Motive

“Who can do
such a terrible thing?!” Sam asked himself.

Dr. Wyle
Miles, a physicist, had been killed in cold blood right in his one-storey
apartment in the East Side of Washington D.C. As a scientist who was half-way
discovering a way of harnessing free plasma energy, it was a blow to the
world’s future.

Most of his
Facebook fans believed that aliens killed the doctor, to stop man from reaching
their home planets through portals created by plasma energy. Some even went
further to claim that the government knew about it, and made a cover up. An
attempt by the government to hide aliens’ existence was the main reason his
fans gave to the press.

Sam was an
FBI agent who had been assigned the duty of solving the case of the murder. It
was evident that the deceased was shot right in the head by the assailant. The
only problem was that there were no fingerprints on the body or anywhere around
the house. Footprints too were absent.

One of his
assistants suggested assassination as a possible answer to the style of murder,
but it was quickly ruled out for all the windows in the deceased’s apartment
were all closed, and none was damaged.

In his
entire two-decade experience in his career, Sam had never handled a complicated
case as that, which did not lead to any single shred of evidence. Sniffing dogs
too reached a dead end, even with their keen sense of smell.

“Something
is wrong. I can feel it in the core of my guts,” Sam thought.

Outside the
crime scene, police tapes surrounded Dr. Wyle’s house. A crowd of people were
furiously chanting and swearing close to the deceased’s compound, lifting their
placards in the air. Anger and frustration could be read on their faces. Some
of them also wept as they shouted.

As a
philanthropist and three-time nominee in the Nobel Prize for Science, Dr. Wyle
was no ordinary citizen. He was a man who easily got a gate pass to the White
House, to share his futuristic innovative ideas and solutions with the
president.

Sam was lost
in thoughts. Pressure from the FBI director of Washington D.C. was weighing him
down. The Sun was almost setting, yet his reports still beat around the bush. An
answer had to come very fast from somewhere. A miracle is all he wanted that
moment.

A case
without clues made his mind to direct him to Buccaneers Joint. Two or three
glasses of whisky would do the trick. Maybe an answer would suddenly pop up
from his tipsy blurriness. “Sometimes answers come from places you wouldn’t
ever imagine,” he thought.

Shock made
him choke, the moment he heard something from a man next to him. “I wish I
killed him myself, that good- for- nothing Miles!” the man shouted. An Italian
designed Giorgio Armani suit, and a two hundred dollar shirt he was wearing
convinced Sam that he wasn’t really mad. He was a rational man who knew what he
was saying.

Sam was torn
between taking him for interrogation or letting him be. A state of tipsiness
wasn’t doing him a favor either. No one would believe him if he said he was
carrying a murder suspect out a drinking joint in the night, even with the help
of a badge. In accordance to the FBI security work policy, he would be
suspended for a year or so due to conducting investigations under an unstable condition.

There was
only one way of finding out whether the man was innocent or not. He had to
start a conversation, using it like some kind of a Trojan horse. Sam stood,
moved his seat closer to the man, and sat again.

“I’m a
drunk, but not gay!” the man reacted.

Sam almost
chocked from his whisky when he heard those words. It was his first time in his
life to be confused for a gay.

“Maybe the
man was raised by a father who didn’t show any warm affection; a kind of a relationship
like that of a soldier and his general. Tough love, as they call it,” Sam mused.

Time was
moving fast. The Sun was setting. He had to get the answers in one or the
other, before the suspect left or escaped. A random question had to be invented
somehow.

“I’m as
straight as a flagpole,” Sam said.

“I just
couldn’t help hearing you saying that you wished you killed someone. I have a
record of people who I wish I could stick their necks between my palms….”

The man was
quiet for a while, staring straight at his half-filled bottle of beer. After a
few moments, he suddenly turned and stretched his right hand to greet Sam.

“Sorry about
my bad attitude. My name is Carlos.”

Sam
stretched his right hand too.

“I’m called
Sam.”

It seemed
like everything was falling in the right place. As the conversation went
deeper, Sam got the information he wanted. Carlos was Dr. Wyle’s assistant, who
helped him in the free energy research. He also told Sam he was upset that his
mentor passed away too soon, leaving him stranded. That was most likely the
reason for shouting out of frustration.

The research
facility was located almost thirty miles from where the deceased hailed.
Electric fences and surveillance cameras made it difficult for any stranger to
break in.

Sam was also
astonished to realize that he was seated next to a Masters holder in Quantum
Physics. The smell of alcohol in the breath, and shaggy hair didn’t match well
with the intellect in Carlos’ brain.

