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Prologue

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“All right, what’ve we got here?”

“A dead body, boss.”

Clearly it was a dead body, dead as a stuffed yorkie. The First Observer only thought it customary to ask such questions, even if he already knew the answer. He was a man obsessed with customs: cover all bases first by settling the basic truths of the case, then move on to more complex things…like hypotheticals. The First Observer was a great fan of hypotheticals. Still, he was self-conscious enough to know that only the most gifted detectives would entertain their own imagination before analyzing the evidence.

“I bet my Nanna’s prized Peterbald cat, this was an assassination,” stated the Second Observer, snapping a picture of the morbid image and typing lazily away on his smartphone.

“Very observant. An assassination seems about right. In fact, I’ll raise you one, and bet this man is…was a covert political official from another land,” affirmed the First Observer.

“You guys serious? You’ve only been watchin’ the body four bloody minutes!” the Stewardess exclaimed in amazement.

The First and Second Observers turned to the exasperated Stewardess, still reeling from her unpleasant surprise. In those four minutes of fantasizing what possibly could be the cause of death, they had forgotten there was another person in the room. The First Observer turned to his partner for an explanation.

“Ah, yeah, the chick who found the body.”

“Hmmm, I see…suspect number one.”

“Sorry?” stammered the Stewardess, “And how am I suspect number one?”

“By being the first person who came in contact with him when he was dead.”

“What about the person who killed him?”

“Ah, yes, back to the cause of death…” murmured the First Observer, placing his elbows on the corpse’s chest and intertwining his fingers like a scholar lost deep in thought, “That is the pickle jar to open, isn’t it?”

“No, this is,” complained the Second Observer, struggling to open a pickle jar that he had designated two hours ago to be his chosen snack that evening, and he was not about to change snacks all of a sudden. His fumbling irritated the Stewardess enough for her to reach over and pop the lid for him, eliciting the barest of thanks before he muttered between crunches, “Wait, boss, by your reasoning, doesn’t that make you and me suspects two and three?”

“I was hoping such a small detail would escape your reliable insight. I did not wish to incite panic among us. But, yes, you are correct.”

“Panic?” The Stewardess’ irritation now betrayed the sweat of self-concern.

“Indeed. By process of elimination, the killer,” the First Observer shifted his eyes from the Stewardess to the Second Observer and back again, “could be any one of us.”

“Process of elimination?”

“Indeed. That being, the process,” the First Observer gestured towards the corpse lying flat on its back, “by which this poor middle-aged man was eliminated.”

“But we don’t know what that process was, do we?”

“Exactly why we must exercise the proper customs.”

“Okay, well, I have an alibi.”

“Pointless,” waved off the First Observer. “Unless you want the people who vouch for you to be treated as possible accomplices. The whole plane could be in on it…there have been records of such murders on foreign railroads.”

“That goes for you an’ me, too? We might be accomplices?” the Second Observer double-checked between bites.

“Especially you and me. It would present the biggest pickle possible: which of us is the murderer, and which of us is the accomplice? I’d rather one of us remain innocent at least, if possible. In order to do that, we must uncover the process of elimination. Only then might we eliminate the peoples not responsible for this heinous elimination. If you and I are eliminated, in the figurative sense, we can proceed with a proper investigation.”

As the air around them thickened with mistrust and the scent of conspiracy, the Stewardess couldn’t help wondering if her safety was at risk, or only her sanity.

The First Observer set to work on the body. He peered and peeled and poked and prodded, until it became crystal clear to him that he had no idea how to start setting to work on the body. But he kept searching, for surely the suspicions of the other two bystanders would suspect him should he not turn up a single shred of evidence towards his own innocence. Finally, he found something he was certain proved his innocence, as well as the innocence of his partner.

“Aha!”

“Aha!” exclaimed the other two in unison.

Eyes glimmering with the tears of relief, the First Observer hoisted high a strand of hair plucked from the corpse’s sweater. It was long and auburn, matching neither the First Observer, who was bald, nor the Second Observer, whose hair was dirty brown and short. The First Observer held his hand over his heart and smiled.

