Write a story about an empty glass.
Mark scrubbed a hand over his face trying to stay awake and suppress the yawn threatening to overcome him. He was so tired not only tired off the middle off the night phone calls that gave him no time to rest but the constant reminder that he didn’t really matter to this investigation.
He was getting all the jobs no one else wanted to do, the ones that weren’t going to do a damn thing to help solve this case. He was stuck sitting here guarding an empty crime scene, the guy hadn’t come back to any of the other victims homes and he wouldn’t this time either.
A yawn managed to escape its way past his tightly sealed lips just as an older man with a cane and several heavy bags clumped his way up the stairwell. He made his way past Mark giving a small nod and continuing on. Mark watched as the man stopped and looked up at the next flight of stairs breathing hard.
Finally he started up on what were clearly some painful joints each stair a struggle, he almost lost his footing 3 stairs up and came very near to tumbling backward. Mark sighed and pushed up from the chair he had been sitting on and called out “would you like a hand up?”
The man looked back at Mark with a smile on his face “are you sure I wouldn’t be pulling you away from something important?” Mark shook his head thinking again how ridiculous it was for him to be sitting here at 3 in the morning guarding an empty crime scene. Besides maybe the old guy had heard or seen something that could help them out. “No not at all, here let me grab those bags for you”
“Why thank you son, these days you can’t be sure if even an officer of the law will assist an old man” he said holding out the bags to Mark “I’m just one more flight up, I’ve been staying with my daughter the past week and I tell you she may love her old man but that girl can be hard to live with after a few days I can’t tell you how glad I’m going to be to have a little bit of peace and quiet……” He continued to talk as he slowly made his way up the stairs.
Mark instantly began to tune the man out and regret his offer of help, not only was this as boring as sitting and staring at a blank wall but if this guy had been out of town for the past week he wouldn’t have any new information about what had happened here the night before.
Mark reached the top of the stairs and called back ”which one is it?” he’d just set the bags by the old man’s door and get back to his post.
“Oh it’s the one on the right, I’ll grab those bags from you in just a second” As if anticipating Mark to ditch the bags and run he continued talking ”set them down and I’ll never get these old knees of mine to bend far enough to pick them back up” he chuckled.
Mark grimaced to himself guess he’d just have to wait. He impatiently shifted from one foot to the other as the old guy finally made his way onto the landing and fished out his keys amidst a handful of tissue and promptly dropped them.”Oh dear would you mind” Mark bent over and swept up the keys “it’s the blue one” the man said Mark quickly identified the apartment key and unlocked the door rushing inside to set down the bags.
“I’ll just put these on the table” he said noticing as he walked the stale dusty odor in this room as if it had been a year and not a week since someone was last in the place. He heard the door shut behind him and turned about to say he couldn’t stay to chat.
Instead he heard a distinctive click followed by a loud pop. He recognized the sound instantly a revolver with a silencer and it had just been fired. He dropped the bags in his hand and reached for his side arm discovering his own gun missing. A hot wet feeling was sliding across his chest and Mark suddenly found himself frozen in place barely able to breathe as he slowly collapsed to the floor.
He realized with sudden clarity that he had made what was certainly going to be a fatal error
“Tsk tsk, you should perhaps be paying just a little bit more attention” the old man scolded as he reached over Mark pulling his cuffs from his belt and quickly and efficiently snapping them in place on his own wrists. “Pity there was a small detail I wasn’t able to attend to the other night and had to come back for it. I’m hopeful your friends over looked it as well or this whole night is going to seem rather pointless”
Mark struggled to breathe staring up at the old man who had most likely just killed him and realized now that he had been fooled by what was little more than makeup and a good act. Too late he had realized the absurdity of believing an old man would be arriving home so late. “What?” Mark managed to croak out; if he was going to die like this he wanted to know what could have been so important to come back for.
“What did I forget?” he asked, Mark could barely manage to nod in answer now. “Well my dear boy I knocked over a glass last night which happened to fall into a little space behind the cabinets downstairs. Silly really but I wasn’t able to get it in the limited amount of time I had left to finish my work and I’m quite certain my fingerprints are on it. I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize what I’m doing; I’m having way too much fun for that, so I must retrieve it before your friends do”
Mark moaned in protest his eyes slowly closing, he was even more tired now than before. He forced himself to think of what had been done in the apartment downstairs and with dismay recalled that most likely the glass hadn’t been found as none of the furniture had yet been moved when forensics left for the day.
His last thought before drifting into the waiting darkness was the shocked realization that he was about to die because of an empty glass left behind a cabinet.
