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Crime Scene Too Clean
by Emily Brown
First Place
The teenage years are full of firsts. First high school party. First driving lesson. First date. First kiss.
When Melissa Reynolds turned thirteen, she solved her first murder.
It wasn’t anyone she knew, fortunately–but it was still rather unusual. A) because murder wasn’t something that happened in her neighbourhood, ever, and b) because there didn’t seem to be a motive. Why would anyone want to kill a janitor?
Oh, and there was the fact that Melissa was only thirteen. That was unusual too.
It happened like this: Melissa walked into school on Tuesday an hour early, as always, and noticed that the halls weren’t quite as impeccably clean as they normally were. So, being an odd girl and a slight germaphobe, she went to find a mop.
Instead, she found a body.
As she later told the police, it looked like he’d fallen asleep–except, who in their right mind would fall asleep in a cleaning closet?
She didn’t touch him, but when she fetched her mop and accidentally knocked all the brooms over and he still didn’t wake, she went to fetch a responsible adult. Said responsible adult–a not-so-responsible twelfth grader named Don–then called the cops.
Melissa Reynolds was fascinated by murder. She didn’t understand why anyone would want to take life, but the methods used to investigate such cases were detailed, intricate, and perfectly intriguing. So when she had to go to class rather than stay and watch the police work, she was very disappointed.
The teachers blamed her distraction on ‘nerves’, since she’d found the body.
She didn’t correct them.
Lunchtime she was sent home to ‘rest’ from her ‘upsetting morning’.
When she got home, Melissa sat down at her desk, but not to rest. She drew a somewhat average picture of the murder scene, and made notes of everything the police had said. She wasn’t a detective, but she was ready to investigate.
The janitor had been poisoned, she was relatively sure of that. He’d had no marks on him, and he’d smelled of chemicals.
It had to have been done recently, or he’d have been a bit more stiff and a lot more pale. And the hallways would have been a lot dirtier a lot sooner.
“So,” she began to talk out loud. “To be poisoned, it would have to be someone with access to his food, his drink, or his person.”
Then, considering the chemical smell, added, “His person, most definitely.” No one would eat food that smelled of chemicals. No one she knew, anyway.
“So… they would have to have been close when he died. And not too far away when I found him, assuming he was killed this morning, and the janitor started work at a reasonable hour.”
Melissa was a fan of sleeping in, although she tended to be early for school. ‘A reasonable hour’ was anytime after six, or sunrise–whichever came later.
“Which narrows it down to…”
She picked up her pen–
And then promptly put it down again, hearing the front door slam downstairs. Mum was back from work, and Melissa would have to write down her suspect list later. After all…
“Mel, honey, the school called! They sent you home to rest?”
After a very tiring day spent trying to investigate, and trying to reassure her mother that she was fine–both unsuccessfully–Melissa went to bed. Even thirteen-year-old detectives have to sleep.
Her dreams were nightmares in which the school was without a janitor, and got filthier and filthier as time ticked on.
The next morning, she decided to recruit some help.
This came in the form of her extremely competitive eleventh-grader cousin, Rex. It was hard to arrange meeting him, since he didn’t arrive as early as she did, ever, but she figured it out.
Mainly by calling the school and telling them she still wasn’t feeling too well, and then hiding in the library among the ‘Russian authors’ section.
Rex appeared 5 minutes later than he’d agreed to meet her, looking very sheepish at being in a library, even though it was technically school time, and the older grades had a free period in the first hour. Sort of. They were supposed to use the time to study.
“This better be good, Melissa.”
She grinned. “Do you want to help me solve a murder?”
He sighed.
“Bet you we can’t figure it out before the police do,” she added.
He sighed again, but this time because he knew he would have to. His own competitiveness wouldn’t let him quit until he did. “Fine.”
The first thing on her list?
Find out when the janitor usually started work. This would give them a rough time of death, since he’d been in uniform when Melissa found him.
Second was to finally build her list of suspects. Currently it consisted of the Secretary, who had been in her office down the hall; the Principal, who would have been on the premises at some point around that time and was often able to turn up and vanish just as he wanted to; Mrs. Dowley, the math teacher in the nearest classroom; Mr. Laver, the history teacher in the second nearest classroom; and the twelfth-grader. And the janitor himself. She wasn’t ruling out anything just yet.
