Rain Clouds

The sound of distant thunder rained overhead, giving notice to all who listened that a storm was on its way.

Rain clouds, John thought, sighing into his coffee. Why'd it have to be rain clouds?

Rain clouds never meant anything good. Whenever something bad was about to happen to him, he was always warned ahead of time by the weather. It rained back when a car skidding across the road ran his childhood puppy over, unable to stop itself thanks to the water laid out across its path. It rained back when he was in college, and he slipped off his frat houses' roof thanks to the rainwater. Stupid initiation rituals. It happened when he learned his dad had driven off the road, unable to see his death in front of him as the rain made it impossible for him to see ahead. And it was happening now, of all times. Now, when he had just watched his prime suspect in this murder case get taken away in handcuffs, screaming that he had been framed.

This had to be some cruel joke by God. An attempt at making him paranoid, and thus getting a laugh out of the old man upstairs. After all, he had never failed once at his job. All throughout his life as a private detective, he had always managed to get the right answer. His first case, thought impossible to solve by his bosses, was something he got done with nothing more than determination, grit, and a little elbow grease. After that, his career only seemed to get easier and easier. With every new assignment he got from his higher ups, he only managed to excel even more at his work. Eventually, he was even able to open up his own detective agency, for all the good that did him. He was rolling in money, so much so that he didn't even know anymore what to do with it.

And now, here he was, a washed up old man with nothing to look forward to in his life except the unending grind of each day. Still, he knew he couldn't have been wrong. He had never been wrong before. This case was one of the easiest ones he had ever done: the son came off as nervous and fidgety during the interview, the knife was found in his room, still covered in dried, crusty blood, and the jacket that he had lost a day prior came back to him in the laundry room, mysteriously stained a crimson red. The case was open and shut before he had even sat down to read through the details. If this was something to get worried about, then he really was losing his edge.

Yet he couldn't seem to shake the feeling that he was missing something important here. Although he never really had a difficult time connecting all the dots on a case together, this felt different. It was almost like everything fit too neatly into place. The attention-to-detail son just happened to overlook getting rid of the knife? The jacket just managed to show up in a place that he was sure he had checked earlier? Even the son's fidgety actions could've been explained away: it was late, and according to everyone who knew him, he never really did handle crises well. It shouldn't have been at all surprising that the murder of his father would be making him panic. He rubbed at his temples with his free hand as he took another sip from his coffee mug. None of this made any sense, and it was starting to get to him.

As he stood there, deep in his thought, a nasally voice called out, distracting him from his lingering doubts on how successful he was this time around.

"Hello there, detective!" he heard behind him.

Turning, he found himself staring at the smiling face of Mr. Woodsworth, the butler for the recently deceased.

Smiling softly, John said back to him, "Hello, Mr. Woodsworth."

Still smiling, Mr. Woodsworth spoke through his thickly manicured moustache, "Deep in thought, I see?"

"Yes," John said, tolerating the bald man's prying nature. "I was thinking about the events of this morning."

John had to be honest: he didn't trust the butler at first. What with his nasally voice, sharp nose, and small ears, he looked like a weasel, and almost played the part too. His eyes lingered on valuables across the house, sparkling with hunger, and his teeth shone almost too much whenever he smiled, which he seemed to always do. Everything about him had the word "rat" stapled plainly across for all to see. Yet after awhile, John was able to warm up to him. It wasn't easy at first--during the beginning, Mr. Woodsworth seemed to be as much a hindrance as he was a help, and half the time, John felt the unsettling urge to strangle his thin turkey neck while he still had the chance--but after a while, he came to like the man. It probably didn't hurt that Mr. Woodsworth had been especially helpful on this case. He was the one, after all, who suggested to him that he check the laundry room again, despite the fact that John had done a thorough search through it earlier in the day, and he had also managed to find the floorboard that the son had hidden the bloodied knife beneath, something that even he had missed. If it wasn't for the skinny, conniving man, most of this would've taken a lot longer to drag into the light.

"Ah," the butler said, stepping beside John beneath the canopy. "Still reveling in your victory, eh?"

"More like sulking in it," John said somberly as he stared out at the sopping field in front of him. "No matter what, I can't help but feel that I missed something. Even though I can't figure out what it was."

The butler smiled again, showing his two front teeth off through the entanglement of weeds that his moustache created. "Well, I'm sure it will come to you," Mr. Woodsworth said, patting John on the back. "After all, you are one of the greatest detectives out there."

John sighed again, before taking a sip of his coffee, and muttering, "I suppose so."

