Killer Bay

Cloudy with a Chance of Murder

"Hello, Adalet! Hope you didn't get caught in the rain on the way to work!" Amy says shaking the water off her umbrella.

"No, it started just after I got in," Adalet replied looking up from her computer.

"I'll check the rest of today's weather forecast. Oh look, the front-page headline reads "Three Month Anniversary"," she comments as she picked up the newspaper, "I love anniversaries! It's the perfect occasion to pop a bottle of sparkling grape juice!"

"This is no party to celebrate, Amy," Andrea sighs as she joined the two, "today marks three months since Hurricane Yves hit Jazz Town."

Her face fell, "oh... that is definitely not something to drink juice over."

"Say, Adalet, why don't you visit one of the damaged neighbourhoods?" she suggested, "see if there's any way we can aid the storm victims."

Adalet nods, "I'll head out right now!"

"Great idea, I'll tag along too," Amy says pulling a poncho from her desk drawer, "I know a neighbourhood we can visit just around the corner!"

At an abandoned neighbourhood...

"Wow," Amy gasped as they walked through the destroyed neighbourhood, "I didn't realize how destroyed this neighbourhood would be, Adalet. And with the rain... Could the mood get any damper?"

"Oh, definitely... I give it two seconds," Adalet said as they turned what had been a street corner.

"Look! That poor man over there is sleeping outside!" she points to where a man was slumped on a dirty orange couch.

"We should take a look around, see if there's any way that we can help," she responds.

Adalet and Amy rushed over to the wrecked house but they saw that there was no helping the sleeping man other than by solving his murder. The poor man's throat had been slashed so deeply that you could almost see his spine. Adalet quickly scanned the area and found a faded badge on a piece of a 2X4, and a torn poncho on top of a collapsed telephone pole.

"Jeepers Creepers! The napping man is actually dead! Looks like you've stumbled upon another murder, Adalet!" Amy exclaimed seeing the large wound on the man's neck, "you'd think the killer would be considerate enough not to leave the body out in this crummy weather! What am I thinking, there's no place for consideration in a killer's mind! Sometimes I forget we're dealing with criminals, Adalet."

"Looks like our victim was cut in the neck..." Adalet examined the deep cut.

She winced, "youch! Let's hope he wasn't ticklish. And of course, Adalet, I will get the body to autopsy for you right away."

"Thanks," she thanked as the rookie got out her phone, "this smudged badge has the victim's face on it. And this ripped-up poncho... it looks like there's a message written on it!"

"If anyone can piece it back together, it's you Adalet!" she praised listening to the ringing of the call, "time to get out of my own poncho and on with the investigation!"

Adalet first decided to fix the tor poncho. She sewed up the ripped pieces with some strong thread and soon the plastic-like fabric was whole again. She spread out the poncho and saw that someone had written on the front of it in either red paint or something much worse.

"You pieced together some kind of message on that poncho, Adalet. Yikes, looks like it's written in blood!" Amy cried.

"The message reads "La vengeance est un plat..." Adalet read.

"What on earth could that mean?" she wondered.

She shrugged, "I'm not sure... but I know someone who can find out!"