On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 226, of 240 so far.

Mice

Jarrat looked at the board for the hundredth time since dawn. It took up most of a wall, perfectly lit with diffuse lamps attached to the ceiling and angled towards it. Every centimetre of the surface was easily readable, and almost the entire area was covered by writing, or magnetically-attached print-outs, photographs, or index cards.

The problem was that it didn’t make sense.

His colleague for this case was a relative newcomer, slightly younger, and still finding his way around this particular type of work. His name was Lantree, and he’d come from the private sector a few years ago, and was a special consultant to the department, holding no actual police powers, but he had plenty of sway with the Chief Superintendent. He was thus a man to be tolerated, and to be used if possible, but never entirely to be trusted.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Lantree said, and Jarrat didn’t even look away from the board as he shook his head.

“When we’ve got a lead,” Jarrat replied. “Let’s go over it again”.

Lantree sighed, but nodded his head. “Well there’s the weird thing about the shoes being taken,” he offered, but Jarrat scowled, still without looking around.

“Back to basics, first,” he said, by way of reply. “We know there have been five murders, all following the same pattern, but all the evidence says they were committed by five different people, each one an acquaintance of the previous victim.”

“So the question is who killed the first person?” Lantree asked. “Seems likely that they’re the one behind it all.”

“So,” Jarrat said, “the question is why. Just like always. Why those victims? Why in that order? Why all the same MO? And in particular, why did each of the murderers take part in the whole thing?”

“It’s like one of those chain letters,” Lantree remarked, at a loss for much else to say, and now Jarrat did look round at him.

“First interesting thing you’ve come up with so far,” he said, but Lantree chose not to reply, and after a moment Jarret returned his attention to the board.

“Motive,” Jarret said after another minute or so of silence. “Or motives, plural, I suppose. We need to pin one on each of the killers. Five murderers, four motives.”

Lantree frowned. “Why only four motives for five people?” he asked, and Jarrat’s lips twisted into a weary grin.

“Mice,” he replied, as if it explained everything. Lantree was clearly none the wiser, and so Jarrat put him out of his misery.

“It’s a… what do you call it?” he began. “Where each of the letters stand for something.”

“An initialism,” Lantree replied, but Jarrat shook his head.

“That’s when it doesn’t make a word you can say. This does. Acronym, that’s what it is. M-I-C-E. The four motives, when you get right down to it, behind any crime.”

Lantree waited patiently, and Jarrat had to grudgingly allow the other man a small amount of credit. He took care not to show it on his face, though, and instead kept his eyes on the board when he spoke again.

“Money, ideology, coercion, and ego,” he said. “That’s the lot. If you find a motive that can’t be reduced to one of those, let me know and we’ll write a bloody book about it, because I never have.”

Lantree nodded thoughtfully, filing the information away to consider later, and he saw that Jarrat had started to move some of the items on the board to open up a space in the lower middle section. Then he took a dry-erase marker from the tray below and drew a crude table with three columns: Vic, DF, and Mtv.

“Victim, distinguishing features of the crime, and motive,” he said, answering the question that Lantree had correctly assumed he wouldn’t even have to ask. Jarrat noted the names of the victims in chronological order of death, and in the second column he began to add any unusual aspects of that particular crime. He noted the word ‘shoes’ in the top row, adding ditto marks in each of the other four rows, to account for each victim’s shoes having been removed and taken away from the crime scene every time.

He then transcribed a few of the more notable distinct features of the various scenes, including a discarded bus ticket for a route that the deceased had never travelled, a foreign coin found on a table in plain view, a tied food-bag of peas in the fine woollen overcoat pocket of a businessman, a women’s engagement ring worn on the little finger of a man’s right hand, with the modest gem turned towards the palm instead of the knuckle, and a few other things.

Each scene was starkly documented in unforgiving flash photographs all pinned to the board in macabre grids, and as Lantree studied one, he noticed something. His gaze went to the next group of photos, and it took only a minute or two to find what he was looking for. His brow creased at the coincidence, and as he went from scene to scene in sequence, a feeling of disquiet bloomed in his chest.

By now, Jarrat had finished working on the central column of his motives table, and he noticed the other man’s renewed attention to the board. “What?” Jarrat asked, and Lantree pointed to the photos from the initial crime.

“This is going to sound stupid, and it’s probably nothing,” Lantree replied, “but take a look here.”

He didn’t actually say what he was indicating, and instead just pointed to each other photo in succession. Jarrat saw it immediately.

“Now that’s strange,” Jarrat said, and he meant it. There was a mouse in every group of photos, often appearing in multiple shots from each set. Sometimes a child’s soft toy, or a novelty item of clothing, or a pewter fridge magnet, or a framed piece of crochet hung on a wall, and in one case even a live pet in a small cage within one of the victims’ spare bedroom which served as a home office. Jarrat went again to his table of motives, still holding the marker.

He wrote the letter I in the motive column for the second murder, because they were already fairly certain that it was ideologically motivated: the victim was an executive in a petrochemical firm, and his vehicle had been vandalised with environmental slogans around the same time as his murder. Jarrat also wrote an M in the fifth row, then he paused when the door to the room opened and a uniformed female officer came in, handed him a sheet of paper, then left without a word.

“Huh,” Jarrat said, scanning the contents of the document. “Looks like our first victim’s investment account was emptied using his own secure credentials less than twelve hours after he was killed.” He took the marker and added another M, this time in the top row. So far, there was an M, then an I, then two blank rows in the motive column, and then another M. The conclusion was clear enough, however unlikely, and it was Lantree who gave voice to it.

“Somehow, these unrelated killers are cycling through your four core motives, in order, using a linked MO? How can that be?”

“Buggered if I know,” Jarrat replied, “but we need to check victim three’s background for susceptibility to coercion, and figure out how victim four was an ego killing.”

Only a moment passed before there was a knock at the door, and the same uniformed officer came in again.

“Sorry, sir, but there’s been another one,” she said. “Shoes removed, blunt trauma in the same pattern. And this one is going to be all over the press once it gets out.”

“And why’s that?” Jarret asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it anyway.

“The victim, sir,” the officer said, looking from Jarrat to Lantree and back again. “He’s an MP.”

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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