“Oh….thank God. I was certain we were not murderers.”

“Congratulations, boss-man,” the Second Observer patted him on the back.

“What are you…what’re you crying for, that’s just my hair!”

The Second Observer reeled back in terror, brandishing a wheel of Gorgonzola as a shield. The First Observer jabbed a finger towards the Stewardess in judgment.

“A confession of guilt! We both heard you, we are witnesses!”

“You idiots, it probably got pulled out when he fell on top of me!”

“So there was a scuffle?”

“No! I mean…I don’t…”

“You better alert the authorities, boss-man,” mumbled the Second Observer.

The Stewardess groaned, face in her hands. She was more repulsed by playing a part in this madness, than by being falsely accused.

“But, if I am the murderer…wouldn’t that make you my accomplices?”

The First and Second Observers froze dead in their accusations.

“What the Hell you talkin’ ‘bout?” smacked the Second Observer between bites of a rotisserie chicken thigh.

“Hush, let her explain.”

“Um…well…” the Stewardess thought up the best way to match their line of reasoning. “You’re the one who said this guy was murdered in the first place, right?”

“Obviously. That’s why I’m the First Observer,” affirmed the self-proclaimed detective.

“Then, if you say my hair on the body is proof that I murdered him, aren’t you taking part in the murder by labelling him, ‘murdered?’”

The First Observer paled, telling the Stewardess she was right on the money. He nodded, shook his head, then nodded again.

“You are right…This hair only proves my involvement as well.”

The First Observer fell silent, glancing towards the Second Observer for reassurances. But the Second Observer was looking upwards, clearly avoiding his glance, preoccupying himself by chugging a carton of milk. The First Observer gulped emptily, and faced the responsibility on his own.

“I must have been wrong, then. This is not a murder.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I am no murderer. So this cannot be a murder. That’s a valid conclusion. It does not defy the customs, either.”

“Nice thinkin’, boss-man.”

“Holy shit, this is ridiculous,” mumbled the Stewardess as she turned the body over to the abject horror of her fellow investigators.

“What are you DOING, woman?! You will contaminate the crime scene!”

The Stewardess studied the body of the middle-aged man, which was caked in dry blood…he must have been killed sometime in the middle of the flight. Unfortunately, most of his blood was still sloshing about in the overhead compartment, so he probably had stopped leaking. But the amount left outside the body promised a wound of considerable size, and sure enough, she located a puncture at the base of the jaw, covered by the middle-aged man’s scraggly red beard. His lolling tongue had slipped into it and clogged the hole, and the blood had just begun to clot.

The Stewardess pointed triumphantly at her find, and both observers stepped in closer to examine it.

“Incredible…You have solved the murder!” sighed the First Observer in relief.

“Um, noooo…you still have to find out who killed him!”

“You mean ‘what’ killed him.”

“No, I mean who, we already found the ‘what.’ It’s this hole in his jaw.”

The First Observer shook his head patronizingly at this elementary deduction.

“Firstly, you forget the murder weapon. In every case, the murder weapon is the single most important facet of the murder…even moreso than the motive and the murderer themselves! Secondly, how do you know what killed the victim? Was it blood loss, suffocation, shock…This puncture wound is only the passage by which cause and effect are joined. But what were the cause and effect?”

The Second Observer contributed to the hunt by bending down near the gaping wound, taking a few sniffs, and remarking with disinterest, “Smells like peppermint.”

The Stewardess had had enough. She didn’t spend her days losing track of time in the sky, traded around and disposed of as some seductive threshold idol to lose her mind arguing with the least qualified detectives on the face of the planet. Didn’t they understand how much stress her job required her to be in at all times? It was like they were all too happy to compound it.

“Okay, I’m done with both of you,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Do you not understand that the murderer is still out there? Families are in danger! Anyone out there could end up like this guy in a matter of minutes, and you’re both acting like a couple of dipshit kids playing at being detectives. Why don’t you shut the Hell up and do your jobs?”

