File Case 5: Dentists are People too (Nov. 2, 2009)

The room stank of death, or maybe it was gingivitis. Ryan Clarke wasn’t quite sure. Still, he knew that there was something in the air that wasn’t quite right. He could see glistening tools of torture lining every desk for every dentist, or actually technically they were orthodontist, but they still wielded similar tools. These particular orthodontist had some video games set up in the waiting room, but Ryan wasn’t fooled.

It had started when he was six years old. A dentist had pulled out one of his teeth, if you could even call it that. By the time that the dentist got to it the “tooth,” was more empty space than bone. Since then it had been a long and bitter feud between orthodontists and Ryan Clarke.

His brother said that he was insane when it came to dentists, but Ryan knew that he was acting logically. He knew that dentists were secretly part of the massive government conspiracy to implant tracking chips in everyone’s bodies. So Ryan knew that he was far from crazy, especially on that day, at that moment when someone started screaming.
“Stop, don’t do it, please!”
***

“So what happened here,” Jake asked as he surveyed the scene before him.
There was some blood on the ground, a chair turned backwards, a bunch of silver instruments scattered across the floor, an electric drill dangling on a cord from a desk and the light that was suppose to hang over the chair hung awkwardly, like a turtle flipped on its back.

Ordinarily Captain Steel wouldn’t have called Nick so quickly, after all his services did cost money and Captain Steel was a capable Captain with an intelligent team. She didn’t want to look like she went to Nick every time that she got a case, so usually she didn’t call Nick unless she had an extremely hard case. However the second that Captain Steel started hearing the details of this particular case she called Nick. This was definitely going to be a hard case.

It made no sense, there was no motive, why would someone beat up and rob an orthodontist? There was also no suspect, who would be an enemy of Dr. Mint. I’ll have to question him myself when he wakes up, she thought to herself.



“We are standing in the middle of what some small children can only dream about. This is the area where an orthodontist got his teeth knocked out,” Captain Steel said to answer the question that Captain Steel assumed Jake would have asked otherwise.

“Oh, the irony,” Nick said as he scanned the room, looking for anything out of place.

“The X-ray machine is angled awkwardly, the light is also awkward,” Nick commented, more to Jake than to himself. “Oh yes, by the way, where exactly did Dr. Mint’s teeth fall?”

“The teeth fell right here,” Captain Steel said pointing to a corner of the room. “There are six teeth all together.”

“Wow those are white!” Jake exclaimed, staring at the bright teeth that had formally resided in Dr. Mint’s mouth.

“So who exactly was here at the time of the beating?” Nick asked.

“Well, there was a young boy who is not a fan of Doctor Mint, however he was seen by other witnesses and he couldn’t do so much damage. The other witnesses accounted for are Austin Waters, and Michelle Radly. Both of them are average tax payers, who happened to be scheduled for an appointment today. However there were two people unaccounted for, Doctor Mint’s assistant Becky Roberts, and a lady named Bethany Clarke, she’s the mother of Ryan Clarke the boy I mentioned earlier,” Captain Steel stated.

“Okay I’ll question Ms. Roberts, and you can question Mrs. Clarke,” Nick exclaimed.
***

“What are you doing here?” Jake asked as he first stepped towards the slightly hefty, red haired lady in her mid forties.

“What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Clarke innocently.

“I mean you’re in the area where Doctor Mint actually works on people mouths while your son is sitting in his waiting room,” Jake replied. “That could be normal except that your son has the appointment with Doctor Mint, not you.”

“Don’t point any finger at me, you can ask any worker in here that my son has numerous issues with both orthodontists and dentists. I was simply talking to Doctor Mint to ask him if there were any extra options to make it easier for Ryan. When we came to an agreement I left, and then I heard the yelling,” Mrs. Clarke explained defensively.

“I kind of have trouble believing that you heard and saw no one go in after you left even though no one saw you in the waiting room, which means that you’re either lying or that you were a maximum of sixteen feet away from the Doctor’s room, because any further and you’d be in the waiting room,” Jake said returning to the offensive.

“Have you accounted for the fact that the person could have been hiding inside the Doctor’s office,” Mrs. Clarke retorted. “If you’ll let me in I’ll show you at least eight places where the criminal could have hidden.”
***

“What were you doing before you heard your boss yelling?” Nick asked Ms. Roberts.

“Well I was out back, smoking, yes, I know that it’s bad for me, but it’s a habit that I just can’t break. Those little patches don’t work, some of them only make it worse,” Ms. Roberts said innocently as she crossed her long legs, and flipped a blonde strand of hair from her shoulder so that she could take her purse off of her shoulder and put it down on the only chair in the small room.

This room is rather small, Nick thought to himself as he looked around the tight room.
However the thoughts that Nick actually voiced were, “don’t think that we’re picking on you, because you look suspicious and because you happened to not have someone to confirm where you were when Doctor Mint was getting the enamel kicked out of him, we’re picking on you because you are in Doctor Mint’s will for every bit of his money, Ms. Roberts.”

“So I have a motive, that doesn’t mean that I nearly killed him. You do realize that I make a lot more money if I just let him live, he makes money but then he has to pay me for my help. In truth, Doctor Mint only has full pockets in the mornings, by closing time he has only a few dollars left,” Ms. Roberts stated with a dainty smile.

Just then Mrs. Clarke burst into the room with Jake following close behind her. Upon laying her jacket on a chair Mrs. Clarke started pointing in various directions crazily. “The criminal could have hidden there, or there, or there, or there…”

“Or there,” Mrs. Clarke said pointing one of her pudgy figures dramatically at Ms. Robert’s face.

“Mrs. Clarke please wait outside!” Nick said sternly.

“I would never hurt anybody, you’re the only person in this room who would beat up someone,” Ms. Roberts yelled angrily at Mrs. Clarke, all traces of her former politeness gone.

“No more arguing, please get out of this room right now Mrs. Clarke!” Nick insisted, keeping his voice low, but strangely dangerous. “You too Ms. Roberts please stop arguing.”

“Fine,” Mrs. Clarke stated huffily picking up her coat with a flourish. “I’ll prove to you that I didn’t do it then.”

“She is my least favorite patient that I have ever had,” Ms. Roberts said once Mrs. Clarke had left. “Oh, yes and by the way you can call me Julia.”

“I don’t think that I can learn anything else from you, unless of course you decide to confess,” Nick said, not falling for the false friendliness. “So I’m going to ask you to wait outside.”

What else can we do?” Jake asked before Julia could get up, while at the same time setting his arm on the clear back of the chair that Julia was sitting on.

“We’re going to go out of the back, and then we’re going to go recruit another brain to help us on the path towards justice for Dr. Mint.”

Jake knew who Nick was planning to talk to, he knew where Nick was planning to go and most important of all was that Jake knew that Nick was right to ask who he was going to so Jake followed Nick obediently.
Once out of the small room Jake sped up his pace so that he could walk next to Nick, only to have to move behind Nick again to get out of the back door.

Jake coughed. “Nice garden back here, but there’s something in the air that doesn’t agree with me.” Jake coughed again.