She was rooting for the math teacher, she told Rex. Math was her least favourite subject by far.
“But why would any of these people want to kill a janitor?” Rex interrupted.
She shrugged. “Why does anyone kill anyone?”
“Fair point.”
They both spent the rest of the afternoon researching–Melissa from the library, and Rex from classroom gossip.
The janitor, Rex told her later, started work at about four in the morning.
She grimaced. Poor janitor. Not just because he was dead.
But, Rex said, she’d be glad to know that they’d just hired a new janitor to replace him. A youngish guy, but apparently very good at cleaning up. He’d be starting next week.
Melissa’s smile returned, if smaller than before. The school would be clean after all. No more reason for nightmares.
But still no real leads. That was… disappointing.
The next day, Melissa informed the school that she would be taking Thursday and Friday off as well. Then she hid in the school library again.
She was becoming very well acquainted with the covers of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pushkin, though she still wasn’t sure how to pronounce Dostoevsky.
Wanting a change of scenery, she said goodbye to the Russian classics and moved to the school blueprints, which was less comfortable but even quieter.
The problem came when she needed to go to the toilet.
She couldn’t be seen in the student bathrooms, since she technically wasn’t supposed to be at school. But she did need to go.
She saw her opportunity when the librarian got up to go to lunch, leaving her lanyard on the counter. Along with her keys.
The staff bathroom! That would work perfectly.
She snuck up to the counter, borrowed the key, and ever so quietly made her way to the staff bathroom.
Finally!
And then she encountered something rather unexpected…
Meanwhile, in class, Rex was talking with a few of his friends.
“A shame that the poor janitor started work at four a.m.,” he said, borrowing Melissa’s sentiments in the hopes of gathering more information. “He wouldn’t even have died well-rested!”
His desk-mate, Allen, nodded in agreement. “Mmm.” He was a boy of few words.
“Probably the kind of work ethic the teachers want to see from us,” Belle from the desk behind them murmured. “Not that they ever would.”
Allen nodded again. “Yep.”
Then, seeing that it might be his chance to actually talk to Belle, a surprisingly pretty girl, he added, “What self-respecting eleventh-grader would ever come in to work early?”
The words echoed in Rex’s ears. “Yes…” he thought out loud, starting to put the pieces together. “What self-respecting eleventh-grader would?”
That afternoon, the cousins ran into each other on their way to find each other.
“I think I know who did it!” Rex said, already picturing the policemen’s faces when they were beat to the murderer by two schoolchildren.
“So do I,” Melissa whispered. “And I think I know how to prove it.”
On Friday, the Police received a call that an anonymous caller knew who the killer was, and wanted to meet them at the crime scene. At the same time, the school secretary was surprised to see Melissa back at school at her usual time, despite having called to say she wouldn’t be coming.
And at the time when school would usually start, Rex and Melissa were absent from their seats. They were meeting with two police officers, and a number of the school staff, gathered around a cleaning closet that was currently cordoned off.
The school principal repeated Rex’s words from not too long before. “This better be good, Melissa.”
The teenage girl only grinned. “I know who the murderer is.”
“We know who the murderer is,” Rex corrected. “And they’re here right now.”
“Well, get to it,” the officer in charge said impatiently. His partner glanced around, wondering who it might be.
“Our suspect list consisted of the Principal, the Secretary, Mrs. Dowley, Mr. Laver, the twelfth-grader who originally called you, and the janitor himself.”
“But it wasn’t the janitor,” the police officer said. “The crime scene was too clean for that.”
“He couldn’t have cleaned up after he was dead,” his partner added.
“Well, we know that now,” Melissa continued. “But we didn’t, not to start with. So we couldn’t rule him out until we were sure.”
Rex nodded to show he agreed.
“At first, it didn’t look too good for the Principal,” Melissa began. “Our esteemed principal, after all, has a habit of appearing and disappearing within the halls of the school. He knows this place better than anyone, and would have known the perfect escape route.”
The Principal opened his mouth in defense.
“But,” Melissa spoke first, “As the officer has already said, the crime scene was too clean. The Principal’s office testifies on his behalf.”
