You Did It

“That’s the problem,” he says, “it’s winter.”

You focus now. Who is he again? Ah yes, the human displeasure. He introduced himself to you earlier. His name escapes you, just like that lazy eye of his.

It is early morning. You had walked out of your dorm and discovered him sitting on the bottom of the steps, where the foyer is. He was leaning against the bannister, mouth agape, eyes closed, with a pair of coffees by his feet in takeaway cups.

Despite your best attempts (which included tiptoeing and holding your breath) his eyes fluttered open.

“Oh, hello,” he said, “sorry, am I taking up the stairwell?”

“No,” you said. Just being polite. What is a murderer doing being polite? You ask yourself.

“I would have sat at one of those tables over there,” he gestured to the cheap furniture that they keep in the foyer for students, “but I was afraid that I’d miss them.”

“Who?” You ask.

“The murderer!” He says, smiling, “coffee?”

A couple of thoughts occurred to you right then. It occurs to you that he may have been waiting for you, and that was how he woke up so easily. He only has two coffees. It also occurs to you that this could be some kind of test. Well, as you asked yourself earlier, why would a murderer be polite?

So you agreed.

Now you are seated at one of those tables in the foyer, sharing coffee with someone that claims to be helping the police with their investigation. He is talking about how it doesn't make sense that Paul would have been poolside.

Yesterday you met him as he was staring at it, muttering.

He’d introduced himself as Ezekiel Knox, Full-time itch. He had refused to elaborate.

“Why would Paul have gone to the pool on such a cold day? When no one else would be there?”

You shrug, you wait. You sip your coffee. You’re sure that this is your order.

“Uh…so…what’s the plan exactly?” You ask.

“Plan?” He asks.

“You said that you were afraid you’d miss the murderer.”

“Oh, the plannnn,” he says, nodding, “well you see-” he stops, and stares directly at you. Well, half of him does. This is the first time you notice how bright his eyes are.

“I’m…hesitant to tell you,” he says, “the plan won’t work if the murderer discovers it.”

“Do you think I’m the murderer?” You ask. You regret the question at first, but then why would an innocent person not ask it?

Ezekiel eyeballs you for a moment, and then shakes his head, “nah, probably not, alright listen,” he leans forward, both of his hands coming up like he was a school girl gossiping, “there are some theories that psychologists have on the science of reading a person through their eyes. I believe that if I can see the murderer…look them in the eyes…I’ll know that it’s them.”

It takes every fibre in your body to stop yourself from looking away.

“You really think you can do that?” You ask. You sip your coffee.

“Absolutely,” he says, “I’ve had plenty of practice.”

“Locking away criminals?” You remember that, despite the sweatpants and the cheap hoodie, he mentioned having worked with the police before.

“Well ye-es…but…I’ve also spent a lot of time studying my own eyes. In the mirror. I was able to get a lot of secrets out from that.”

He finishes his coffee and stands up.

“Well, I should be going,” he says, “I have a busy day of detective work ahead of me.”

You nod and finish your coffee and then you stop.

“Wait, what about your trap?” You ask.

“I’ve seen enough,” he says. He gets to the door, and then he stops and turns around, “I forgot to mention…it’s so odd…never mind.”

You stop yourself from asking. Instead you throw a questioning look.

“It’s almost like he was trying to dig his way through the bottom of the pool. He had the vinyl liner under his fingernails. Why didn’t he just swim up?”

The door closes behind him soundlessly. You finish the coffee.

You do not like the feeling he gives you.

*

A pool is a strange murder weapon. But that’s why you used it. A murderer must be inventive to get away with it, because the police have the advantage. The police have seen every type of strangulation, stabbing, shooting etc. that has ever happened, and even if the specific officers have not seen it, they have access to crime scene notes and medical records from the police that came before them.

They are like an audience member at a magic show who has seen every single sleight of hand possible. The only way to fool them is to palm a card in a way that they have never seen.

Paul was a drinker, so it would not have come as a surprise for him to fall into the pool drunk. However, giving him the right amount of alcohol to ensure that he drowned would have looked suspicious.

The pool is nestled on the west side of the building, where the architecture makes an almost sudden right turn. Windows look out from dorms at the tiled area, and when the pool lights are on, the students pull the blinds down, or else they cannot sleep.

You made sure that they were on that night. The pool has a cover that is rolled up on a horizontal pole with a winch. Over the course of two weeks, you measured the pool and bought a cover that was the exact size, so that when it unrolled across the surface, there would be no slack.