“Do you
think aliens might have anything to do with Dr. Wyle’s murder?” Sam asked.

“No! I think
it’s people who are afraid of the future. The Vatican is one example!”

It was
evident that Dr. Wyle had many enemies, most of whom were competitors in the
science community and fundamentalists in the religious community. Some clergy
and priests called him a twenty-first century sorcerer. Carlos too was a
suspect. Almost an hour back he was shouting, saying that he wished that he
would kill Dr. Miles.

The
government was out of the picture because it had spent millions of dollars
funding the free plasma energy project. It would be bonkers to kill one whom it
had invested lots of time and money.

The only way
to find out who the killer or killers were was by visiting Dr. Wyle’s research
facility. Sam had a feeling that a clue would surface somehow. He planned to
spend the whole of the next day at the facility.

“I’m afraid
we have to meet another time. Please give me your contacts,” Sam said.

“Ok. No
problem,”

It is after
exchanging contacts that Sam left home, to retire for the night.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Traffic was
making it hectic for business people to report to their work on time, and kids
to reach school. Old couples were seated on benches in a park, as they watched doves
play around a fountain. It was morning again.

Sam had
already reached Dr. Wyle’s facility. He had reported at his assignment at six
in the in the morning. Something strange had caught his attention. According to
his forensic analysis, one of the boot prints he had found in a research lab
had some crude oil molecules.

The mystery
was that the molecules were located in an odd place. It would be normal if the
prints were found in any oil refinery around the world.The nearest oil refinery
was twenty miles away from the research facility. It belonged to BP. Thanks to
chemical dating with the help of his forensic kit; he could tell that the
intruder got into the facility the same day Dr. Wyle was killed.

“What would
a man from an oil refinery want from a free energy research facility?” Sam
wondered.

It was evident
that the killers were not interested in Dr. Wyle’s money; they were interested
in his research. Computer connections in the main server were dismantled, while
some computers had missing hard drives.

Sam was glad
he had managed to join some of the puzzles in his mind together. He was certain
without any shadow of doubt that the killers came from an oil refinery, most
likely the BP refinery.

The whole
free energy research facility had turned into a crime scene. Sam called his FBI
colleagues to web around the facility using yellow tapes. No sooner had he
completed his call, than when the main entrance door’s hinges started to creak.
There was someone getting inside!

Crawling
like a marine, Sam managed to secure a secret spot near a fire extinguisher. Sweat
was flowing on his face like a stream. He could hear foot step sounds drawing
closer and closer to him. The intruder was almost two meters away from where he
was, facing away from his hiding spot. He wore a mask, and had a gun on his
right hand.

Life was the
most important thing that Sam valued at that moment. Observing caution, Sam
gently removed the extinguisher from its storage, swiftly and silently ramming
it against the intruder’s head.

He fell down
on the cold floor, and lay motionless. Sam quickly called an ambulance on his
phone. There was no need to call for back up; his friends were on the way. As a
safety precaution, he handcuffed the intruder against a water pipe.

“Let’s see
what we have here,” Sam whispered.

His hands
searched every pocket he could find in the intruder’s trousers and jacket, only
to find a cell phone in the right pocket of the trousers. Without hesitation,
he went through the phone book. After several seconds, his face froze when a name
appeared in the phone book. It was none other than Haze Griffins, the president
of BP oil in the United States!

To confirm
whether the distinguished man was linked to the murder, he dialed the number.
Suddenly the call was answered! “Have you completed burning the damn place? I
don’t want any other Miles to appear out of nowhere from a wandering research
document!” Haze shouted.

All the
pieces in Sam’s mind came together, forming an image of a murderer he least
expected! The intruder had started to regain consciousness. Miraculously, the
FBI team arrived on time.

Threatened
with life imprisonment, the intruder confessed to the team that Haze had hired
him to kill Dr. Wyle. A remote-controlled drone connected with an automatic gun
was used to carry out the cold act. It managed to get an open window in one of
the rooms upstairs in the deceased’s house.

 Rapid deduction of oil sales, because of free
plasma energy, was the only reason that Haze wanted the physicist dead. His
greed for money had cut short a technology that would have taken man to deeper
frontiers in space.

Another FBI
team was dispatched to capture Haze at his residence, West of Washington D.C.
The intruder’s phone came in handy tracking him down.

They were
all relieved that the murder mystery was closed. A strange aura of divine
presence was beginning to hover over them.Each one of them felt a presence of someone
watching them from above…