Patterson’s Crime Solvers

Auguste Poe was anxious to get moving. A teacher had once described him as having an excitable temperament, and it was showing this morning. 

As he exited the newly renovated bakery building in a crisp linen suit, Poe glanced at the fresh lettering on the front door. Holmes, Marple & Poe Investigations finally felt legit, and today was the day that would put them on the map. 

“Good God, Auguste, what is that monstrosity?” 

Margaret Marple was standing outside the office door in a neat business jacket and skirt, staring at her partner’s newly acquired 1966 Pontiac GTO. Poe was obsessive about anything mechanical, and muscle cars were a particular weakness.

“It rides as smooth as a town car,” Poe said, knowing she preferred more discreet transportation. “I promise you.” 

Marple frowned. “I’ll wrinkle my outfit, folding myself into that thing.” 

“Margaret, you need to be more flexible,” said Brendan Holmes, exiting the door right behind her. He plucked a speck of lint from his suit jacket as he walked toward the car. 

“Let’s go!” Poe said as he slid in behind the steering wheel. 

Their plan hinged on getting in front of Police Commissioner Jock Boolin. The topic they wanted to discuss was a case that was consuming the city: the mysterious disappearance of a young Black attorney named Sloane Stone. 

Missing for two weeks now without a trace. The pressure on NYPD—and the new commissioner in particular—was growing more intense by the day. 

Poe glanced in the rearview mirror as Marple pulled up the latest reports on her iPhone. 

“Any breakthroughs?” asked Poe.

“The authorities are still baffled,” said Marple.

“Good,” said Holmes. “We’re not.”

As Poe headed for the Brooklyn Bridge crossing into Manhattan, he got a fresh tingle of anticipation. This was it—their first high-profile case—and he and his partners were determined to break it wide open. 

Even if nobody had actually hired them. 

…

THREE HOURS LATER, Holmes stood with Marple and Poe at the entrance to an abandoned farm about a hundred miles north of New York City. Boolin hadn’t been ready to call out a full search team on the say-so of three unfamiliar PIs. But he’d agreed to send a couple of rookies and one homicide detective for a preliminary scout. 

The partners had agreed that Holmes would take the lead on this case, but at the moment, he was way out of his comfort zone. He leaned back against a fence post and pressed his hands against his temples, breathing through his mouth. His superior sense of smell made him part bloodhound, part pointer, and part bulldog. But sometimes, it just made him sick. 

He felt Poe’s hand on his shoulder. “Brendan, are you okay?” 

Holmes nodded. “I just need a few minutes to adjust to the redolence.” 

“Not a fan of country air?” asked Detective Lieutenant Helene Grey.

Holmes could tell that she thought this was a waste of time, and he sensed that she was going out of her way to needle him.

“I much prefer the urban miasma,” said Holmes. 

Grey cocked her head. “Tell me something, Mr. Holmes. How can you be so sure about the location of Sloane Stone’s body—unless you had something to do with hiding it?” 

Holmes ignored the jab and stalled for time, waiting for his over-active senses to settle. He glanced around the property, from the barnyard to the fence line in the distance. 

“If you want to dispose of a body on a farm,” he said, “you have several options. You can feed it to the pigs, but they leave hair and teeth behind, so it’s an incomplete solution. You can bury the body in the middle of a field, but eventually a plow or some woodland creature will dig it up. You can drop a body in a grain silo, but you’d have to lug the dead weight up the stairs and hope that you don’t tumble in yourself and suffocate under the grain.” 

Grey stood with her arms crossed, drumming her fingers. “Put up or shut up, Mr. Holmes,” she said. “Do you know where the body is or not?” 

Holmes paused and took a deep breath. His delaying speech had worked. Olfactory adaptation was setting in, desensitizing him to nearby smells. In their place, he began to detect telltale molecules of cadaverine, putrescine, indole, and skatole. Faint and distant, but unmistakable. 

The scent of decomposing flesh. 

Holmes looked past the barn toward the uncultivated field behind it. “Follow me.” 

The team walked single file across the muddy furrows, Holmes first, then Grey, then the two cops, then Poe, then Marple—the only one in the posse wearing knee-high Wellington boots. 

At the edge of the field was a mound of compost, five feet high and stretching twenty yards along the perimeter of the property. Holmes walked slowly down the row as the others trailed behind him. About ten feet from the end of the mound, he stopped and pointed. 

“She’s right here,” he said.

Grey glanced at Marple. “Is he sane?”

“Not always,” said Marple.

“But he’s usually right,” added Poe.

…

MARPLE WATCHED TWO white Crime Scene Unit vans roll to a stop near the barn. As the techs gathered their tools, the detective walked over with three extra respirator masks. 

“If Holmes is right,” she said, “you’ll want these.” 

The CSU team set up a series of metal screens over huge trays. Working slowly and deliberately, they scooped small mounds of compost onto the screens and spread it with their gloves and tools. But just a few minutes into the dig, the detailed archeology became moot. 

“Christ!” shouted one of the techs, stepping back. A human arm, or what was left of it, protruded from the pile. 

Marple turned away for a moment, then forced herself to look. It was part of the job. For her, it was the hardest part—the part where all hope was gone. 

The extraction took thirty minutes, and the result was pure horror. Inside her mask, Marple murmured a silent prayer as the team unzipped a body bag and gently enclosed inside it the mortal remains of Sloane Stone. Two of the CSU guys then carefully transported the bag back across the field toward the vans. A second team stayed behind to sift for more evidence. 

Grey, Holmes, and Poe walked a few yards away from the scene and yanked off their masks. Marple removed hers too and caught up with them. She could hear Holmes expounding again. 

“Don’t be surprised if the hyoid bone is intact,” said Holmes. “That doesn’t mean she wasn’t strangled. She was. I believe that the act took some time. Perhaps because the killer had small hands.” 

“Well, let’s see what the autopsy turns up,” said Grey. “That might narrow down our suspect list.” She looked pointedly at Holmes. “Let’s hope it excludes you.” 

It was clear to Marple that Grey was into procedure and process, and that she was eager to get the case back onto a normal track, firmly under her control. 

But Marple could tell that, as usual, Holmes had a plan of his own.