Thursday 3/31/11: Tyrone's First Encounter with Death
For today, give us a drabble about the first time you encountered the great equalizer.... death.
The murder of one of my fellow archaeologists disturbed me. What disturbed me more was the investigation into who did it.
We were in Iraq. I was dusting off some pottery when military police came and told us to leave the site. They found one our fellows dead froma gunshot to the skull while on a supply run, and thought it to be the work of terrorists. I managed to convince them that a terrorist wouldn't be satisfied with killing just one person or so cleanly. That led to the MPs quarantining the rest of us to the site. At least some work could get done while the matter was cleared up.
But the interrogations and searches kept us from finishing anything. Our time and funds were running short. I decided to take matters into my own hands and suss out the culpret so I could return to work. I uncovered a conspiracy to smuggle valuable artifacts from the site among my fellows, of which the victim was a part. Complicating matters was that a few of the uninvolved archeologists and volunteers had the same idea as I to solve the mystery.
And we had to make the MPs think they were the ones who solved it.
Ultimately, I did find the murderer. She caught him in transaction with a group of men selling painted pottery. In anger she beat and shot the man. I share her anger, but she went too far and ruined the excavation. By the time she was finally locked up, we had run out of funds and had to return home.
May I never have to experience such travesty again.