The+Airborne+Murder

"The Airborne Murder" by Abby and Helen

**The Airborne Murder**

**Introduction** Ellie Narfsnuckle was not your average girl. Ever since she was young, she had been sharp and able to up small details. Some inferences showed themselves only to her. Some things were simple to this 19 year old that completely baffled those trained to do what she loved: solving things. This was what she did day and night. She was practically a legend at the police station, because she was always ready for a case. In her pocket she held a tape recorder and a small magnifying glass, because she didn’t know when she would be called in. There was rarely a case that ever confused her. Scarcely was there a clue that did not show itself to her. That was not true, however, on a still morning in Houston, Texas, her home town.

**Chapter One: The Passengers** That morning I had gotten a letter. An urgent letter from the police station. It hadn’t said much, but that they needed me to come in to see a case. I had seen it in the papers, and was hoping that I would be called in to investigate. There were four men in a jet, all working for a plane company by the name of Sky Company. They were going on an important business trip to the Bahamas. It was so important that it had included the president and vice president of the company. Three men had gotten off the plane, including the pilot, who was none other than the vice president of Sky Company. They had had a bumpy flight apparently, because the oxygen masks had come out. They had gotten off the plane not realizing that Mr. Russell Snipe, the president and owner of the company, had not gotten off with them. The jet had been searched, and the search disclosed that in the back, with his oxygen mask still on, was a dead Russell Snipe. I went off to the police station to question the three other men that were on the plane at the time of the murder.

Passenger #1: Charles Fredricksen
Very soon, I found myself sitting, interrogating Mr. Charles Fredricksen. He was a middle-aged man who was a passenger on the plane at the time of the murder. His hair was graying along with his thick mustache. He looked at me through black eyes that looked as though they were searching me. “ What do you know about the murder?” I asked him, deciding that it would be completely pointless to beat around the bush. “ Well… I’m not sure, but I don’t think Mr. Snipe and the vice president got along too well,” he told me in a raspy voice. “You see, there was a very big offer on the company last week. That’s what this trip was for. We were coming to see Airlines Incorporated, the company that wanted to buy ours. We all knew that Mr. Snipe wanted to refuse, even though we would get mounds of money. I heard the vice president, Mr. Adam Polly, arguing with Mr. Snipe just before the flight. If you remember right, Mr. Polly was the one flying the plane that night.” “ And what are your views on the matter? I hear you weren’t too keen to keep Sky Company either,” I inquired. “ No… I don’t want to keep it. I have no authority, though. I was just there to take notes over the meeting… Who you really want is Mr. Adam Polly. That man is Vice President, or was. Now he owns the whole company; he had a real motive. I hear he gets five million dollars if he sells our company,” and with that he went silent. He wouldn’t answer another question I asked him. It didn’t really matter though, because I had gotten exactly what I wanted. I had found a motive the police hadn’t. “ Ok Mr. Fredricksen, thank you for telling us this. You may leave now.” I said, dismissing him.

Passenger #2: Kevin Muntz
Next we called in Mr. Kevin Muntz, who was also a passenger on the plane at the time of the murder. He was skinny, tall, and had a working attitude about him as he walked into the room. His thin blond hair wisped slightly as he sat down in the grey metal chair. “ Will you please tell us as much as you can about the flight or the murder?” I said to him with interest. I wanted to learn more about this case. “ Well, when I was on the flight, all the president wanted was to be alone. I suppose he wanted to look over paperwork before the meeting with Airlines Inc. We couldn’t see him because he had pulled the curtains over his seat in the back of the small jet plane. I never would have thought he was dead,” he told me. “ Yes, that is interesting,” I said, pondering this fact in my head. He must have been killed during the flight…. But how? “I heard you had a bumpy flight, too. Can you tell me about that?” I lead. “ Well, yes. The whole ride seemed very bumpy. Come to think of it, it really started getting dangerous about halfway through the flight, right when Mr. Snipe went to the back. The oxygen masks came down, as I think you know, and we had no more problems,” he finished. “ Very good. Can you tell me anything else?” I asked, now groping for clues. “ No… Well yes, it was the oddest thing. The pilot seemed very eager to get on the flight early. He came on there with some package. I’m not sure what it held, but it wasn’t too big. I assumed that it was some sort of repair to the plane, because I had seen them around the airport that week. Mr. Polly never left the pilot’s chair during the flight, though.” “ Ok, thank you for your time, we really appreciate it Mr. Muntz,” I said. “ And I thank you. Good luck with the investigation, please let me know if you find out anything,” replied Kevin.

