The Riddle

The Riddle
By: Anonymous

It was 9 o’clock, and she would be showing up soon. Melinda Feroe, just thinking about her sent warm tingly feelings up my spine. Unfortunately, thoughts of the romantic night we would soon be sharing together were perturbed by the unsolvable murder/torture mystery that had been plaguing me for almost a year.
I knew I was close to solving the first step of the puzzle, but that held little reward for me. Each clue I had obtained, had been at the expense of person’s life or well-being. The only physical clues were the scarlet sheets of paper with a single letter located on each. I was almost certain that these letters, plus a few more would spell out the perpetrators name. Unfortunately, I have a weak mind for word scrambles and I didn’t know how many letters I was missing. I knew that it was too long and didn’t contain the right letters for an English first name, so I assumed that it made up at least a first an last name, possible a middle name was on the way.
Since I couldn’t figure out the riddle, I had to rely on other clues I had gathered from the crime scenes and the survivors of these vicious attacks. One thing I knew for certain, the killer was a she, and that each of the victims had been her boyfriend at the time. Another fact was that she had been using a pseudonym with each of her boyfriends and thus couldn’t be tracked down by name.
From the interviews I gathered, and the crime scenes I investigated, I found that our perpetrator, like many women, had an uncanny knack for switching between wonderful boyfriends and the cruelest assholes on the planet. She was obviously a little unstable and couldn’t decide on whether she wanted the good guy, or the villain. Now SHE was the villain. I knew she must have had a soft spot for the nice guys however, these were the individuals she left alive.
Thinking about the girls I had met in my life caused me to wonder what it would have taken to drive them over the edge to the point where they sought vengeance on all their previous boyfriends, even the decent ones. My guess was rape, it appeared her first boyfriend had a couple complaints about him, but since they were from prostitutes or the equivalent they weren’t acknowledged in court.
Justice had found him however, and it’s punishment was harsh. She’d left him with a knife through the heart, the same knife she’d used to castrate him moments before. On this individual’s chest would be found the first of the red papers, with an single artistically draw letter “L” upon it. This paper, the first of many, would give her the title of the Scarlet Trickster.
One fact was she got around a lot. So far I had collected 11 letters in the same amount of months. She was incredibly good, despite her seeming insanity. I was almost certain at this point that she knew I was personally in charge of this investigation, and was leaving clues behind to taunt me. Because she was so familiar with the investigative process I couldn’t help but believe she was one of the many detectives that worked with me. Therefore, I had come to start doing my investigation at home, so as to not reveal any new clues I had picked up, or scare the perpetrator away when I finally discovered her name. So now I sat looking at the L and R-O-I-N-A-D-M-F and 2 E’s. I was certain that it was her true name, and I was also certain that it stilled lacked a few letters, and subsequently a victim or two.
I was frustrated, from the very first case I had been following this woman, desperately trying to figure her motives and strategies out before she struck again to no avail. She was a smart girl, smarter than me by far, and there was nothing I could do about it. She was always 1 or 2 steps ahead of me, predicting my next move, seeing right through me. I couldn’t seem to see into her head, though she could read me like a book. Men are too easy predict, women can’t be. While it is true that there a significantly less percentage of serial murders are done by women, it wasn’t so cut and dry. While I had no evidence I knew another reason why there were fewer women killers. They weren’t stupid enough to get caught.
There was one other catch that annoyed me at the moment and caused my current hurry to discover the answer. She always struck on a new moon, when the sky was completely black but for the stars. Tonight was a new moon. I was almost certain I would wake to find another instance of one of her attacks written in bold across the daily paper.
For his sake, I hoped he had treated her well. Or maybe he would be luckier if he hadn’t depending on your viewpoint. Interviewing the few survivors who encountered this lady revealed she didn’t kill the nice guys. However, while it was true she left these men alive… she didn’t leave them men. Instead they awoke from their drug-induced slumber without clothes… and without their balls. What she did with them was anybody’s guess, maybe they were now her personal trophies.
As I grew exasperated, I threw the letters back onto the table, unable to figure out their meaning. They would just have to wait for another day.
Just as I was about to get up, the doorbell rang. I happily opened it onto my dates beautiful face. I couldn’t help but smile. “Come in, come in, let me get something to drink for you. How about some red wine?”
She smiled at my apparent nervousness, and accepted my offer. I sat her down on the leather couch, and served two glasses of my only wine. As we began talking her wonderful personality lit up the room and filled me with contentment. In no hurry to leave, I jumped up to go get some snacks, so that we could delay the actual date.
When I returned to the living room with the Goldfish crackers (yeah, I know, how romantic) she had a mischievous smile on her rosy lips.
After taking a drink of the wine, finding it’s aftertaste a little off, I looked into her cute eyes, and asked “What?”.
That’s when I passed out.
In the morning I awoke to a scene that would alter my life forever. In front of me lay the scarlet sheets of paper laid out in order, with an extra letter E added.

M-E-L-I-N-D-A F-E-R-O-E

I don’t need to explain the rest to you. You know what happened. I was a nice guy.

The End