I want to say upfront I regret that we couldn’t do anything for Mister Raff. I have known him all my life, and he was just the sweetest, kindliest old man. He didn’t deserve to get caught up in any of this, and I am sorry we couldn’t save him. I am getting ahead of myself, I know, but I just wanted to say that first.
So, that said, I suppose I should begin at the beginning. The whole thing started when the fat dead man was brought in to us, whose real name I still don’t know even now. We figured the fat man had probably been a man of means in life, judging by his fancy clothes-- pinstriped pants, leather shoes, and a bright yellow oilcloth jacket, among other things. Usually when wealthy people die from foul play or go missing, some other wealthy person will kick up a stink demanding justice, or at least answers. In this case though, no one knew who the fat man had been-- or at least no one was willing to admit to knowing him-- and there was no obvious clue as to his identity among his possessions. So when the sherf grumbled he had better things to do than try to figure out how this out-of-towner “had got himself reborn” while clearly “doing something he hadn’t oughta,” out on the outskirts of town, no one batted an eyelid. If anyone was concerned there was a throat-slasher running around town, they weren’t concerned enough to complain too vocally about the sherf’s apathy. The victim clearly had not been from around here, after all, so who knows what he was up to? Who can say whether he deserved his gruesome fate? You just never know with strangers.
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