Chapter 1
He entered the room filled with people, yet he felt lonely. The room’s decibel level was so high, still he felt silent. It had been like this for him since the onset of summer. He left the party, which was organised by his colleagues to celebrate his latest victory, in his red Lamborghini. He made the headlines of all the newspapers again, but this was his last.
Jack Phelps was found dead in his Lambo in the early hours. The car was partially submerged in the river.  There were no scratches or bruises in his body. All the evidences lead to the conclusion that the rich young entrepreneur who had everything in his life committed suicide. His moody and gloomy behaviour in the recent months made the Police believe the suicide theory
I could not digest this. Not because I am a detective, but Jack was my best friend since School days. I felt that something was bothering him. But no one could tell me anything on the actual reason. I went to my superintendent and requested him to make me in charge of the murder case of Jack Phelps.

Chapter 2
I formed a team comprising of the best detectives in the agency. I asked them to find out each and everything about Jack. But nothing came up in the first few days. The case took a huge turn when we got his credit card statement. It turns out that Jack Phelps from his corpse is still buying new clothes from Ralph Lauren.
We contacted Ralph Lauren’s office and asked them to send the camera footage of the day in which the purchase had taken place. It was a 6 foot man with a long beard and with the eye of a policeman; I could surely say that he was a crook. We brought him in. I stood behind the one way mirror watching my fellows interrogate him. “Where did you get this wallet”. “It’s mine” answered the crook. “See my boy we have already enough charges to lock you up for the rest of your life, so you better make this easy”. “Okay” said the terrified crook. “I had stolen it from a guy, I didn’t see him but he had a red Lamborghini. While I was riding on the National Highway 67 I saw an abandoned car on the side of the road with all its lights and engines on, so I got down to see if anyone was inside, but there was none.  So I took the wallet and left”. “You could have taken the car easily, why the wallet” asked the officer in blue. “See sir I am just a pickpocket I don’t steal huge and valuable stuff which would be hard for me to sell since I am not experienced in that field”. “One month inside the prison” ordered the judge.
Now there was 1 question in my head. As far as I knew him he would never leave his wallet and the car keys inside the car while going out. So it was for certain that Jack Phelps was kidnapped before his death.

Chapter 3
Dozen days passed by and my superintend was getting impatient and the best lead we had got was the statement of a crook. So everyone was under the cloud until Jack’s autopsy results arrived. The efficiency of our forensics department was not that bad. But why did Jack’s autopsy take this much time? Something was shady. I made one of my fellow co-workers to follow up on this and he had found out that the report we had was a fake and the original one had got stolen. They said that they had already sent a letter regarding this to us. So even though I didn’t share this with the team, I knew that someone on the inside was working against me.
I moved past that since I had no evidence about that incident. While I was parking my car I noticed that my car had a rear camera which records everything, so there must have been one in Jack’s car also. I rushed to Lamborghini dealership which held the car impounded. They said that the car camera always saves the footage as cached data. But nobody really asks for it so it deletes itself every month. Luckily, today was the last day of the month. We got the footage and found out that Jack voluntarily got into a Black Rolls Royce. I looked up the vehicle number and the owner’s name was John Phelps, Jack’s envious brother.
I solitarily went to talk about this to him. “Oh hey Henry, what brings you to my abode” asked John after he opened the door. “We know about the meeting which you had with Jack” asked me. “Oh yes, it was kind of a secret, that was why I didn’t tell anything to the police” said John. “Well then, let’s flash a little a light on the little secret of yours shall we?” I curiously asked. “As you know Jack was gloomy for a couple of days”. “Yes I am aware of that” I replied. “He had been receiving death threats since the start of the summer”. “Then ……why….why…..didn’t he come to me with this and how did you know about this? Did he tell you?” I was anxious. “Because the death threats he was receiving , it was not for him but instead, it was for his family and if he spoke a word of this then whoever wrote that promised that his family would be murdered”. “If no one knew, then how on earth did you know?” “When I received my first threat, It was clearly said in it that my brother was also involved in this”. “What did you guys talk about on the eve before Jack’s death?’’ I asked. “What else could we talk about other than these horrifying threats”? “May I see them, these threats?” I asked. “I have burned them all, it was clearly written on those letters to burn it after I had read it”. Once again me and my investigation lost hope.