You kept the thick roll underneath your bed, and every night you unrolled it bit by bit and layered it with the same vinyl pool liner that coats the floor of the pool.

On The Night, you snuck into the pool area, armed with a wrench. You unscrewed the winch and pulled the old pool cover clear and slid the new one over.

Then you waited.

Paul materialized at the pool side, entirely on cue, the note that you had slipped him in his hand. You appeared from the shadows, and with a shove, he flew into the blue.

He did not fight at first. That’s what you were counting on. By the time he was beneath the water, you were turning the winch. You had pierced the edge of the cover so that there was a bungee cord attached, which you used to drag the cover across the pool and latch onto the fence tightly so that it would seal up.

And then you waited.

You waited until the clawing stopped, and then you waited some more.

Once you were sure that he was gone, you pulled back the cover, and you waited again.

He simply floated, face down.

The whole process, reversed now, undoing the winch, removing the cover and replacing it with the old one. You had to figure out where to store the cover.

You left, lugging the cover behind you down the hill towards that road that wraps around to the university parking lot. You used a box cutter to slice the cover into strips, which you then stuffed into a bag and buried beneath the soil, rife with dead cigarettes and broken and derelict bottles. You had pre-buried the bag, so all that you had to do was dust the dirt away and pull the zip free.

You patted it back and flat, and then began the walk back up to the university. The entire thing took two hours.

By the time you got back, the body had already been discovered. Students were standing at the edge, the police were called, and you simply descended into the panic.

*

You come back to your dorm, trudging up the stairs. The word trudging always seemed apt for such an action, the letters make such a thick sound when you say them.

You reach the little hallway from the steps to the door. Sitting outside the door across from you is a woman. She has light brown skin and long, straight black hair, and she is softly thumping her head against the door.

You get to your own door, and you reach for the handle, and she says, “no, please, don’t worry about me, I’ll just keep banging my head against the door in the hopes that it will solve all of my problems.”

You stop at your door. Your key is in the lock, your hand on the handle.

You sigh and turn back to the girl.

“That banging is going to stop me from sleeping,” you say.

She looks up at you and squints.

“My misery is going to interrupt your sleep?”

“Yes.”

The woman smiles and knocks her head against the door. Harder this time. You literally feel your face twitch, and you glare at her.

“How is that going to fix your problem?” You demand.

“It’s not. But it feels better than just sitting and doing nothing.”

You sigh through your nose.

“What’s going on?” You ask, and again, internally, you wonder why a murderer would be so polite.

She jabs a thumb over her shoulder at the door.

“Boyfriend,” she says, “won’t let me in. We’re having a fight.”

“Well, maybe you should just go home. Maybe he’s not worth it.”

“I’ve got nowhere to go,” she says. She looks down, “I’ve been…staying with him, even though I know he’s technically not allowed to have someone staying with him…still.”

For a moment, you ponder the fact that you’ve never actually seen anyone enter that dorm. But it is overrun by the feeling of sheer stupidity. How could someone be so idiotic as to stake their entire existence on someone like that.

“Well, I don’t know, I can’t help you there.”

“You’re just going to leave me here?” She asks you.

You sigh again, and you look at her, and you can feel the exhaustion of your day like an invisible hand pressing down on your back, a giant child attempting to push you into a little putty ball.

“I don’t even know you,” you say.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t be nice to me,” she says, “but fine, my name is Elise Sarte, and I’m twenty five years old if you must know, and I’m right now regretting my choices and I’m finding that the only thing that I can do right now that is worth any good is knock my head against the side of a doorframe until I forget something important.”

You try your best not to roll your eyes, a murderer must of course, remain polite.

“Well-”

“What is that smell?” She asks. She curls her nose and sniffs, little wrinkles pooling on either side of her nose.

“What smell?” You ask, your hand snaking to the doorhandle once again.

She stands up and sniffs again.

“Smells like…chlorene. Have you been swimming in the pool?”

Your hand tightens around the door handle. For a moment, you feel like you can snap the thing off.

“No,” you say.

“But I’m sure I can smell it,” she says, and she takes a step towards you, and it feels like you’re cornered, even though there is no corner, and there is left and right and backwards.

You, without thinking, step backwards. Your shoulder blades press to the door like flattened fly wings.

“Why would you swim in the pool?” She asks, “it’s so cold, I thought it was like, closed or something?”

You press your tongue to the bottom of your mouth.

“I don’t know,” you realize you are acting suspicious, and you move to amend that. You spin back around and twist the handle. Your door flies open, and you stumble into your room and slam the door closed.

