I believe I have, at long last, cracked the case wide open. By taking into account the fact that all of the victims were English students, the orthopedic shoe treading found at the crime scene, and the continued references to Blake and Lord Byron in their braggadocious letters mailed to the local newspaper, I have deduced that the killer is none other than Ms. Withers, the aging and embittered librarian!

Damn! How did I not see it sooner? It all makes perfect sense now. Of course, it was Ms. Withers–

Oh, you’re not sure? You think there might be some holes in my theory? Interesting. I guess my counterpoint to that would be that I'm the best detective in the world and have literally never been wrong.

You want to know Ms. Withers’ motive? She was embittered. Do I need more than that? What’s your motive for second-guessing me every second of every day? Every week, we go through the same rigamarole. I’ll be assigned a case, deemed unsolvable. I’ll go down a couple of incorrect and futile rabbit holes before uncovering some new piece of evidence and pinpointing the killer. You all, my supposed coworkers and friends, will then stand in a circle around me and tell me why I’m wrong for suspecting this specific person. The Chief will be persuaded by your rhetoric, tell me that “I’m in too far” and take me off the case. I’ll ignore him and continue to do work on my own, eventually coming face-to-face with the killer that I originally suggested and prevailing in a dramatic final stand-off.

So I guess my question is: what if, instead of doing all of that, you all just accepted that I’m pretty much always right? We could save time and, I don’t know, probably lives too.

Oh, you think Ms. Withers, a 92-year-old woman, is too feeble to have committed these crimes against virile men in their 20s? Ever heard of adrenaline? You all said the same thing about four-year-old Jimmy Sparks after taking down his parents in 2002, about diminutive Aubrey Johnston after the death of her professional wrestler boyfriend in 2007, and about that marionette doll that committed all of those crimes at the Catholic school in 2015.

Also, what was strange about that marionette doll thing wasn’t that you told me the doll couldn’t commit the murders because it was a doll, you told me that it couldn’t have done it because it wasn’t strong enough. Weird!

Honestly, I never see any of you doing actual police work anyways. You seem to only exist in this office. Do any of you solve cases? Are you real cops? If you think Ms. Withers was too small and old to have taken down these men, go pound the pavement and develop your own theories.

And let me remind you that, to date, I have solved every single case that I’ve ever been assigned.

And yes, I understand that Ms. Withers’ alibi of having been at a literary conference during the time of the murder(s) seemed airtight. But guys, an all-expensive paid four-week librarian’s conference in Hawaii? Maybe we shouldn’t have just accepted that at face value? Jimmy Sparks was supposedly at daycare, Aubrey Johnston playing bridge with her mother-in-law, and the marionette doll “Petey” was supposed to be an inanimate object, but as cops, we’re supposed to look past surface details in the pursuit of truth. I bet if we were to call the number that Ms. Withers gave for the conference that it would end up being a pizza place or something like that.

Oh, you just did and it is a pizza place? Exactly.

You just need to trust that at the end of the day, I’m always right. Please stop second-guessing me. Ms. Withers is dangerous and she could easily kill again!

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