Man In Black - Season 1 - Episode 3

4 years ago

Man In Black - Season 1 - Episode 3

Tobi walked slowly around the bed, from the foot of the bed to the left-hand side, looking straight at the woman as he did. He held up a hand for his assistant to wait behind. His eyes studied the bullet wound on her head. This seemed like a normal assasination at first glance. A rich woman was dead, which meant someone had paid another person to kill her, end of story.
But there were still some things that didn’t add up.

For example, if this was actually a paid assasination, and Tobi’s eyes told him cause of death was a gunshot to the head, then it made sense to say that the killer had snuck into the house, then up here into the bedroom and shot this woman through the head. It would have been hard, considering the live electric fence on the normal fence outside, but it was still a distinct possibility.

But Tobi had seen enough headshots to know that, had she shot been at close range, then by all rights the top of this woman’s head should have been blown all over the back of the room in a shower of blood and broken bone, and not still attached with just a small round hole in the middle of her forehead.
The detective resumed his walk from the side of the bed. He passed the door to the room’s toilet. However it had been done, the woman was dead, at least one bullet had been fired, which meant he was supposed to find one corresponding shell casing, unless the killer actually picked it up before leaving.
His shoes made loud noises as he walked on the tiled floor. The air condition was still on.
It was when he got behind the bed that he saw the real confusing thing. There was a curtain over the window, but behind it the windows were closed. In the window, however, was a bullethole, and a corresponding one in the curtain where it had passed through, along with a small scattering of broken glass on the floor.

Something clicked in Detective Akano’s mind, and his head snapped to the right.
There, on the far wall at the foot of the bed, was a deep scratch in the pink paint of the room that corresponded to the hole in the window, revealing a white undercoat of paint.
When he had passed that spot few minutes earlier, he had thought the scratch had come from someone trying to hit a nail through the wall. Why on earth would an assasin shoot the window as well? Tobi wanted to open the curtain and have a look at the hole in the window, but he knew he wasn’t supposed to touch anything until he at least found a pair of gloves. He would ask those officers for one when he saw them again.
But the detective’s already multitasking mind had come up with another possible explanation his mind just refused to accept.
Fifteen minutes later, he had conducted as extensive a search of the room as he could without touching anything and had found neither casing nor another bullet to account for the second one that had been fired into the room.
When one of the two officers finally came upstairs, Tobi was standing beside Efe at the side of the bed and staring, not at the corpse, but at the scratch on the wall and the hole in the curtain, wondering how it was possible that the bullet hadn’t passed through the wall into the room on the other side.

But then again, how was it possible that a bullet had been fired into the room through the window? They were in thefirst floorof the building for crying out loud. Based on all he knew now, it was either they were dealing with a killer who could fly, or. . . There was one thing he still hadn’t considered. . .
He looked again at the hole in the curtain, at the scratch on the wall, then at the bloody hole in the head of the frozen woman on the bed. He thought he saw smug satifaction on the officer’s face when he saw Tobi’s look of bafflement.

The detective turned to look at him. Efe, who had stood watching him quietly all the while, turned as well.
“Who was the woman they found at the door?” Tobi asked.
“The housekeeper,” the officer replied. “She’s in the room outside,” he pointed behind him to a closed door across the corridor. “We know she fainted only because the mallam outside told us. I just thought she was sleeping. She’s still sleeping. We need a doctor to look at her, self, but for now we’re the only ones here.”
Detective Tobi opened his mouth to ask for a pair of gloves, but the officer was not done.
“And there’s a media vehicle outside,” he added fretfully. “I don’t know how they heard about what happened here so quick, but they said they want to talk to anybody that can tell them what happened. It’s like the woman is—Was.It’s like she was popular or something.”

Detective Akano had gone rigid the moment he heard “media vehicle”. He didn’t even want to know whether it was a television station truck or a newspaper reporter. The media were a good way for the police to shine when they just closed a major case, and the publicity they got in those situations helped them close it in style.