The Pilot: Adam Polly
The last to come into the interrogation room and sit down in the metal chair was the pilot, Mr. Adam Polly. He seemed most reluctant to be there, seeing as he kept glaring at the one way mirror. He, like Kevin Muntz, had blond hair, but it was thicker, and reached a little lower down his face. His blue eyes stood out amongst his bushy eyebrows that seemed set in a reluctant face, and he was very tan and sun burnt in places.

“ Good morning, Mr. Polly,” I said, with no reply. “//Good morning, Mr. Polly,// ” I repeated a bit louder. He stubbornly grunted and looked around again. //Good enough,//I thought to myself. “You know why you are here, I would imagine?” I said in an airy voice, hoping this would not tip off that I was a little angry.

“ I would //imagine// it would be because you accuse me of a murder, that was clearly not committed by yours truly. I would have //thought//that you would be kind enough to call me off on a day I did not have an especially large meeting to attend to. I see that you also have made no attempt to speed things up,” he retorted. The tone of his put me on edge.

“ And what was this meeting for, could I ask you?” I spat out, trying not to shout.

“ Well, as you might think, the meeting to sell the company had been postponed with the death of the man making the decision,” he said. “So it has been moved to today.”

“ Ah, Ok… Could you please tell me as much as you know about the murder of Mr. Russell Snipe?” I said simply.

“ Well, I, being the vice president of the company and pilot of the plane of course, had nothing to do with murder, but I guess I’ll tell you what I know. Well, I know that the other two passengers wanted to sell the company and I heard them talking about it before we took off.”

“ One of your fellow workers, I won’t say who, noticed you got on the plane early carrying a small package. What was that about?” I asked.

“ If you must know, there had been a report that an oxygen mask had been broken on the flight before. I was going in with a new one to //fix// it,” he told me. I waited a moment before answering him, deciding whether to ask more questions just to keep this snide man from his meeting. Finally, I decided against it, knowing that it would just agitate him further, and that any other questions toward him would be pointless.

“ You’re free to go,” I said with an air of reluctance, and without another glance at me, he left the room.

Chapter 2: The Plane Investigation
Now that I had finished the questioning, I was ready to go investigate the plane. The day after the interrogations I drove out to the airport, where they were keeping the plane. It was a small jet plane, but a nice one. It could hold, oh I’d say ten people plus two in the front. I decided to go inside, and it would seem quite ordinary to any other person, but me, being a detective, picked up a few subtle and important clues.

The first main thing that hit me was that all the oxygen masks were still down, which led me think that the flight really had been a bumpy and dangerous flight. I decided to go into the front where the pilot was. There was nothing much up there; it was normal. I ran through the things that I already knew about the murder. There were four people on the flight including the pilot, the president was found dead in the back, curtains drawn, oxygen mask still on, Mr. Snipe was arguing with the pilot before the flight about selling the company, the pilot had gotten on the plane early, supposedly to fix an oxygen mask, the pilot never left the controls during the flight, and they had a bumpy flight.

//What else could I investigate?// I thought to myself. Well, if the two men were the only ones that had contact with Mr. Snipe, it must be one of them. They could have switched back the broken mask with the new one. Over each seat in the overhead compartment there was a canister of oxygen which the masks were hooked to. I started looking through all the compartments in the front, and they all seemed the same. So I decided to look at the canister that Mr. Russell Snipe used during the flight. The canisters were made of white plastic. I wrenched one of the ones from the front out, and took it to the back. There I found the seat that the dead man had been in. This mask, too, still hung limply over the seat. I looked it over thoroughly before ripping out the canister on top of it. I compared the clean white plastics to each other. They were both pristine; they both looked untouched. A small question popped into my head at that moment. If this was the new oxygen mask, why did it look the same as the old? Also, where was the box that had held the “new” oxygen mask? I pushed this question down, though, deciding that it couldn’t be that important seeing as it was just a box.

I needn’t have look for more clues on the matter, because I found none, but still, you can never be too careful. I left the scene in a state of triumph, with the two oxygen masks still under my arm.

