Attacks against obnoxious but nevertheless defenseless inflatables occur daily in the streets of our great city. These are the stories of the dedicated men and women of the Christmas Season Crime squad who investigate these hideous crimes against these helpless… whatever you wanna call them. This is what they do.
CSI – Christmas Season Investigation
Saturday, December 13
When investigator Bob Sawyer arrived at the crime scene, he found his partner Judy Brown already there.
“What do we have here, Judy?” he asked, surveying the area as he spoke.
“It looks like a massacre, if you ask me.”
“How many vics do we have?”
“Three. They’re all in a pile over here.”
She led Sawyer to a pile of what appeared to be stack of official NFPA/CSFM Fire Retardant, weather resistant PVC coated rip stop nylon crap of all different colors but mostly blood red.
“Can we I.D. any of them?”
“I won’t know for sure until we get them back to the lab and I’m able to pump some air into them. But I’m guessing that this one is Santa and this one's probably some kind of a snowman.”
“How many kinds of snowman are there?” he asked, trying to relieve the tension.
She ignored him so he got back to business.
“Do we know what took the wind out of their sails?”
She wanted to ignore him again but this was a fairly legitimate question, given the circumstances.
“Someone pulled the plug would be my guess. But who would do this? And why?”
“Who called it in?”
“A mailman. Said he was driving through the neighborhood and something just didn’t seem right. And then he saw them…just lying there…slumped over in a heap.
“I take it we don’t have any witnesses.”
“No one’s talking but we’ve got some uniforms canvassing the neighborhood. The family wasn’t much help. They said that the last time they saw them, around three hours ago, everything looked fine. They were bouncing around, had big smiles on their faces, looked real cheery, you know…all Christmassy.”
“You believe them?”
“I don’t know. You know as well as I that it’s usually someone close to the victim. But why would they do it? This neighborhood is pretty heavily decorated. Why would anyone take out their own Santa?”
“That’s our job to find out.”
“I know one thing for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“They’ll be no rockin’ round the Christmas tree, tonight.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get the scrooges who did this.”
Sawyer directed the uniforms to put plastic caution tape around the plastic crime scene and went into the house to talk to the family. Judy Brown loaded the victims into her trunk and proceeded downtown to continue her investigation.
Several hours later Sawyer returned to headquarters. He entered the room where Lab Tech Brown was poised over one of the victims.
“It’s funny,” she said, “but I couldn’t help thinking…” her voice trailed off as if unable to organize her thoughts.
“What is it, Judy?”
“Well, I was just thinking how when I work on a human I put plastic gloves on to protect me…and I guess to protect the evidence and here I am working on a piece of plastic and I’m still putting on plastic gloves for whatever reason…I don’t know…you know.”
She looked quizzedly at Sawyer who looked just as confused as she did.
“I got a feeling that this is just the beginning of many strange things we are going to encounter with this case,” Sawyer said, sensing that she might be letting the case get the better of her.
“It’s not going to be easy on any of us but our job is to speak for the victims. These guys will tell us what we need to know. We’ve just got to go where the evidence takes us. So what have we got so far?”
“I was right about Santa and the snowman. The other one appears to be a reindeer.”
“Rudolph?”
“I don’t think so. Look here,” she said, holding up the limp, lifeless plastic remains of what was once a charming fantasy deer. Sawyer tightened his lips and nodded, obviously impressed with his partner.
“No red nose. Good work.”
Suddenly the phone rang. Sawyer picked it up and Judy watched him grimace and shake his head as he listened. He put the phone down and just stared at the floor.
“What is it?”
“I think—” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Sometimes, even for a seasoned Christmas Season veteran, it all gets to be too much.
“Come on, tell me. We’re a team aren’t we? So let me help.”
“I think…I think we have a serial killer on our hands. We won’t know for sure until we get all the facts but it looks like two more Santa’s, another reindeer, some elves and an Easter bunny.”
“An Easter bunny!”
“Yeah, go figure. All I know is we got to stop this insanity before no inflatable individual feels safe in suburbia.”
“I don’t know? An Easter bunny at Christmas time. We may already be at that point.”
“Is there anything else we know, anything at all that can help us get to the bottom of this massacre?”
“Well there doesn’t appear to be any cuts or tears. They don’t appear to be shot and I’m ruling out poison—just because. I think my first hunch may have been right. Someone pulled the plug on these guys—but who—and why?”
“If ever there was a case for a case going cold it would be this one. There just doesn’t seem to be much to go on.”
Just then, a patrolman burst in, ran over to a television set and turned it on.
“Sawyer, you gotta see this.”
Fox News was highlighting a rally just a few blocks from the crime scene. An evangelical minister, standing in front of a manger scene and holding up a Bible was protesting what he called the ongoing war on Christmas. He was calling for Christians to unite and fight back.
“Stand up for what you believe in,” he urged the crowd of spectators. “We have to take Christmas back and put it where it belongs—in the churches. We have to put Jesus back into Christmas and take Santa Claus and Rudolph and those lazy freeloading elves out. We have to rid our department stores of the false gods of Christmas.
“Once we succeed in saving Christmas we have to take back Easter…and All Saint's Day too.”
“Did you hear that, Judy? I understand where he’s coming from, I really do, but honestly no one else is even thinking about taking Easter back—not with twelve more shopping days to go in the Christmas season.”
“You might have something there, Bob. No one would even be talking about saving Easter in December unless they’d just recently had an encounter with an Easter bunny. I think we’re going to have to pay a visit to this community terrorist…ask him a few questions.”
“Well, if we’re right about the guy, I know one thing for sure. We won’t have to trick a confession out of him. My guess is he’ll be squealing like a pig about to become an Easter ham just to claim credit for this crime.”
“The stupid ones always do,” Judy agreed, shaking her head in disbelief.
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