The Case Against Randolph Dixon-Hertz - Entry 5

Searching Randy's desk at the office was eminently more reasonable after I relented and brewed myself a batch of Greenland Gringo Soy Bean-Infused "Naturalized" coffee, and since that was the nostalgia-blend, I was more than sturdy enough, psychically, to root through my head-wounded employee's personal belongings...boring, though they may be.

I would have expected more in the way of pizzazz from a man who has, at least to my knowledge, consistently prided himself on being a functioning nutcase; instead, I was combing through drawer after drawer of candy-wrappers and weathered, almost pulped, comic-books, neither of which even remotely helped my search into Randy's past. What was abundantly clear was the depth of Randy's nerdish-tendencies, as I'd feel comfortable labeling him "knee-deep". Gender-generalizations aside, men tend to collect things: comic-books, baseball-cards, CDs, automobiles both big and small...even serial-killers, mostly a Y-chromosome-based predilection, need keepsakes of their kills. What was different about this case, however, was that Randy wasn't so much collecting comic-books as he was destroying them; this became readily apparent after I jimmied open the locked bottom-drawer of his desk with my Lawson Detective Agency © Brand Crowbar to find a drawer-shaped block of mulched, multi-coloured paper.

I had never seen anything like it; in the way an insanely-pressurized rock converts to diamond, Randy had been cramming comic-books into this drawer with such force that it looked as though I could just remove the block and shear some sheets of note-paper from it. More help from my magnificent Crowbar allowed me to, indeed, remove the somehow-and-somewhat-cold block from its casing, and after I sat it on a neighbouring desk, I noticed the incredible reinforcements inside the drawer: stainless-steel sides with a refrigeration-pump spewing cold into the walls.

It was amazing, spectacular even, but why? It was like looking at a woman in zebra-print-leggings and too much blush: I knew of all the components individually, but I couldn't understand why they were all together in that particular fashion.

Then, the paper-block began to tick.

Entry 6