When I got back to my car, I threw the canisters in the back seat and went to start the car. It made a grumbling noise that told me it was not going to answer. After three more tries at turning it on, I decided to go into the little airport to see if someone could jump start my car. The man at the front smiled politely when I asked him if there was someone with cables that could jumpstart my car, then went to the back. I sat waiting in the lobby. Next to me were two stewardesses that would work on small planes.

“ Have you ever seen weather like this?” asked one.

“ No, how bout you?” inquired the other.

“ Nope. Smoothest flight I’ve ever been on, I swear!”

“ Yep, it’s amazing… Not a single storm or bad gust of wind in weeks!”

With that the two women walked on out the door to greet arriving passengers. I had frozen in my seat. //Good weather?// I thought to myself. The flight had been exactly a week ago. I had no more time to think about this new fact, though, because the man from the desk had come back out with some car cables and said that there would be one of the company cars coming to bring me to my car, then jump it. I thanked him then waited for the black van with the logo to come. Soon there came a van with Sky Co. written in blue bubble letters on the side.

When I got in I was surprised to see that there were many small brown boxes in the back, much like the one the pilot had been described carrying. The van then gave a lurch as it started and I looked at my driver. He had brown hair that was cut short. That was all that I could see of him from the back. “What are all of these boxes for?” I asked.

“ Well, in a lot of our planes, there are these outdated oxygen masks. They are not as safe as these, apparently. We put in a big order for them lately. I don’t really see any difference,” he told me.

“ Do you know whose decision it was to get these?” I asked, the detective inside me burning.

“ Actually, I do. It is always the vice president’s decision when it’s about little things like oxygen masks,” I sat there not believing. Could this really be true? This could only mean one thing. I had solved it. I jumped my car and left in a hurry. I needed to go question a pilot one last time.

Chapter 3: The Last Interrogation
I fumbled through the folder which was the case description. There at last I found Mr. Adam Polly. I looked down the paper searching for an address. I soon found it and started driving in the general direction. When I found the street that he lived on, I made a sharp turn. There was no way that was going to get away now. This was a one way street, and there was a cop on the other end in case anyone did not listen to the sign. The cop would catch him if I didn’t. I turned into the big house that read the numbers 2780, which matched the ones on the papers. Before I got out of my car, I quickly dialed the police and told them to come to number 2780 West Road.

Walking swiftly up to the door, I noticed that there were some tracks in the yard, like someone had come here in a hurry and not bothered to wait for the drive way, which was just a short way away. I knocked on the red door when I got there. The knocker was an ornate bird. You flapped its bronze wing to knock. I heard muffled running from inside, and another small bang before the door opened. Mr. Polly looked winded. His hair was shifted from his eyes, and he was breathing through his mouth, so he had been running. “Hello,” I said in a matter of fact tone,”would you be so kind as to let me into your house?”He looked pretty confused, and I think it was out of that that he stepped aside and let me enter into the sitting room. I sat in a flowered old chair with gold upholstery, and fumbled with the recorder in my pocket. As I pressed the record button, I thought of how dangerous this could be. When Mr. Polly had decided to shut the door, he came back into the room, but did not sit down. He had gained back a little control and seemed to be registering what he had just done. He would get angry soon, but I just needed to keep him busy until the police came. The one on the corner was just a traffic cop. I needed someone with handcuffs.

“ So.. How does it feel to own the company?” I asked him, hoping he would take the bait. He didn’t answer, though. He just looked skeptical. “ Are you going to talk to me?” I inquired.

“ What do you know, girl?” he spat. Through this, though, I could hear a tinge of fear.

“ I would expect that I don’t know everything… No one can, but I do know what you did to your boss, Mr. Russel Snipe,” this may have seemed a bit daring to other people, but I saw him trembling as I said it. “What did you use Mr. Polly?” I asked in a whisper. This probably took things a bit far. I could see him trying to muster enough anger to have a retort, but it did not come.

“ I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, only a bit viciously.

