Curious Commotion

The early morning rays turned brighter when Joe finally managed to finish her cereal bowl at eleven. Her apartment seemed to be in a complicated state of mess, with the floor flooded by loose, crumpled sheets of white paper. Her laptop sat on her study table peacefully, sleek and shut, while the living room and the kitchen sink were overflowing with dirty plates and bowls. Although, there was a serious crime drama playing on the TV, Joe’s lazy self was hardly paying attention as she slipped into a comfortable position on her couch. She placed an arm on her eyes, hoping to snore off to an early afternoon nap. 

As everything went dark, mundane noises floated in. In spite of the show’s mysterious background music, birds could be heard chirping their way into the day. Cars on the main street honked by the almost-empty block of apartment buildings, considering it was around noon on a Wednesday. 

The hassle of lack of inspiration and ideas leading to a stuck plot surfaced again, under her shut eyes. Even though Joe was trying hard not to let her mind retract to that distressful path, her effort to sleep it all off was rarely paying any heed. Her unintentionally concentrated mind kept circling back to the one thing she had been meaning to discover over the past seven days, though to no avail. 

She finally leapt up, groaning at the irrelevant sounds her ears were starting to pick up. She looked around her apartment, eyes roaming over the unavoidable mess which had been stocking up each day, and cringed. 

“I have to clean this up, don’t I?” Joe turned to the innocent dog sitting just beside the couch. MJ perked up at her voice and stared at his owner, with eyes as big as a football, while his tail wagged behind him. 

With a twisted face Joe sighed, as she patted her small dog, mentally thinking about skipping another day of some much necessary cleaning. Another day to the lot won’t harm, right? she thought. But then her eyes flitted to her work desk in the corner of the room, messy and a perfect definition of abandoned passion. A long look at it was enough to get her up on her feet and start cleaning. Maybe clearing the mess would make way for a good twist to the plot, she reasoned. 

Joe dived head-first into cleaning her apartment, running around while grooving to old jams. In an hour, she was dripping in sweat, in spite of the cool and breezy autumn weather. The job seemed to be a lot more than she had anticipated at the start. It was tiring, all right, but she had soon realised it was proving to be an effective technique to take her mind off work-related things. 

After a quick water break, she swooped back in. The loose sheets ended up in the dustbin, most of them being crossed out chapters with stark red ink circling about dialogues and sentences. Dirty plates and bowls had been gathered at one place, in the kitchen sink, before Joe had vacuumed the whole place thoroughly. 

The sun was eventually nearing the horizon, as Joe spent her entire afternoon cleaning. Pushing the couch back into its place, she stood in the centre of the living room hall, hands on her hips, when a satisfied sigh escaped her lips. The place was as new as she could imagine, with each corner scrubbed till glossy. It looked like a home now, rather than a landfill of sorts. MJ danced around the uncrowded place merrily, pulling attention to himself as Joe chuckled, joining in his ecstasy. 

“I’m exceptional, aren’t I, MJ?” she crouched down and patted his ear, talking in baby voice. 

She then flopped down on the couch, exhaling a gush of air before reaching for the TV remote. However, she was never able to switch the device on, as a faint sound of a commotion coming from the street interrupted her actions. 

Curious, Joe stepped up to the window and glanced down to see a pair of cop cars situated at the sidewalk opposite her building. Red and blue lights reflected from the street along with fading hues of blue and purple painted by the evening sky. Curious eyes of the residents peeked from their windows, and a few crowded the street as well, while passersby slowed down to uncover what was happening. 

Joe’s eyes raked the scene with keen interest. She stared down the narrow street, followed by the erect building under question, when suddenly her mind reeled back a few days. She remembered seeing a police car earlier that week as well, at the same spot which was now occupied by double the number of cars. 

Apparently, there had been a report about a girl mysteriously going missing, who lived in the building across. Officers had stopped by then too, investigating her apartment and the whole block. They had asked around, seeking information and random leads from neighbours and tenants close to the her. Joe recalled she had seen the missing girl one time through the same window. She had been pacing about her room while being on call with someone. Although, it didn’t seem very suspicious that night, Joe’s brows were scrunched as if figuring out what had irked the girl that much. Or rather, who had been on the other side of the phone. 

Having been writing a thriller for the past five months herself, loads of criminal research and prosecution scenarios had somewhat transformed Joe’s imagination. It now matched that of a rookie detective, to say the least. She would usually find herself suspecting people in the grocery store or at a bench in the park, trying to piece together their backstory, mostly fake. Sometimes, she would even follow suspicious neighbours. Joe knew to an outsider it would all seem close to retarded, but she did it solely to increase her experience in the particular genre. And, also because it gave her a unique kind of rush, an endearing excitation. 

Quickly, she turned and raced to the door, grabbing a jacket in the process. She put on the jacket over her tank top, while waiting for the elevators. Bubbling with anxiousness, Joe eventually reached the small, wide space which led to the street. As she looked around inquisitively, she noticed two detectives on the left of her, chatting among themselves, with one of them holding a small notepad. 