A bright blush spread over the First Observer’s face as he sheepishly looked askance at the corpse sitting on the table.

The Second Observer chewed on a half-burned cigar and looked expectantly at his pal.

“The chick’s right, you know, boss-man.”

The First Observer blustered, he blushed, he burned with humiliation. But he was a man of customs, and nodded as if he already knew but didn’t want to come to terms with the fact he was out of his league. This was the sort of situation he had always dreamed of facing, but he knew he was no good at it. Why couldn’t they let him pretend for but a moment instead of bursting his bubble? But the moment was spoiled, and there was no use picking it back up again with half as much energy as he had going into it. Better let it fade away into a fond memory of briefly glimpsing something worth doing.

“Let’s get back to work, then.”

With those words, the First and Second Observers wheeled the cart holding the body over to a small iron cabinet. One opened the cabinet, the other pulled a lever on the cart, and the table tipped up until the body slid right into the hole. A swing of the cabinet, a press of a red button nearby, and they turned back to the Stewardess with the empty look of having completed a mundane task.

The Stewardess had no idea what these two did, it happened so fast. But when she smelled the stench of something burning, her eyes opened wide with horrified realization.

“What did you do?” she asked anyway, second-guessing her eyes for a second.

“Our job, as you requested.”

“Are you burning the body? Why the Hell would you do that?”

“Because it’s our job.”

“I don’t…I meant you should report the murder to your superiors! Launch an investigation with the police! You’ve been giving an autopsy, which isn’t your job.”

“What makes you think those other things are part of our job,” snorted the Second Observer.

“Aren’t you Airport Security?”

The First and Second Observers looked wryly at each other, the former fiddling with his glasses and muttering, “It seems you think all Airport Security exists within a narrow definition of the occupation. We are U.S. Customs Officers. Our expertise is in contraband. And this corpse is…was most definitely contraband.”

“Contraband? It was a freaking murdered human being! How is that contraband?”

“The definition of contraband is something that was exported or imported illegally. Illegally, in that it is not allowed or does not belong in the space created by the aircraft. That is, the aircraft is a reality in which contraband cannot be allowed. That corpse was something that cannot be permitted to exist within the reality of the plane.”

“Especially not this close to Christmas. Not good for the company, not good for the families,” agreed the Second Observer, who continued to sift through edible contraband and find new treats to dispose of. It was emphasized by an overly fervent nod from the First Observer.

The Stewardess could hardly believe her ears. Here were authorities, little as they actually had, blatantly covering up a murder because the murder shouldn’t have happened on the plane. A cover-up, an injustice permitted, all for the sake of keeping peace in the holidays.

“What about the families out there in danger right now? Any one of them could have a seat on their ticket right next to a homicidal maniac!”

“Ma’am, please. We work for the same organization, I’m sure you understand reason. Besides, everyone knows the risks of boarding a plane…Why, there’s a higher chance of the plane crashing into the sea than having your throat slit on a flight. The important thing is, we control what we can. What we can’t control, well…That’s called “Nature.” And we can’t control Nature, can we?”

“Yeah, what’re we gonna do, a little rain dance and hope the murderer goes away quietly?” laughed the Second Observer, squeezing a bottle of lotion into his palm.

The Stewardess sat down, dumbfounded. She had met thick-headed men before, but it was always emotional; they felt something wrong, and likewise felt they were so right in feeling that way. And their emotions betrayed when they knew they were wrong as well, in body language and in word. Winning emotional arguments with intelligent individuals is difficult, she knew that well, and knew that she would be in denial when she was wrong. But to win an argument of stupidity, where the reasoning was for the sake of reason, and the dictator of the argument was so confident in their own reasoning, she was sorely outmatched. How can you argue with a man of customs, who has so customized his world that it seems right to purge all contraband from passing through the gate of understanding? It wasn’t a man she was arguing against; it was a system. And she didn’t get enough paid vacation to take that on.

