The team was inspecting the scene, photographing the corpse. Laying on his back, in his own bed, lifeless and dull.
”Sir, that's the director of the women's shelter.”
He was almost unrecognisable, marinated in his own liquids. The official autopsy would follow next week, but looking around, the cause of death was obviously either alcohol poisoning or choking in his own vomit. The kitchen was full of bottles, all empty. An opened container of windshield fluid. Exactly one dirty glass, with lip prints on the rim and its bottom containing a layer of what looked like said windshield fluid diluted with whatever alcohol had been the last to run out.
”It's unbelievable. Such a great man, with everything he's done for others. Who would've guessed he was battling this behind it all.”
”Oooh, you have a home bar!”, she'd said that night, admiring the impressive cabinet of bottles full of colourful liquids. ”Tee-hee, I don't understand any of these fancy drinks~ Come on, explain them to me!” And so he'd shown each bottle to her, explaining the expensive flavours, mixing them nice drinks to start their date right.
Had the police suspected anything and dusted the scene for fingerprints, they would've found only the director's own prints on each bottle.
”How about you make us another round to get properly in the mood?” She'd asked that night, after discreetly pouring her own drink away.
”Do you think it was... you know. Intentional? He HAD just divorced his 5th wife. I'd be suicidal, too.”
”Or he just drank without thinking.”
”How about one more drink, I want to try the green one!” She'd said, forcing a post-coital smile on her face. ”Oh, can you still walk? No worries, I'll do it!”
And carefully, with her gloved hands, she'd pulled out the windshield fluid from her bag and mixed it into a large, deadly drink. He was already too drunk to even realise she wasn't drinking with him anymore. She just sat there, watching him for hours.
”You know, your wife... well, your ex-wife, she told me you're a drunk. And what you do when you're drunk.”
”This will devastate our city. The victims of domestic violence have just lost perhaps the only pillar of safety they've ever known, to a stupid drinking accident.”
After losing his pulse, she'd wiped him swiftly clean and washed her own glass to match all other clean dishes in the house. She didn't have all night, couldn't afford to lose her perfect work attendance on the very day she needed an alibi. She'd gone back to the kitchen, and very carefully emptied all the bottles into a bucket to explain why he'd resorted to drinking windshield fluid, topping the gigantic cocktail with the condom they'd used. Those were the kind of evidence she needed to take with her, to make it into an accident.
The same kind of accident his ex-wives, and pretty much everyone in the shelter used to get themselves into.
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