Chapter 4
“Any new leads on that Jack Phelps case sir?” asked the boy at the counter of McDonald’s, since everyone knew about the case and that I was in charge of it. As I pulled my wallet out, the boy said “Nice wallet sir god knows when I would be able to afford such a wallet”. Then it hit me, we only focused on the credit card kept inside Jacks wallet, not the wallet itself. I dashed to the evidence room only to find my best clue since months, was missing.
Once again hope didn’t smile for me instead it made a malicious grin because what I was going to hear from my lazy but efficient secretary was going to change the whole dynamics of this case. “The ballistics of Jacks Phelps wallet has come, sir”. I was astounded. “So, does the ballistics have the wallet with them, Julia?” “Yes, sir” she replied.   “As the chief of this investigation don’t you think I should have known about this?”  I furiously asked. “But, sir I thought, since you were having lot on your plates, I thought I would inform you when the results arrived, sorry sir”.  She said it with guilt. “Its fine, could you please keep the report in my office”.  “Will do, sir” suddenly my lazy assistant got a fire in her.
Surprisingly there was nothing in his wallet other a few currencies and some nickels. But I noticed an odd thing. He had 5 different currency notes all from different countries. Now Jack liked to collect but he always kept it in his house since it was too valuable for him. To me the 5 different currencies weren’t odd thing but, the peculiar thing was why he did he take his beloved collection outside?

Chapter 5
When he was alive he always used to joke around and say “When I die, I would always leave a path for you to find my killer” I never thought I would have to live up to that. The currencies is my clue but how….how do I decode it. Anger and disappointment were making their way inside me. So I started from scratch, I took a piece of paper and wrote the names of these notes and its value.
DOLLAR  - $5
POUND   - £4
DIRHAM - 1 ?.?
RUBLE     - ?1
PESO - mex$2
What is he trying to tell me? Anxiety and stress are also now making their way in. Then out of the blue curiosity finally blessed me, why is he carrying only certain number of certain currencies? It was a long shot but it was the only shot I had. After 10 hours of staring into the paper, my brain finally did the magic. The value of each currency represented each letter in its currency name and if you put them in an order of their values of the currency you will get a name, the name of the murderer of Jack Phelps.
Jack was a brilliant man, he probably didn’t want the murderer to find that he has left a trail and that’s probably why he had chosen this extraordinary method. “A” from dirham. “N” from pound, “D” from dollar, “R” from ruble and finally “E” from peso.  ANDRE, the name which I was searching for almost 6 months was finally lying on my desk. Now only one more question remained. Who was ANDRE and why did he murder Jack Phelps.

Chapter 6
The end was near and I was able to feel it. Andre was one of Jack’s employees and the FBI was going to bust his office in one minute. We found a bottle of “Belladonna” or more commonly known as the deadly nightshade in his top drawer. If had enough then it will kill the person within 4 to 5 hour. We were now sure that Andre Lopez was the murderer. We brought him in and I questioned him. “Why did you do it? Why did you murder jack Phelps?” I asked fierce fully. “I only did it to save myself and my family” the murderer replied. “Could you please elaborate on that?” I asked with curiosity running through my veins. “In our company, there was an opening for the vice president’s place and in order to attain it we had to accomplish our own individual goals. I was desperate for that position, so I purposefully drugged one of our clients to make him close the deal which helped me to reach my goal and VC’s chair was mine. It was all well until Jack found out about it and he confronted me about it. I got scared when he told he would he go to the cops and get me arrested. So I sent him death threats which I hoped would work but it didn’t and then I even threatened his brother to make sure that Jack was silent but unfortunately that also didn’t work and I had no other option except to kill him” confessed the sinner. “You are a sick psychopath” I said with my temper on an edge.  “Lock him away sergeant”.   I took the case file and stamped solved in it.
Sometimes I wonder if Jack hadn’t done the right thing with André, then he probably would have been alive now. But, simultaneously I remember what he always used to say to me that “It’s not hard to do the right thing. It’s hard to know what’s the right thing is- but once you know what is right, then it’s hard not to do it.

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