“Did they find the girl?” she asked an old lady standing on her right. 

“I just came down myself,” the lady informed. “But I heard someone saying the police found a body.”

Joe’s brows shot up at the new-found information. Her mouth opened as if to say something, or simply express her shock, but she held back and walked a few steps away from the lady. The last glimpse of sunlight disappeared behind the tall trees and buildings, as the night finally made its presence known. Joe stood fixated at her spot, scenarios turning in her head at the speed of lightning. A body? she scoffed in utter bewilderment. That’s a first. 

The lively neighbourhood, which now seemed to be turning a bit on the grim side, felt alien to Joe as she spared her block another glance. Although, she wrote about murders and crimes, a part of her felt a bitter unease at the thought of someone so close to her house being dead mysteriously. 

Joe tended to the two chatting detectives next. She inched closer in order to hear better. 

“Could be suicide,” said the shorter of the two detectives. “There were no bruises on her body. Not even a single scratch.”

The other detective shook his head slowly, stroking his beard. “Why go somewhere else?”

“Isolation? Time to think it through? No distractions?” 

“Seems too ambiguous.”

There was a moment of silence between them as they went through further facts and existing evidence. Joe searched her mind as well, the detectives’ discussion now an addition. She had her own lot of implying questions, but was too polite to ask. 

“Did we get in touch with the boyfriend?” asked the bearded detective. 

“He’ll be at the station tomorrow.”

“And he was the last one she talked to on the phone?” 

“Yeah.”

The taller detective scribbled something down on his notepad before closing and finally pocketing it. Both the detectives turned to the building and stared it down, as if uncovering its secrets bit-by-bit. Joe followed their line of sight, her head tilting upwards due to the height. Her eyes lingered on the bedroom window of the girl’s apartment, before the detectives spoke again, snatching her thoughts. 

“Has to be a murder.” The bearded officer shook his head. “No records of depression, or suspicious hospital visits. Suicide just doesn’t fit the picture, Murray.”

“No doubtful background, as well. No connections whatsoever,” said Murray. “When I went over the charts and possible suspects, no one stuck out. Clean as hell.” 

“Family agree to the autopsy?” 

“They came around.” 

Failing to suppress the urge now, Joe decided to go for it. “I couldn’t help but overhear, sir,” she started, “but what do you think would be an apt reason to murder her? The background—as your partner mentioned—isn’t as much a lead.” 

The detective looked surprised to find someone hearing in to their conversation. He hesitated for a second, probably balancing the pros and cons of sharing case information to a civilian. Still, he relaxed and turned to an expectant Joe. She knew he would answer her. She had pieced her question that way, not too intruding yet able to obtain the speculation she required. 

“There could be a lot of reasons,” said the detective. “For one, it could be an accident, or a long-lost grudge. Even a sort of blackmail game.” 

Joe nodded slowly, processing his words and the tone behind them. She was calculative on the inside, aiming to snatch whatever trivial piece of information she could during the brief insight. She opened her mouth to speak in affirmative and thank the officer for his time, when his next words echoed in her ears.  

“Or, maybe she saw something she shouldn’t have.” 

Joe froze. The words suddenly filling every corner of her mind, creating a ringing effect. It was like a sudden lightbulb glow that she teleported back to that night. New memories surfaced as a tiny observation she had made came into light. 

During the late hour when the girl had been on a call, she had been glancing upwards toward the roof of Joe’s own building. At that time, she had assumed it was due to her annoyed state that she had been frantically looking about the building and occasionally staring at the sky. But in fact she just might be ogling the roof across. A possibility, surely. And, maybe the panicky phone call was all about her sharing an anecdote?

“Miss?” 

Joe snapped out of her trance, her feet waiting to burst. “Thank you so much for your time, detectives! I hope you solve the case easily.” She bid a suppressed nod to the confused officers and twisted on her heel, overflowing with a quaint adrenaline surge. 

As she paced for her building, only those last words played themselves on repeat throughout. Joe was almost giddy with excitation when she managed to reach her apartment at last, forgetting to even shut the main door. 

She aimed directly to her desk, beyond thankful to find it polished clean, and opened her laptop for the first time in seven days. She started typing, the sound of keys clicking filling her cozy apartment. MJ trailed behind her and tilted his head cutely, while his round eyes watched his owner silently. 

“Oh, you’re writing,” a voice hollered after a while. 

Joe looked up briefly, almost missing her next-door neighbour’s call. She smiled as she went back to typing. 

“Yep.”

“And you cleaned your apartment! Must have gotten a big lead, then?” questioned Mason, leaning on the doorsill amusedly. 

“I told you my characters talk.” Joe shrugged. 

“Yeah? What’d they say this time?”

She looked up, smirking. “Detective Nolan just explained to me why Rose’s death might be a murder and not a suicide.”