The Rookie Detective by Shela Muriel

The Rookie Detective

by Shela Muriel

In 1912 in Greenwich Village a young brown-haired blue-eyed twenty-year-old woman was walking through the streets late at night when she started to hear something hitting the wall in the dark alleyway of New York. She stopped in her tracks wondering what was there and investigated the dark alley hoping that she could see something move within the darkness.

“Hello?” said the girl as her voice shook with fear. “Is someone there?” Thinking that it was her imagination, she stepped away from the alley and continued to walk back to her house. Her feet were hitting the concrete at an increased speed; she was determined to get back to her house before anything bad would happen. She shouldn’t have been scared about what was going on around her. It could have been a rat or an alley cat; however as she turned the corner, she heard footsteps following her. Now terrified, the girl began to walk faster, her skirt blowing behind her as she was moving at a pace that would most surely make the skirt flow around her legs.

As the girl picked up her pace, she heard the footsteps that were following her. This time she had to get away from it as the footsteps seemed like it kept increasing every time she sped up. Eventually making it to her small apartment, she raced inside and slammed the door shut. Locking it behind her, thinking that she was now safe, the girl sighed with relief and took off her wool sweater. Laying it on the nearest couch, she went to check on her cousin, Julian, to see if she had gone to sleep.

When she entered Julian’s room, she saw that Julian was curled in bed with the blanket covering her body. Smiling softly, the girl made her way to her room where she was going to get ready for the night and hoped that what she heard in the alleyway was all in her imagination. As she was starting to undo her hair, she suddenly saw someone in her mirror. The girl cried out as she turned to see who it was.

“Hello, beautiful,” said the stranger, who had somehow gotten into

her bedroom. “You should not have protested; women should know where they stand within the society,”

The stranger approached her with his knife in his hand. The girl tried to walk around him but he blocked her path. The man had a weapon in his hand that he could use to harm her; he could also harm her cousin, and she wasn’t about to let that happen. As she was about to run around him, he backed her against the wall and thrust the blade into her stomach. The girl gasped as the color drained from her face and life left her eyes. The man pulled the dagger out from the girl’s stomach, causing her to collapse on the floor, blood pooling out from the wound.

The very next day, Julian woke from her sleep and was surprised that her cousin hadn’t woken her up. She got out of bed and started getting ready for the day. Julian put on a white blouse with a poiret slit skirt, stockings, and one-inch heels. Believing that her cousin, Ivy, was still asleep, she made her way to Ivy’s room.

“Ivy?” she called out as she knocked on the door. When no one answered she knocked once again. “Ivy?”

When her cousin didn’t answer, she pushed open the door and saw, to her horror, her cousin lying on the floor. Panic swelled throughout her body as she made her way over to Ivy. The minute she got to Ivy she saw that her dear cousin had been stabbed in the stomach. It did not look like the killer hesitated. Racing into the living room, Julian grabbed the phone and dialed the police thinking that they would help her figure out who murdered her cousin.

“Hello,” said the operator from the other side of the phone. “What’s the emergency?”

“Please! Send the police! Someone murdered my cousin!” screamed Julian, and she hung up the phone and she waited for a good ten minutes when the police arrived. Julian opened the door for them as they raced inside and entered the room in which Ivy had been murdered. The police made sure to bring out the dead body and make the room a crime scene. Julian sat outside on the curb as she was thinking back to what she had seen. Her cousin was killed, and it didn’t look like there was any evidence except for the fact that her cousin was holding the dagger

with her own hand. After a while of waiting, one of the police officers approached her.

“Ms. Walker,” said the officer.

“Yes sir?”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know,” says Julian as she wiped away a tear. “I walked in and saw Ivy dead on her floor,” she continued. “She was murdered by someone.”

“No ma’am, what I believe happened was that she committed suicide,”

“What?! That’s not possible. She was never depressed; she was always cheerful.”

“There’s no other way to say it, Miss; she had the knife in her hands and she just stabbed herself,”

“No, you’re wrong,” says Julian as she started to become confident. This officer was lying: there was no way her cousin would commit suicide. Julian knew better than that. She looked at the officer’s name badge which said ‘Officer Matthew.’ “Officer, I know my cousin was murdered, and I will figure out who did it,”

“Why don’t you leave that to me?” said another man, who was wearing a trench coat as well as a suit and tie.

“Who are you?”

“Sorry,” says the man with brown hair as he held out his hand. “My name is Jefferson Stalin,” he continued “and l’m the detective that is in charge of this case.”

“You’re going to figure out who murdered my cousin?”

“Yes, we just need any information that you can hand us to help solve this mystery.”

“You can go ahead and search the house; some of her belongings should be there.”

Stalin nodded his head toward Julian in a polite manner as he entered the house searching for anything that could help them figure out what had happened to Ivy. However, Julian wasn’t about to sit around and let the men solve the mystery; she was going to solve it herself. If