The poor Principal wasn’t sure whether to take it as a compliment or an insult.
“That also rules out Mr. Laver.” Melissa added.
Mr. Laver nodded graciously; yes, it was a known fact that he was rather untidy.
“This then also works against Mrs. Dowley and the Secretary,” Melissa continued. “Being a math teacher and a secretary, they are both impeccably tidy and orderly. But, as Rex found out for me, Mrs. Dowley was taking an early tutoring session with a few eighth-graders, and was definitely present there since just after she arrived at six.”
Mrs. Dowley scowled, annoyed that she’d even been a suspect in the first place.
The Secretary went pale.
“As for the Secretary,” Melissa said, “She had been in the building all night, working on some insurance paperwork. She is completely unaccounted for during the time of death, and being staff, had access to everything she would have needed to kill the janitor.”
The officer pulled his handcuffs from his belt. “So you’re saying it was the Secretary?”
“But why?” his partner interrupted.
“Exactly,” Melissa smiled knowingly. “But why. Why would the Secretary, the sweetest, most caring woman who works here, want to kill the janitor?”
Everyone paused, thinking.
“She wouldn’t,” Rex finished. “Which leaves…”
“The twelfth-grader?” The officer looked confused. “But that makes even less sense.”
“Does it?” Melissa questioned.
No one answered, afraid of being shown up by a thirteen-year-old girl.
“Alright, another question – “ she said. “Why would a twelfth-grader, who has their first hour of school time literally set apart for study, be at school a full hour early? With no tests or exams due in the near future?”
The officer’s partner, who had a nephew in grade twelve, frowned. “Yeah… that is unlikely.”
“Your conclusion?” The officer asked.
“Don is not actually a twelfth-grader. He simply wanted you to think he was one, so that he could find the body and throw you off his trail.”
Seeing that her audience was still confused, Melissa continued. “He memorized the layout of the school, and the janitor’s schedule. Quite possibly by using the guise of a twelfth-grader. Knowing that the janitor would be back at the cleaning closet by six, he waited there, and then poisoned the janitor. He then cleaned up after himself, and made his way to the staff bathroom, where he changed into his student disguise before coming back here to find the body by seven.”
“He couldn’t have made it all that way in that little time,” Mrs. Dowley scoffed.
The Principal winced. “Actually… there are secret passages in the walls.”
The police officer sighed, no longer surprised by anything. “And there’s one between the cleaning closet and the staff bathroom?”
The Principal nodded sheepishly.
“So why did he do it?” the partner asked Melissa.
She shrugged. “He wanted his job.”
The Principal was horrified. “You’re saying that the new janitor… is the old janitor’s murderer?”
Melissa nodded. “How else would he be able to leave the crime scene so clean?”
Which is when they heard the brooms all fall over.
“And… that would be him.” Melissa said.
The police went home with a janitor–aka Don ‘the twelfth-grader’ in a fake moustache–and Melissa and Rex were both applauded and scolded for their detective work. The Principal’s secret was out, and the Secretary, perfectionist though she was finally went home for a good night’s sleep.
So what did Melissa find in the staff bathroom? It was more what she didn’t find.
The bathroom was clean. Too clean. There hadn’t been a janitor there since Monday, but it wasn’t dirty enough. The only explanation was the one she’d given the police–that the bathroom was associated with the scene of the crime.
They found Don’s change of clothes in the dumpster outside the school, and were finally able to explain why Melissa had thought he was an adult. As for how she’d been able to predict that he’d be in the cleaning closet? Well, that was a secret Melissa kept to herself.
The only downside to the situation was that the school was still without a janitor. And, of course, that Mrs. Dowley assigned everyone extra homework. That sucked too.
And that is how Melissa Reynolds solved her first murder at the age of thirteen.
She had to wait until she was fourteen before she solved her second…
Winning pieces are published as received.
Fiction Potluck
April 2024
First Place Winner:
Emily Brown
Emily Brown is a teen author, poet, and singer/songwriter from Australia, and can often be found with her nose in a book, or writing her latest idea. She can also be found in Write the World Review, in Pure in Heart Stories, and on YouTube under the stage name Emmi Byrd.