When Jake stepped out of the car he immediately noticed Nick standing next to Captain Steel. A smirk adorned Nick’s countenance.

“Are you sure that he hasn’t solved the case?” Zach asked as he noticed Nick’s easily recognizable smile.

“No, I’m just feeling rather good about noticing something so small so quickly,” Nick stated as he overheard Zach’s statement.

“Well, what is this small thing of which you speak?” Jake asked.

“It’s quite simple actually,” Nick responded. “What would you say if I said that pine trees don’t have maple leaves?”

“Then I would say that that’s a true, and logical statement,” Jake replied, not understanding why his employer was talking about leaves.

“Then what would you say if I said that I inspected a couple of leaves in an alley that has nothing except a pine tree forest to the south, as well as the fact that this morning the winds was blowing to the north?” Nick asked.

A similar smile spread across Jake’s features as he realized what Nick was trying to point out. “So leaves were probably brought in by the murderer on his clothing.”

“That means that Ricky Kendal probably brought them in on his clothes from his hunting trip, that hunting trip that he camped under a maple tree!” Jake exclaimed

“You still haven’t explained how we can prove this,” Captain Steel said irritably.

“That’s simple, if Ricky doesn’t know that we suspect him and if he continues to try to seem helpful then he’ll likely show us exactly where he was camping, then we could match the leave’s DNA with the tree’s DNA, and then if it was a match we should be able to get a warrant for his DNA, and then we could match it to anything that Conner finds on the body,” Nick explained.

“I’ll try that,” Captain Steel said. “But there are still some unanswered questions that are bothering me. For example, why was the victim killed and why did he have a postmortem wound across his neck?”

“I don’t know that,” Nick confessed before he sipped his coffee that Jake had handed him.

Just then Nick’s phone rang. Nick answered it, not saying a word except “thank you” at the end of the call. “The victims name is Scott O’Brien, and he was last seen helping rob some safe deposit boxes full of diamonds, oh yes and by the way I think that I have a theory that would explain everything.”
***

At that same time Nick’s brother in law was enjoying the sunshine, a fresh newspaper laid neatly across his lap, just waiting to be opened, so that the smell of fresh paper could waft out of the newspaper, to be accompanied by interesting stories about the world. The newspaper and sunlight were not a right though, to Ralph Copper they were a privilege. For Ralph sunshine was only given to him on every day from noon to three p.m.

Through these strict limits, sunlight and newspapers were made precious to Ralph. That’s how the human mind works, even one as mentally unstable as Ralph’s. People can't realize what they want if they have it.

“Hello Ralph, I was just looking for you,” the Warden, Mr. Peterson, an old man with thick hair said, interrupting Ralph’s thoughts. “Doctor John wants to test a new technique on you, just because he knows that you can handle stress better than any of the other patient here.”

Ralph was forced to put down his newspaper as he agreed. “If he’s smoking one of his cigars though I’m not going to come, I’ve already told him that I’ve quit, but I still get occasional cravings.”

***

Awhile later people had continued killing other people, so new cases had been opened, and there was other work that had to be done. However there was still curiosity surrounding the case involving the dead hunter with a post mortem wound across his throat. Also naturally when the DNA results came back people wanted to see them. As it turned out the case took one last turn. The turn happened after they got Ricky with a positive DNA match, and Ricky was telling what happened.

“…I met Scott awhile back and we stayed friends until we were both out of a job, that’s not to say though that we weren’t friends after the recession hit us, we stayed very close, in fact we robbed a bank together so that we didn’t lose our homes. It went very well. We got a ton of diamonds from safe deposit boxes, and I was sure that I could sell them on the black market. To celebrate we went hunting. After that we got drunk, so drunk that I passed out. I don’t know what happened after that, except that when I woke up I found Scott, dead, and a good portion of the diamonds missing. When I was sober again I realized what had happened and I realized that I had to slit Scott’s throat to get at the diamonds or I wouldn’t be able to keep my house after all.”

Jake looked away from the one way glass, towards Nick, who was on the same side of the glass as himself. “So his story matches your theory, thanks to the bugs and the slit throat no one could tell that he had choked. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t help this time.”

“You helped,” Nick replied encouragingly. “You got the coffee.”