Whodunit: After-School Homicide

(Image credit: Flickr user Daniel Oines)

In this week's Whodunit, author Hy Conrad introduces a new sleuth, Jonah Bixby. Here's what you need to know about him.

Jonah Bixby was not your average twelve year-old. He spent more time in police stations than most career criminals. And although he had just started middle school, Jonah was single-handedly responsible for bringing more than a few of those career criminals to justice. But let's start at the beginning....

Jonah's mother and his father had both been police detectives in the city's Major Crimes Division, solving murders and assaults and high-profile robberies. It was while working there that they met and fell in love, then got married and had a son.

When Jonah was only five, his father was killed in the line of duty. At that point, Carol Bixby could have retired from the force. But she didn't. She stayed busy with the most important job she knew, law enforcement. And that's how young Jonah became the unofficial mascot of the Beaverton Police Department.

From the first grade on, Jonah would get out of school each day, walk across the street to the Fifth Precinct, and wait until his mother got off her shift. Carol's fellow officers took turns keeping an eye on him. Detective Massey from the Fraud Squad helped young Jonah with his math homework while Sergeant Gonzales tutored him in Spanish.

Jonah was blessed with an inquisitive mind and an eye for detail. And his love for police work
 came naturally.  Before long, he was making deductions even 
the best officers on the force couldn't come up with and whispering them to his 
mother. Little did the other detectives know that many of
 Detective Bixby's toughest crimes were 
being solved by her preteen son.

And now for Bixby's first Whodunit, the case of the After-School Homicide. Can you solve the crime?

Detective Peter Pauling glanced up from his paperwork and was surprised to see a boy with a backpack standing in front of his desk. "Jonah! Hi." He checked a nearby wall clock. "Is it six o'clock already? How was band practice?"

"Pretty good," said Jonah. "Is my mom around?"

Jonah Bixby's school was directly across from the Beaverton Police Station, and nearly every day Jonah waved hello to the desk sergeant and made his way back to the Major Crimes Division bullpen to wait for his mother.

"Carol's at a crime scene," the middle-aged detective told him. "I have to get over there myself. You want to come?"

A few minutes later, Jonah was in the passenger seat of a police cruiser as they pulled up in front of Clawson & Wolfe Jewelry, an expensive shop in the downtown district. The seventh-grader expected to be told to wait in the car, but Detective Pauling didn't say a word, and Jonah wound up following him past the yellow crime tape, through the jewelry showroom, and into a rear storage room. The first thing he noticed was the blood.

Against the far wall of the room stood a floor safe, about four feet square, its door flung open. All around the safe was blood, drops of it on the floor and streaks of it across the back wall. In contrast, the inside of the safe was as clean as a whistle, without blood and without a trace of the trays of gems that were usually stored there.

The next thing Jonah Bixby noticed was the source of the blood, a tall heavyset man sprawled a few feet in front of the safe. A crime-scene technician knelt over the body, taking swabs from under his fingernails, while another took dozens of photographs, recording the blood spatter patterns on the floor and walls and on the door to the huge safe.

Detective Carol Bixby was off to one side, away from the blood, questioning a man and a woman. The woman still had a look of horror on her face. From his mother's questions, Jonah deduced that this was Madelyn Wolfe, co-owner of Clawson & Wolfe. Her partner, Otto Clawson, had been the victim.

"It was shortly after five P.M.," Miss Wolfe stammered. "Otto and I had just put the inventory into the safe and locked it when the front bell rang. It was a man with a large box in his arms, like a deliveryman. It was only after Otto had opened the door that we saw..." She shuddered at the memory. "He was wearing a ski mask and had a gun."

"Did you recognize his voice?" asked Carol.

"He didn't say much," Miss Wolfe replied. "He forced me into that closet and locked me in. Then I heard him talking to Otto. I kept yelling, 'Otto, open the safe. It's not worth getting killed for.' A minute or so later, I heard the shot."

Madelyn Wolfe paused to take a deep breath, which finally gave the other witness a chance to speak. "I guess I'm the one who discovered the body." His name was Gilbert Green and he was the dead man's next-door neighbor.

"Otto's car is in the shop," he continued, "so he asked me to pick him up after work. I got here around 5:30 and found the front door open. I heard a woman screaming, so I came back here and saw this." He stopped and scanned the room, just to make sure. "Except Madelyn was locked in the closet. I didn't want to touch anything, so I dialed 911 on my cell. It was your men who broke down the closet door."

Detective Bixby nodded, but her mind was elsewhere. Something didn't make sense. "If Mr. Clawson opened the safe for the thief, like he was told," she muttered, "then why did the guy shoot him?"

"Maybe Clawson recognized his voice," suggested Detective Pauling. "Or maybe they fought over the gun."

"Maybe," Carol said, then at long last noticed her son standing in the doorway. "Jonah? What are you..." She turned angrily to Pauling. "You brought a twelve-year-old to an active murder scene? What were you thinking?"

Detective Pauling shrugged. "He's been to murder scenes before."

But Carol was already at the door, ushering Jonah away from the blood-filled room. "Sorry about this, kiddo. Did you get anything to eat? I'll get a patrolman to take you out for a burger."

"I'm not hungry," Jonah protested. "Mom, one of them is lying. I think one of them killed Mr. Clawson."

WHOM DOES JONAH SUSPECT OF MURDER?

WHAT MADE JONAH SUSPICIOUS?

Show Answer

The whodunit above was provided by American mystery fiction author Hy Conrad.

In addition to his work in mystery and crime puzzles, Hy was also one of the original writers for the groundbreaking TV series Monk.

Currently, Hy is working on mystery novel series "Abel Adventures" as well as the Monk series of novels, starting with Mr. Monk Helps Himself (published by Penguin, order from Amazon here)

Check out Hy's official website and Facebook page - and stay tuned for more whodunits puzzlers on Neatorama from the master of whodunit mysteries himself!