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  • Brian Stansell replied to the topic Murder mysteries for dummies in the forum Mystery/Suspense/Thriller Writers 4 years, 2 months ago

    Here’s just a little something I wrote which shows some misdirection:

    Rathburn did not know what he was in for. We had found strategic positions and lay in wait for him. There was not a lot of cover, so we had to find safe positions behind the austerely furnished room. Getting access had taken months of planning. Rathburn often worked late nights from this place. He found the muted evening lights of the city soothing from the 46th floor. The day businesses in the surrounding buildings had long since darkened their office floors. The digital read 11:40 pm. Only janitorial staff prowled at this late hour and systematically turned the lights out as they worked from the top floors downward. The evening weather had been overcast. A light rain had wet the large glass windows, giving a shadowed peppering to the dark walls still partially illumined by the waning city glow below. Darkness shrouded us, for we knew it would be dangerous to our objective if he spotted us too soon. We each had a line of sight to the door through which we knew he was bound to enter. I sighted down the lens and trained the crosshairs right about the five and a half foot mark so I would be sure to get a headshot. I smiled to myself as I anticipated the stunned look that would pass across his face as he entered. Three or four of the others might get in a profile target point, but I believe that mine would be the money shot.

    At a quarter till the handle of the conference room door clicked as a key was turned in the lock. The door swung inward. A man stood silhouetted in the doorframe, bathed red under the hall exit light. Half a second later, from outside of the building windows, the conference room strobed with muted flashes of light. I was right. Mine had been the money shot.

    Rathburn had been stunned and had taken several shots before we all revealed our purpose, by shouting, “Happy Birthday, Mr. Rathburn!”

    To which he replied, “You’re all fired.” But then he grinned. The man was prescient, always seeming to know everything that went on in his company from the lowest level clerk to the top VP. He rarely registered surprise in all the years I’d known him. But he did in this photo. The money shot image on my camera’s digital screen had been of a man genuinely caught off guard.

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