Crowbar

Agoraphobia (part 2)

They arrived in Alex's office at about 4 in the afternoon and were sat on guest chairs around the table. Alex sat on his chair on the other side. Jimmy went and leaned against the window pane to the left of him as the detective thanked everyone for coming. Thereafter, he began explaining, "Well, the matter at hand... this case, Crowbar, a seriously disturbing matter by the way, has me wondering all sorts of things. Initially we believed there were 11, but now I am certain that there are 26 victims, if we can call them that, because no criminal could be identified and the lunatics, on the other hand, are so devastatingly screwed that they wouldn't be able to tell their right from left! And we have absolutely nothing to link the crimes with anyone else. No criminal, so no crime, and evidently, no victims. By the way, where is that Mike 'Camera' Jefferson?"

"Knew it!" Peter shouted and everyone laughed.

"Forget him, Alex. Continue, please," said Sally.

"Alright," said Alex, leaning forward. "Now, if you look at the papers in front of each of you, you will find profiles of all the 26 so called victims. All these people have been accused of one or other heinous crime, but in all of the cases there was never enough evidence for an arrest to be made. Let me call these 26 the pawns of the case. So, now we definitely see motive for someone to hurt the pawns because all the 35 or so crimes, in which these people were arguably involved, were never solved. And by that, in response to what you guys wrote for the newspapers, I want to make myself very clear, Peter, that this was NOT the work of a HALA HULA madman!"

"I hear ya. Been waiting for it too," said Peter, smiling.

Alex continued, "Seems to be the work of an intelligent person who is trying to play some game with us."

Sally asked, "So do you think someone who knew one or more of the victims of the said crimes committed by the pawns could be our man?"

"Hmm we could look at the relatives, friends and acquaintances of all sorts and try to figure out who might be upset by the unsolved crimes. Matching the results we should be able to find a common factor... an opinionated idealist who has the nerve to commit a crime."

"Ok, wait," said Peter, interrupting Alex. He leaned forward and asked, "You want us to question everyone they ever knew?"

"No. You also have a page in front of you with the names of some people who I believe could be involved."

"It has just 2 names on it Alex, and what did you mean by game?" the chief enquired.

"Yes Chief. And you can cut one name from it, the female name, because the description of the criminal was of a male from all of the living pawns except one. So that leaves us with..."

"One person," Sally whispered then said, "Wow..."

"You said something, Sally?" Alex asked.

"Agoraphobia... what is there to say? Let's go and get this guy!"

"Yes, indeed we could, but I don't think this will be over so easily, and yes, Chief, I did say game."

To this the Chief responded by asking, "How do you mean?"

"Look, if this man wanted justice, he got it. If he wanted revenge, one will have gotten that as well. But, if he wanted the police running around after cold leads he could have done that with half as much trouble."

"Do elaborate," said the Chief as he leaned forward and placing his elbows on the table sat erect and attentive.

"He took the DNA, blood, and prints, to put on the crime scenes, from the escapees of a lunatic asylum, whom he of course helped escape. If he wanted the police vexed he could have just gone for any bleeding man on a street! Why go through so much trouble? And yet make it so obvious that it was not any lunatic's doing? I mean those wack-jobs who escaped were not this screwed up in the asylum as they were when the police found them. He definitely did something to them."