“What does this nonsense mean?!” Agent Janice exclaimed as she threw down a stack of papers written in a made-up secret language that were supposed to help solve a murder case. Genius work, she thought to herself, but there has to be some sort of decoder.
“Janice, we just need to find that old notebook that can figure out what this means. It’s locked away in the orange cabinet in Darryl’s office,” said her partner Agent Keith in attempts to calm her down. “I will call Darryl right now and get our hands on that.”
“Hello, Agent K and J. My favorite pair. What’s the scoop?” answered Darryl. He is always acting very strange but the whole team got used to it. “You need to see the decoder? Errh, I might not have that anymore…” He almost sounded nervous on the phone. Janice and Keith decided they would go check anyways.
The agency they work at was very low budget and small. Walking through the hallways was like walking through a construction sight. It was a surprise anybody working there got anything done over the constant noises of renovation. Keith and Janice made their way from room 20 to room 52. Darryl’s office was the last room on the top floor of the place. He always stays in there by himself, even after he’s allowed to go home. Other agents have just assumed he’s living in there, but he doesn’t have a bed, kitchen, or any entertainment that you would find in somebody’s house. Janice always said that he just likes to work hard. Either way, he was a strange man. They passed room 40, room 42, then 44 as it went up by 2 every time. They finally got to room 50 when they noticed the door was wide open and Bobby, who works in that room, was nowhere to be found.
“Didn’t you just see Bobby like 20 minutes ago? Where do you think he went?” Keith asked Janice. “It’s against the rules to leave the door open, anyways. He better hurry back!”
“He probably went to go get food and forgot to close the door,” replied Janice. They didn’t pay much attention to it and just kept walking. They reached Darryl’s office which reeked of gasoline almost all the time. He was a really weird guy. Keith was barely able to knock three times before Darryl flung the door open quickly.
“What are you guys doing here?” he asked, almost out of breathe. “I told you I don’t know where that file is!”
“Whoa, calm down! You said you don’t know where it is, and it will really help this case that Janice and I are working on! Can we just look really quick?” Keith replied defensively.
“Alright, you can check… Just don’t bother me,” said Darryl as he went to go sit down in his chair and put his headphones back on.
“Weirdo…” whispered Janice to Keith. They saw the cabinet that it was suspected to be in and they used the key that was laying out to open it. They were both overrun with happiness.
“Finally! The notebook! It has the entire language in it!” Janice exclaimed out loud. Darryl heard this through his headphones and took them off in disbelief.
“You actually found that thing?!” Darryl said, nervously. “Let me see if it’s the right one…” Not thinking about anything bad happening, Janice handed Darryl the notebook. He started flipping through it, not even reading it. Then, he jerked open the screenless window in front of his desk and threw the book outside. “Oops!” he said, insincerely. They all watched as it flew through the wind which swept the thin notebook up easily.
“DARRYL!” Janice and Keith screamed at the same time. “What is the matter with you?!”
“I dropped it, I swear!” They didn’t seem to believe him, but they both ran outside in hopes to gather at least a few pages of it. As soon as they left, Darryl made his way over to Bobby’s room. He looked around for a few minutes, then shut the door. He opened the locked closet and revealed Bobby’s corpse lying in a body bag. Darryl smiled, and talked to his lifeless body. “Ha, ha. They might have almost caught me with the other guy I murdered, but they will never find you. I can just say you quit and leave it at that. They’ll never be able to find the pages of that stupid decoder anyways. Who would even suspect an old man to do all of this?” His fantasy of escaping empty handed came to a stop when he heard Janice and Keith outside yelling in excitement. He peered out the window and saw them with the entire notebook. “I have to get out of here,” Darryl said out loud to himself before he jumped out of Bobby’s window.