“ I think that you and Mr. Snipe used to get along very well. I would deduct that you were close friends, or started the company together, that’s how you got the job of Vice President. Something was wrong though, was it, between you and Mr. Snipe. He had made the company to keep, and you to sell,” I paused for a second reading his reaction, but his face was blank. “It didn't matter much while the little offers came. You didn’t want those, did you? What you were after was a lot bigger than that; millions. Very recently, the offer came that you wanted. The highest and last offer. The only company bigger than yours, wasn’t it? This was your last chance to make millions, but Mr. Snipe didn’t see it like that. He had made the company to keep, and was sticking to that. He didn’t see his chance to make five million dollars, but you did, and there was someone in your way,” I paused once more, waiting for him to break. He stood with his back to me now. There was no way to tell what he was thinking. If the police could just get here soon. “Can you tell me who that person was?” I asked. He did not answer. “Could it be Mr. Snipe?” I barely whispered. He whipped around, his face red and windswept from running around his house.

“ IT WASN’T ME!” he screamed. “It wasn’t me!”

I could hear the desperation in his voice now. I could hear the police sirens blazing somewhere far off. “It was you wasn’t it? You bought a large number of oxygen masks around the time when the offer was made. You took one of the old oxygen masks and its box home with you. No one would notice, because there was such a large number of them being replaced by new ones. I am sure we would find that your last trip for your company was made to India. That would explain the sunburn you had the day you were questioned. You also found there a vile of snake venom from the fatal Naja Naja. Only a small amount would kill **. ** You put some into the oxygen canister of the back seat’s oxygen mask.

“ Before the flight you deliberately got into a fight with the president. You were trying to get him to sell, but also get Mr. Snipe into the back seat, which was the one farthest from you. You knew your old friend would just want to get away from that problem, would just want to go away, into the back. You went in early to the plane with the package containing the oxygen mask. You switched the two masks, putting the one that had been on the plane in the same box that had held the poisoned one.

“ Of course you could not tell if your plan was working from the front, where you had to stay. It was a stroke of luck that Mr. Snipe went to the seat in which the trap was planted. It was another lucky thing that the he pulled the curtains when he was back there. If he hadn’t, the other two would have seen him die. “ Your job was so easy; all you had to do was do a terrible job flying the plane. The masks would come down and the three passengers would put them on. Mr. Muntz and Mr. Fredricksen would be fine. In the back though, was an unsuspecting Mr. Snipe. He put his mask on like everyone else, but his was different. His canister contained the dangerous snake venom from the Naja Naja.

“ Just breathing it could make you sick, but when it drips down into your mouth it’s a death sentence. I’m familiar with my snakes, Mr. Polly. I’ve had other cases.” I ended. Mr. Polly had turned slowly as I was talking, so that his back was to me. He then spun around like a top. He was grabbing the nearest lamp, obviously to hit me with. Then I noticed the sirens that had blazed through everything I had just said had stopped. Mr. Polly noticed it too. He ran at the back door just as both doors were thrown open. In came two police officers through each one. I reached down and stopped the recorder. While two policemen were getting Mr. Polly into cuffs, I gave my recorder to the nearest policeman. I then walked back to my car, and turned around. I saw Mr. Polly being pushed out the door. I stooped down into the passenger seat of my car and pulled out the canisters. I also handed those to the police, warning them about the venom.

Then I went back inside the house. The box that had held the deathly canister was in here somewhere. There was a carpeted strip in front of the door. Small marks were there, indicating running. Then I looked down the hall to my left. The same marks were there, but only two paths; one on the left, one on the right. The hall had three doors. I followed the prints to the second, and went inside. There was a bed room, one closet, one chest, and one bed. Except for these things, it was empty. I searched the chest first, and found nothing but mismatched shoes. When I was through examining everything from top to bottom there, I looked around the bed. Suddenly I stopped, though. I could just follow the footprints. Now I looked at the running footprint and saw that they went to the bed. On top of the bed. I stood there on the bed and looked up. There I saw was an air vent. Remembering that just breathing a trace of venom would make you sick, I leapt down and ran to the police still outside.

“ There is a box that probably contains a small trace of deadly snake venom in there. It is in the vent above the bed. We need someone in there that has a mask so that they do not get sick,” I told them. Then I got in my car, while the police started to listen to the tape. They looked more and more amazed as I drove away. I only saw Mr. Polly in the back of the car, glaring at them with increasing guilt.

Conclusion
In the days that followed, many things happened. Mr. Polly went to jail, someone took his place at the company, his house was searched, the venom was found, my tape recorder was played for the whole police station, and the other passengers on the plane were told what happened. To others, this was just another job well done. Just another case solved, but to me, this was not just another case. This was one worthy of extraordinary.