Welcome to Gaia! ::

This is a detective story about a detective who is pretty bad at his job and breaks quite a few of the taboos of his particular line of work. If you have any questions, criticism, or would like to see more let me know!

Chapter 1: House of The Rising Sun
It was a late December night, a monday I believe because I distinctly remember thinking life changing events shouldn't happen on a Monday. Regardless it was a late night the night she turned my whole world upside down and shook me for my lunch money. She was a prostitute. I wasn't there to sleep with her although the idea certainly wasn't offensive. No I was there on a grimmer work related note; indeed I had been called in to investigate the murder of this delightful treat.

I was feeling rather disappointed to be recieving this assignment for three reasons. One was obvious seeing that it was a Monday as mentioned before. Two: It wasn't raining and I remember this lucidly because I remember from picture films that the best of murders where avenged in the pouring rain and while it's true that I'm not the greatest Private Investigator I felt the least I deserved was sleet. And finally I was given this assignment because the police had turned away from it. If the police had turned away from it it could only mean one of two things:

1) the police were too busy to look into it right now or

2) It was simply a waste of their time and resources to handle.

I was personally hoping it was the latter.

Her name was Emily, annoyingly out of character for someone in her line of work, and she worked for a "Gentlemen's Clube" known as The House Of The Rising Sun. Pretty clever name and fitting although I'm sure none of its regular patrons knew the song from which it was most likely named. Emily herself was a 5'5" goddess with a head of earth colored locks and equally brown eyes. Her sumptuos body layed sprawled out on the bed as she stared vaguely at the cieling. Her mascera was running a little but despite this she was certainly quite the looker, Even post mortem. Her Hyoid bone had been crushed leading me to believe she had been strangled.

Not much else in the way of evidence, Forensics has already been through and scrubbed the place for evidence finding absolutely nothing. Furniture is askew as if there had been a struggle, a fact which neighbors on her floor confirm. I leave Emily, I'm sure she wont mind, to search the appartment for more evidence. Nothing out of the ordinary really, I rummaged through her drawers and opened cabinets, read a few entries from her diary (I pocketed this to read later for evidence) but found nothing that seemed out of place. As I entered the kitchen I noticed a book of matches and a carton of cigarettes sitting on the table. After filling one of Emily's cups with tap water I sit down at the table and help myself, I was feeling jittery after all and it's not like she'd be using them in the near future considering her present state.

After Lighting up and taking a drag or two I looked around as I fingered the book of matches. Once I had had my smoke I stood abruptly, patted my chest methodically, looked around hoping some evidence would jump out at me (none did) and then without further ado I left.

I noticed I spelled club wrong by accident too. Oh well here's the next segment.

Chapter2: Daddy Sang Bass
I'm not cut out to do this kind of work; So Why am I doing it you ask? Like all adults it goes back to my childhood. My grandfather wanted me to be a marine and so did my father, which made sense both of them being ex-marines and all but mom disapproved. Momma said I didn't have to doom myself to being shot at for a living and said to study hard and I could be anything. Dad didn't like the idea of breaking tradition but he loved mom more than he loved the tradition.

And so I started my education and worked hard. I did homework all Saturday and then went to church on Sundays. I didn't understand church I just knew that mom and dad were part of the church choir and that I got ice cream afterwards. At least until dad died, then I worked Sundays to help pay for things.

In Sixth grade I got the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for my birthday and that was it. My life's calling came to me in the form of Sherlock Holmes. I directed my focus on that and before I knew it I had graduated from college with a degree in criminal justice and set up my detective agency. What I didn't know then was that detective agencies were a dying thing in America. Every police force in the country had a crime scene unit and a special investigations unit. People stopped paying me to half-a** my way through murders and pretty soon my clients dried up to wives who were suspicious of their husbands.

At the height of my career I was looking to hire a second private investigator. I had married the love of my life and moved into my drea house. I had it all until forensic technology became available and changed the face of P.I. work. Pretty soon the repo men came, I became the soul employee of my firm and my wife left me. Although that last one wasn't a huge loss since I was cheating on her. Cutting my losses I bought the place above my office and continued my one man fight on crime.

Amazingly business picked up and I could afford a secretary. She was pretty and smart, the deadliest of all combinations and in a fair world I would have been her secretary. None the less this pretty young thing organized my files and was always willing to work late if you know what I mean. Eventually I started bringing her along with me on cases and even shorter after that I promoted her to assitant private investigator of Hood Investigations.

After about six months we becamse as thick as thievs. Business was decent and we were about to crack the case of my career. The police were after a drug lord named Vinny Malone. He was responsible for 75% of the drug rings in the city and had an iron grip on his postion as the undisputed king of the underground. The cops couldn't nail him because none of the charges stuck. It was apparent the cops were desperate when they came to me and I accepted the task. The first month of the investigation proved fruitless and I was ready to pack it in.

Then during one of our frequent late nights we stumbled upon the answer quite by accident. Vinny Malone was using a local food store to ship his cocaine in bags of flous and sugar and so on and so forth. It was so god damn obvious and I wasn't even the one that discovered it. But when the time came to inform the police we'd discovered it I took all the credit. I recieved the awards and money and all sorts of acknowledgement for the arrest. My partner left, ashamed to be with me and angry I'd stolen her spotlight.

Ten years later I'm 41 years old and have been disgraced and discredited. I'm the laughing stock of the police force, a has been they throw and occasional bone to. But none of that matters now because I have a murder to solve, and no idea where to start.