Ruben Mendoza

The Brown Recluse: Murder in Green Hills Ruben Mendoza

On Saturday a woman called the police department to report suspicious circumstances at the Lower East Side, construction site. The woman told the dispatcher that the door to the office-trailer had been ripped-off its hinges and it was now lying at the bottom of the stairs. Two police officers were dispatched to the scene and found the victim dead on the sofa, belly-up, bound by the hands and ankles. The victim had a series of punctures around and about his heart. The floor, covered with the victim's blood, was a gruesome scene. The victim suffered a painful ordeal. It was past midnight and the city had long gone to sleep. There were no witnesses, or evidence readily available to identify the one, or more, perpetrators to this atrocious act. Detective Sergeant Gilbert Roland was called to the scene and he d unravel the three C's to the murder with every tête-à-tête he d encounter: complexity, collusion, and convolution. He'd profile and chart the victim s background; childhood and up to the present, displaying a makeshift diagram for his office wall that served both as a visual diagram and as a verbal bouncing board. Any, and all of those who'd hover or associated with the victim, were added to his wall of murder. In the end, there would be a motive, or combination of motives for the murder: lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, greed, and pride. All of which revolved around a twist of fate, but only one motive outweighed them all...