The Detective

• Elisabeth Oh, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2021

“So you're completely sure you want ramen for dinner not pho?” my roommate, Mila said tapping around on her phone. I rolled my eyes impatiently while snapping my plastic gloves on. “Yes Mila I’m very sure I want ramen not pho” I insisted, after all we did have pho last week. I picked up the bloody knife as Mila groaned and I started inspecting it. I had picked the knife up this morning from the office to investigate for a recent murder case. Now I’ve been a detective for three years now, and you might think that's not that long but after three years you do get the hang of things and I’m pretty sure after inspecting 27 knives this one was like no other. The leftover blood on the knife was a bright red. The handle of the knife was wooden and unsanded leaving sharp spikes that could easily cut me if I wasn’t wearing gloves.

It was 2 am and my eyelids felt as if they were hungry crocodiles waiting to snap their mouth closed. I had searched everywhere on this thing trying to find a hint to who the murderer was and I had even used every little trick I knew but there was nothing. I decided if I was to solve this case then I would have to go on site and search the crime scene so I texted my boss and asked for the address. He didn’t want me to go but I eventually convinced him.

I’m not one to judge how clean a house is or how well it's kept because personally mine’s not the cleanest but this house was very bad. In every room the floral flower wallpaper was a musty yellow and was peeling. The furniture was rotting and it felt as if the whole house was too. It had a wet and humid atmosphere which I guessed was from mold. The whole house reeked of blood which I had gotten used to, working as a detective and being very prone to blood noses. When I got to the bedroom I found a small blood stained toy bunny which to me was very odd because the person murdered was a 45 year old man.

As any professional detective would have done I took the bunny home with me to inspect and the same result as the knife came out with the bunny. Nothing. Me being frustrated I swept everything off my desk and threw the bunny for my red panda Ko to play with.

I didn’t get any work done today because Ko had an upset stomach and it was killing me to clean up so I took her to the vet. The vet soon enough found out there was something in there that needed to come out and when it did it was a major clue.

Ko ended up vomiting out a smaller toy bunny which when I checked had the DNA we needed and the murderer was- my boss?