He watched as the rain poured itself into the dirt, drowning the land in its damp, inescapable clutches. He wondered if the grass at his feet felt the same way that he did; lost and helpless, naked and afraid, and shivering to the bone. He regretted the life that he had chosen for himself with almost every fiber of his being. He was tired, cold, and worst of all, uncaring about almost everything that he tried his hand at. The only thing he could still tolerate was continuing to be a detective, and even that was beginning to lose its luster for him.

Despite his apathy towards it, he kept going back to his whole investigation on this matter. Something still felt wrong about it. He wasn't sure what, or how. All he knew was that it irked him the wrong way. Maybe Woodsworth was right. Maybe he was thinking too much about it. That shriveled middling man would know better than anybody. He had spent years worrying after the son, constantly fretting at his perverse habits, and doubting his sincerity about anything. He ought to have been the king of knowing what too much worry can do to the psyche.

That was the one thing that John didn't understand about this case. Woodsworth had told him very early on that he feared for the son's mental health, and for both his employer's and his own safety whenever they were near the man. So how had he ever let the son get a hold of a knife? It could've easily been some vain hope that the boy he had helped raise wasn't truly gone, or maybe even an accidental oversight on his part, but neither would make sense, if true. Woodsworth was above all else, a cunning and shrewd man. He kept special attention to detail, and was quick to cut off his ties at the slightest hint that his investments were beginning to sink under. So it wouldn't be in character for him to suddenly try and trust that the son wouldn't hurt him, nor that he had accidentally missed the son's little secret that he kept hidden beneath his bed. He wasn't that clumsy to let something so big go unbothered.

Suddenly, a thought came to John, nearly knocking him off his feet.

"Woodsworth?" he asked, voice shaky with fear of what the answer may be.

"Hmm?" Woodsworth responded, apparently also deep in thought, despite his assertion that it was bad for one's mental health.

"How did you know that there was a hidden floorboard underneath the bed?" John asked, fear being the only thing that kept him from trying to run at this point.

Woodsworth took a moment to respond, but John had already stopped listening. Woodsworth seemed to almost immediately find the knife, a feat more impressive since John of all people had managed to miss it on the first time around. It was like he knew it was there, hiding beneath the wooden boards that made up the son's dusty, cold floor. Sure, maybe he just happened to notice something off, and had his senses alerted to what was wrong because of it. That wasn't the first time, after all, that he had shown how scrupulous he was with catching the minor details in an image. But that wasn't the only thing that rubbed John the wrong way when Woodsworth found the knife. It was how he reacted to the discovery. He wasn't scared. He wasn't angry at the son for hiding something so important from him. He wasn't even disappointed. If anything, he was proud. Almost proud of himself...

He tried to do something--maybe splash the coffee into Woodsworth's face, or smack him with the mug in his hand--but he didn't react fast enough. Woodsworth had already moved before he even had the chance to turn around. Faster than a man for his age and size ought to be, the butler punched John square in the jaw, barely reacting at all as his fist reverberated against the detective's mouth. Stunned for a moment, John dropped his mug, before stumbling backwards. Slipping on the rain water coating the ground, he barely had time to think before he fell back completely, letting gravity take over as his body went flying towards the pavement. The last thing he heard as his head slammed against the ground was the mug smashing alongside him, cracking into a thousand tiny fragments.

He laid there for a moment, too stunned to even feel the pain in his head, even though he could tell it was there, spreading through his skull. The only thing that he was able to focus on was Woodsworth, standing over him in measured disappointment. Inside him, he heard a voice scream that he needed to get up and get moving; that he needed to warn the police that they had gotten the wrong guy, that there was a huge mistake, that the real killer was standing right in front of him. Yet he couldn't. For all the work he put into his career, he couldn't even be bothered to walk off a minor head injury. Then again, the fact that he couldn't really feel anything or think properly most likely meant that this injury was more than minor.

Woodsworth stared at John silently for a moment, before sighing, and saying, "I'm sorry, detective. I really didn't want to see anyone who didn't need to get hurt. But you've left me no choice. I wish it didn't have to be this way."

John didn't respond, most likely because he was incapable of that now. Woodsworth took his silence as a sign that his job was done, and so walked away, leaving the poor detective to lie there, cold and abandoned. John tried to stand up. He really did. He wanted to desperately manage to overcome his injury, and stop that damned butler from getting away with this. But he couldn't. The time for that was long gone. Now, all he could do was lay there, shivering in the freezing water, and listening as the rain pitter pattered its way across the ground.