Free Murder Inc.: A Sci-fi Thriller: Book 1 by Owen Baillie Page A

said.
    “Do you?” Gutterson felt sudden anger rise. “Because I’d like to know what you heard. I bet it’s different to the truth.”
    “Hey, go easy,” Harding said.
    “No, I won’t. We’re going to have some problems here so let's get it all out now before we begin, that way we can concentrate our efforts on the case.”
    Camilleri shrugged. She glanced around at the others. “I heard you cut corners, didn’t follow procedures. Tried to force information out of witnesses, and basically stuffed up the entire case.”
    “I heard the same,” Harding said.
    Smyth nodded. “That’s it?” Gutterson scanned their faces. He was on a roll now and couldn’t stop. “No bribes in there?”
    “I heard you took them, too.”
    Gutterson waited. “Anything else?” Nobody spoke. “Well, this is the truth. I give you my word, on my children, about that. I guess you need a little background about the case first, though. Like I said, I was investigating a suicide. I got a vague tip there was more to it.”
    “I remember it,” Smyth said. “A guy killed himself over a girl.”
    Gutterson nodded. “But I didn’t buy it was a suicide. There were inconsistences.”
    Smyth said, “Like what?”
    “Well, the victim had two gunshot wounds. Generally, in a suicide case, there’s only one shot—the sufferer isn’t physically able to shoot a second time.”
    “Not impossible though.”
    “No, but one of the shots was in the side of the neck. Suicides are usually in the mouth or side of the head. And the second shot was in the belly, through his shirt.”
    “Okay, so you investigated.”
    “I started looking into the place where he worked.”
    Harding scratched at his cheek. “What’d you find?”
    Gutterson pressed his lips together. “I couldn’t find anything wrong with what they were doing. I spent hours upon hours swiping records, digging through information about their operation. All their investments are clean. But… I started investigating their employment history. An above average number of their employees over the years have died—both from suicide and natural causes. But they didn’t die often and seemingly only in small groups.”
    Camilleri said with her chin on the palm of her hand. “And?”
    “Nothing really. I guess I went a little off the rails then. I didn’t want to let it go. I was convinced the company the man worked for had something to do with the murder. Like I said, there were inconsistencies. But the autopsy report painted a clear picture that it was suicide. I did some things outside the rules. I spent months trying to uncover more, interviewing people, accessing a limited number of public documents about the private company’s performance. But I kept finding locked doors and weak answers. It was as though I was fighting some invisible force. I approached people who worked for Janefield and chased down those who had left. But I wasn’t able to find any of them. Do you know how strange that is? That’s when I knew I was onto something.”
    “You gave up though,” Camilleri said. She brushed a strand of long dark her behind her ear. For the first time, Gutterson saw seriousness in her expression. “If it was that important, why’d you let it go?”
    “I’ve never let it go. But by then I had no choice. My wife passed away during that time. But by the end of it, I couldn’t think straight; couldn’t make sense of it all. The department shut the case down; apparently I’d pissed off a lot of people. Claimed I was bothering current employees and they were making noise. I made some real enemies in the department. They said I did things unbecoming a detective—like taking bribes. It was all false.” He grit his teeth, unearthing bitter memories buried deep in his bones. “It was all kept pretty quiet.”
    “We knew something was going on,” Camilleri said. “But nobody would talk about it.”
    “I didn’t even get the chance to move to another case. There was a small