*

You dream of a hill that is endlessly revolving. You run and you run and the sky is a murky green which just seems to get murkier and murkier. You are, of course, looking for your reflection, before the wind can take it away.

But the hill keeps rolling, and no matter how fast you run, you never get anywhere, you are always just running in the same place.

But then you’re there, you’ve gotten there, and you realize that even though you’ve been running downhill the whole time, you have finally reached the top of the hill.

There is a pool. More of a trough. Certainly a pit.

It is endlessly deep, and the water is the same murky green of the sky. Standing at the edge, you finally see it, you see your reflection, staring back up at you. The water is completely still, but you find yourself uneasy, because you cannot see the bottom.

Still waters run deep.

Paul used to say that all the time, didn’t he? Or did he?

You reach out, because although you are uneasy, you need to get hold of your reflection, because that was why you were running down the hill.

Your fingertips touch the water, and they burn.

You hiss and pull your hand back and fall, and you are falling down the hill now, and then up the hill and then you plummet and splash into the pool and you are falling and falling through the stillest of waters into the deepest depths, where you will be swallowed and lost and-

You sit up so quickly that your brain feels like it's tipping over. You dig your fingers into the covers till your knuckles ache.

The time on your phone screen reads 5:00am.

Something doesn’t feel right. Something is off. A balance has been disrupted. Something very specific has changed.

Then you realize.

Your room smells of chlorine.

You roll out of bed suddenly, the inside of your skull a massive flashing red siren. She was right, the woman (what was her name? Elise) was right.

You flick on the light and rip open your cupboard and dig through your clothes and sniff at each sleeve and collar. Soon, you have a pile of discarded clothes behind you, and you are sniffing your shoes.But still, you can’t find the source.

A voice, so serious and firm that it practically wears a police uniform, makes its way through your door.

“If Ezekiel is right, we have to start digging through the property around the university?”

You freeze in the middle of your room.

“Really?”

“He figures that the killer had to have hid the cover off campus to properly hide it.”

“Ah.”

“So, what we’re going to do is keep an eye on all the students, tail some of them one when classes kick off today. Then tomorrow, we’ll start digging. Cover all of our bases.”

“What if the killer moves the bag tonight?”

“Oh, they won’t think to do that,” the firm voice says, “they believe that they’ve won. They’ve become complacent.”

The voices begin to move away, smaller and smaller and smaller.

You wait, ear pressed to the door. Once they are gone, you grab the doorhandle. But you hold back.

There are cameras all over this building. If you suddenly leave in the middle of the night, especially when everyone is on such high alert, it might look suspicious.

You open your window.

Just below the window is a little ledge, and then it is a bit of a drop to a line of bushes. You hesitate for only a moment, and then you climb to the ledge, You hesitate a moment more and then you drop. As your foot hits the floor and pain shoots up your leg, you wonder how you will make it back to your dorm.

That is for later.

You circle around the building and find the fence around the pool. Then you hit a left and trek down the familiar path.

You’ve done it at night, so it is easy but your foot feels like there is a shard of glass in it and internally gasps in pain whenever you take a step.

You hunch by the tree and you scoop all the dirt away, all the cigarettes and glass bottles away. Finally, you get your hands on the zip and you pull it open.

Where would you even-

“Ah, that’s where you hid it.”

You turn, kicking up a cloud of dust as you do. Ezekiel is a few meters away, with his phone torch on, looking brighter and more awake than you have ever seen him. In the light, you can see his lazy eye has no longer wandered off.

You stare. Your mouth feels sealed shut.

“You know what I just couldn’t grasp,” he says as he walks towards you, “why there were no scratch marks on the bottom of the pool. No matter how many ideas came my way, or all the other clues that were found…the fact still remained that Paul had vinyl under his fingernails and yet there were no scratches on the bottom of the pool.”

You nod. Because of course that would form some questions.

“How did you know it was me?” You ask.

“It was too well thought out to not be someone that knew him…and it had to be someone that lived here, so that narrowed it down. When Elise pressed you about the chlorine and you reacted the way that you did…I took a gamble and poured some chlorine under your door to see what you’d do.”

“It was how he spoke to me,” you say, “he was my friend for nearly twenty years, and every conversation we had it was like I was so much stupider than he was. I just…needed to be smarter.”

“Someone’s always smarter,” Ezekiel said, walking towards you and holding out his hand, “no matter who you are. There will always be someone smarter.”