But the First Observer took the Stewardess’ silent surrender as a chance to elaborate further. The Second Observer had already found a sweater around his size in a pile of neglected textile, and handed his superior a coat to bundle up before they headed home for the day.

“The point I’m trying to make is this, and I’ll put it out there for you to consider: The key instinct in public service is to know what’s best for the people you serve. They rely on you to create a reality in which they feel safe, secure, and empowered to live life however they want it. This fellow, this murderer, whoever he is…Why, he’s just as much a traveler as the rest of them. Our job is to not keep him from transgressing the law – that is beyond our power – but to ensure his transgressions do not break the reality of safety and security that the airport creates for its charges. Perhaps, by example, he will come to understand the danger he poses when he sees just how wonderful an airport can be, and what he stands to ruin if his evil actions are discovered. I bet he will-“

“Especially so close to Christmas,” chimed in the Second Observer.

“Most definitely. And I’m certain he will see the error of his action by its possible consequences.”

In a last ditch effort, the Stewardess sprung up and shouted, “But how can that happen when there are no consequences? When you covered up his action by burning the evidence?”

The First Observer just smiled at her, as if to say: you will come to know in time. But in truth he had no answer. He just felt deep in his heart, in his convictions in custom and the expertise he had studying them, he just knew – he was right, one way or another. And there was no way to explain that to a woman who couldn’t understand, because she refused to listen to reason.

Father John chewed devotedly on the sharp end of his candy cane, still irritated by what the middle-aged man had said to him.

“A rose by any other name,” he chortled, marveling at what made this phrase so special that it should be repeated over and over again since its conception on the Shakespearean stage in all the wrong ways. Truly, mankind was filled with roses by any other name, all giving off the same uninspired fragrance, repeating the same uninspired phrases, following the same uninspiring steps in the same uninspiring dance. There were outliers, of course, but these were becoming fewer and far between – and usually germinated in terrible conditions.

The faux priest smiled gently. He was not at all opposed to terrible conditions. In fact, one could say terrible conditions were the source of his “Great Awakenings.” He had sensed a new one on the horizon, and the name finally revealed itself to him when he arrived at the Sydney airport a few days back. It would be the next recipient of his evangelism – the newest town to join the ranks of those truly “realized.”

The airport was decorated magnificently, with wreathes that looked as though they weighed a tonne, and magnificent garlands thrice as thick as any green anaconda, and far more suffocating. They gleamed over Father John as he passed beneath these verdant arches, making his way to the gate for his final destination. No one really saw him, and that was part of the joy he felt on journeys like this. No one saw him, but they would see what he did, and he could hear them whispering about his legacy as he passed by. Folks living in fear, yet still secure in the realities preserved by those dedicated officers in U.S. Customs. It really put him in the Christmas spirit, and he crunched the last of that nickel-tasting candy cane.

Arriving at the gate, Father John spotted yet another man whose bag was much too big for the overhead compartment. They seemed to be on every plane nowadays, and it tickled the Father when he saw folks glaring down their spectacles at this transgressor of that loosely-enforced law of travel (while his back was turned, of course). He himself did not personally care, always traveling light – it was the disposition of the transgressor that mattered to him. And watching this particular fellow, he seemed a right naive chap who simply didn’t care if he took up extra space. He didn’t feel or think anything of it – it was just natural for this traveler to travel as comfortably as he pleased. And this type of companion always pleased Father John. They were so easily converted.

While waiting to board, the ecstatic clergyman pulled out a book, which he had almost reached the end of, and continued to read. It was in Persian, and might have gotten him in trouble if anyone who worked at the airport knew how to read Persian. But he could count on the chance that no one did, and even moreso on the chance that no one would do a thing about it. It was essential that he finish before the end of the flight, though – He didn’t have time to fly to Heathrow, and from Heathrow to Kerry. Something was happening in Killarney, he could feel it deep in his dark soul.
It was his god’s will that Father John get to Killarney before Christmas. The people there needed his blessing as soon as possible, and, well, if he had to hijack the plane to get there in time…

Let’s just say, converting a flight plan would be an easy miracle for him.

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