Frobisher

Meanwhile, in the mid-sized city in the Pacific Northwest, Detective Lieutenant Milton Frobisher studied the autopsy report of an Uber driver who had been run over by a light rail vehicle. The cause of death was about what you would expect: run over by a train. The ME had, however, found one curious fact that didn’t fit with the other injuries - a small indentation behind the vic’s left ear, containing trace amounts of a blackish substance. The incongruously attractive science nerds of the Mid-Size City crime lab were currently trying to identify the substance.

Frobisher had checked with Uber to see who the driver’s last passenger had been - the one who had apparently shoved him out of his car and sped away. That’s when things got weird. The last trip the driver had logged was a routine trip - a regular customer had been taken from her home to her place of work. Then...nothing. All records of his work after that moment had simply vanished, along with the OnStar data for the car.


The phone on Frobisher’s desk rang. The patrolman on the switchboard said, “Lieutenant, I have a missing person’s report. I think it might be related to your Uber case.” Frobisher took the address of the reporting party. It was near the scene of the “accident”.


When he arrived at the address - a cheap apartment building - he was greeted at the door by a dowdy middle-aged woman with a thick, unidentifiable eastern European accent. She was decked out in a frowsy bathrobe of indeterminate color, and pink bunny slippers. She had curlers on her head, but her flaming red “hair” was obviously a wig. Frobisher could see her wispy, grey real hair sticking out from under the edges of the scarlet nightmare.


The woman identified herself as Svetlana...something. He asked her several times to repeat it, but couldn’t understand her. Finally he handed her his notepad and pen and asked her to write it herself. When she handed back the pad (but not his pen, he realized later), she had written it in Cyrillic letters. Oh, well, he thought. I’ll just get it translated later.


After considerable difficulty, Frobisher was able to gather that Ms. Whatever had called because one of her tenants - known to her as Rennington Hightower - had vanished without a trace, owing rent money. When she showed him the apartment, it was completely bare. Frobisher said, “You say he was here just this morning? How could he move all his stuff out so quickly? He must have had stuff, right?” Ms. Whatever replied indignantly, “Of course he was having stuffs! You are the police man - you figure it out!”


Frobisher was about to call for a lab team to come go over the unit, when the lab called him. The head lab technician said, “Frobisher, we identified the substance in the Uber driver’s indentation. It’s from a banana.”


Frobisher felt his stomach churn. “Oh, no...not again”, he thought.