I came to the conclusion that she had been dragged to the coffin, instead of being killed inside of it.

Thinking it through,  I came up with a theory. Malissa and her murderer had planned to meet under the big oak tree. Malissa, not knowing of her deadly fate,  waited under the tree until the killer came. They had begun to kiss, which would explain the smeared lipstick and most likely that they had been together as a couple. Then he pulled out the knife and stabbed her. Taken by surprise she pushed him away and ran. He chased after her then tackled her to the ground, breaking her ankle. He then proceeded to strangle her which eventually caused her death along with the internal bleeding. Finally, he quietly dragged her body, by the wrists, and into the coffin then burying it.

However, there were some things that  I thought were amiss. What was the murderer’s motive? Money, love, jealousy? Also where was the shovel and knife he used? These questions ran through my mind as the officers wrapped her body up and took her away to the morgue. Getting into my black, 1970’s Challenger, I drove to the police department building. Our little town lay on the top side of Maine, discreet and cold. We very rarely had any murderers or killings here, so this was going to make the top heading on the newspaper. Reporters cornered me, asking hundreds of questions which I declined to answer.

“Hey Shorty,” Captain Michael Cabyl teased. It was a moronic nickname I had been given when I first started working here. It wasn’t easy being the first woman detective in our town’s history.

“I told you to stop calling me that, Mike,” I sighed, taking a seat at my desk.

“Aw come on, it’s catchy,” he whined.

“Fine, Cabby,” I taunted. The other detectives made fun of his last name, Cabyl, and called him Cabby.

“See? Nicknames are fun.”

I rolled my eyes at him and typed up my notes that I had taken while at the crime scene.

Entry 19. November 19, 1989

Malissa Smith, age 20. Cause of death was a stab wound to the body and strangulation. Found buried in a coffin along Kilmann's orchard. Broken ankle which shows a sign of struggle. Bruised wrists most likely indicate the murderer dragged the body to the coffin thenceforth burying it. Entry made by Rose Phillips

    “Wow, I didn’t know about her death, it seems so inhumane.”

    “Isn’t all murder inhumane?” I asked him.