Funny Or Dead (A Detective Hank Strange Tale) By: Donald D. Shore
My name is Detective Hank Strange. I work for the L.A.P.D. Homicide Division. I'm good at my job. Real good. The reason for that is I have what some might call a gift. I call it a curse. I first discovered my condition as rookie on the force. An elderly woman had been murdered in her home and I was first on the scene. She had been strangled in her bed by an intruder. I stood there, beside the bed, and she turned to me, her face swollen and blue, and said, “It was the neighbor boy, little Jimmy Cadaver, who killed me.” She turned away, her body still, as she said, “And I thought he was such a nice young man.” The detectives arrived, searched the house, and decided the perp was a transient who frequented the neighborhood. I would have left it at that. Chalked it up to a freak hallucination on my part, except the woman kept talking to me, her voice inside my head, saying, “It was little Jimmy Cadaver who killed me.” She wouldn't leave me alo...