🚀 go-pugleaf

March blew in my back door, and I knew the cold months were gone.  The
icicles were melting off the eaves in front of my office on Maine, and
children were starting to appear, joyously, on the streets in front of
houses newly shed of frosty panes and snowy rooftops.  Two boys batted
an old tin can as they slinked across a grassy overgrown lot, books in
each arm.  The City was awakening again; and so, similarly, was my own
life revived.  I need the city, and it needs me.  I'm an investigator.

Richard Sterns, age thirty-one, was sitting in my better chair.  Story
is, his wife disappeared without any trace.  No suspect.  No clues, or
guesses even.  One photograph, badly developed and wrinkled.  A single
letter, written in shaky handwriting, was left in the kitchen.  Sterns
either could not or would not identify the author.  I tsked, squatted,
reluctantly shouldered my rifle, and put a round into his left temple.
-- 
HWRNMNBSOL