A tale to be told of murder and betrayal:

There’s this story I have flipping around my mind. Yeah?

Maybe it’s a true story.

Maybe it’s not.

I haven’t written it down yet, so it could be either.

It might even be both.

But there’s this whole thing going on where the police finally decide that it’s time to do policing in the bad end of town. Or maybe there’s political pressure. Or maybe some detective pissed off the person assigning cases and they said, “You know what, Johnny? You get to look into that series of murders going on down in the poor end of town where no one, and I mean no one, flashes their badge to get leads.

You do, maybe they shoot you. Or maybe they shrug their shoulder and wait for you to lean into your grift. Who knows why. Maybe they stare blankly at cops long after the badge goes back into hiding. But down there, everything looks up and they don’t care much about what kinds of rules you want them to follow, cos it is the jungle. You know — like Axl motherfucking Rose sang. Welcome to the jungle. That kind of place.

So this detective with a chip on his shoulder, or a drinking habit or just a bad sense of comedic timing starts slumming around looking for leads on several murders that have happened around the environs.

Imagine this: the denizens are nonplussed by these efforts. Who’s you piss off in admin, Jeff?

I think his name should be Jeff. Or Geoff. And they call him… Geoff! Cue incidental music with stabs and violins.

And Geoff (or Jeff if I decide that way), he goes to the scene of the crime and finds that integrity of the crime scene fell apart like two weeks before when the landlord decided enough was enough and he was going to tear down that yellow tape and rent out the vacancy (after viscera cleanup detail comes, nat). Geoff/Jeff has a blinking young girl staring up at him when the door opens, there is a pregnant pause before the girl shrieks and runs to her pregnant mum who knows full well about the murder, but needs a place to sleep and just avoids the part of the living room where the stains have seemed through the new bargain remnant carpet that was installed to replace the bloody one that sat there before it. Berber carpet from the rolls at the big box shop, what can I say?

She knows there were a murder there, but beggars can’t be choosers and the landlord just wants an occasional throw between the sheets when the itch gets him and, well, at least she doesn’t have to pay rent on top of it. Jeoff cringes, but keeps his mouth in a firm straight line as if he didn’t hear such a thing.

But, she informs Geff, he might want to talk to that witch dude in the building about a block down. Not only does he make some awesome herbal compounds for folks who can’t afford standard meds. She heard the witch dude has an arrangement with certain demons and demigods and he knows who was doing all that killing a few weeks back. Ain’t no one been killed recently, so that was good news — although she also thought it might mean they were due for another murder, seeing as they like to come a go fairly often.

Witch-smitch. Geov sticks to good old fashioned detective work. Maybe he even gets off the sauce, if that’s his thing because he’s found a renewed purpose. But probably not that redemptive of a tale. Hollywood can keep that trope.

Only, each murder points back to this witch dude that I’ll name Steve. He seems to know all about those murders, talks about them over making compounds and assures people that that whole ugly business is fixed. He thinks. He hopes. And would you like a tincture of white willow bark with that, Mrs. Grundy?

Well, Jeffery decides his detectiving takes him to Steve and that the friendly little neighborhood pharmacist-not-pharmacist is Most Likely A Serial Killer™ of seedy people living in a seedy jungle of despair. Why not use heavy metals or arsenic? Our intrepid hero remains uncertain, but it is clearly clear that the killer is amongst them and it is very likely Steve.

Only — Steve is a really swell guy. And a pacifist. Possibly a Buddhist. Doesn’t even kill mosquitos. Well, that ruins Joffs whole detectiving hypothesis. Whiplash moment is when Steve reveals he is not a Buddhist, but a vegan pacifist neopagan.

Well, Geoff lived through the 80s Satanic Panic, so he know all about those vegans. Steve is back on the suspect list.

Until he talks about the Morrigan, and Jaff likes a woman that works back at the station name Morgan, and that makes Steve a-okay. They bond over it and a liter of Jamieson in a dive bar.

Turns out Steve knows who was killing, but no amount of alcohol will pry it from him. The spirits (not the alcohol variety) did a bit of soul recovery on the poor person and they got better. No more killing! Serious! No need to arrest.

Kief, drunk detective, takes a poll at the bar where they’ve been drinking all that primo booze. Folks mostly shrug. If Steve says everything’s kosher, then everything’s kosher. He’s a vegan, after all. Besides, these “victims” were part of the problem in jungletown. Hyaenas and jackals, all. Not really — I’m just using metaphor.

No one really misses them is what I’m trying to say.

Well, in the haze of hair of the dog, Leif uses Evidence and Observation to locate and identify the killer. Oh teh noes! Can you guess who it was?

Right. Mrs. Grundy is the jaguar of the jungle at the wrong end of town.

Eesh.

What does J/Geffy do?

Gets knifed while puffing away at a crumpled cigarette he found at the edge of a greasy spoon cafe counter just after having this revelation and bleeds out in a dark alley. The stabby stuff was performed by one of the people that Mrs. Grundy might have killed had her soul not been retrieved.

Oh! The irony.

Stay tuned. I might even write this story.