DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery by CHRISTOPHER M. COLAVITO

you have to hope it's not at a critical time. I didn't get fortunate that way.”
    “Basically, you're telling me that I need to challenge everything I assume, to make sure the foundation of my conclusions is solid.”
    “Right. If you're wrong at the start, you're never going to get to the right finish.”
    “So, with that in mind, what if we've been working with a wrong assumption on this case?”
    “What are you thinking?”
    “We've been assuming that no one could have been in the room to commit the murder, but what if there is a way to get in and out that we missed?”
    “That's not a half-bad idea. Do you think we should go back again and see if we can figure something out?”
    “If nothing else, it'll get your mind off the past.”
    “Let's go.”
     
    * * *
     
    Puzzles have solutions, but they aren't always obvious, and can escape you if you don't know what it is you're looking for. Detective Knox realized the truth of the axiom as they stood at the scene once again. No matter how closely they had looked before, they could not catalog every detail. The information they acquired was filtered through the lens of what they already knew, meaning the needle in the haystack could be ignored if they weren't looking for one.
    That there was no escape from the room was obvious, otherwise they would have already identified it upon their first inspection. They had assumed the locked doors and windows led to a single conclusion, but Lane was right to challenge this assumption. Plenty of antique buildings contained hidden secrets and passages, the sorts of tricks that made escape possible. Without a blueprint, finding those avenues, were they to exist, required patience, skill, and a degree of luck Knox was confident they did not possess.
    Lane instructed his partner to lock him out of the room, in order to test his acumen and see if there was a method for breaching the locked door. Knox heard rustling and scraping on the other side of the oak blockade, but didn't expect the brass latch to move. A simple examination of the mechanism had told Knox everything he needed to know; that there was no method of moving it from outside the room without conjuring magic into reality. Lane made a valiant effort, considering every possibility.
    Hearing a knock, Knox let his partner back in, confident they could now cross that point of contention off their list. Lane did not seem frustrated, but rather disappointed that he had not stumbled upon an elegant solution to their problem.
    “There's no way anyone got through that door.”
    “I agree, but I could have told you that before you wasted your energy trying to get through it.”
    “We're here to challenge assumptions. You can't do that without a little experimental methodology.”
    “Have it your way. If you want to fail, be my guest.”
    The pair continued their search, scouring the walls for any clue that a hidden door lay waiting behind them. Lane plucked books from the shelves, hoping each one was the trigger to open a portal, while Knox ran his hands over the smooth surfaces, looking for a crease that could conceal a hinged escape. No inch of the room was left untouched, but they were unable to find anything they had missed in their earlier inspections.
    Lane dropped to his knees, anxious to see if the answer had been under foot the whole time. A wooden floor could easily hide a false board that might cover a tunnel, and Knox watched as his partner scoured the floor for a sliver of wood out of place.
    With a thought in mind, Knox left the room and went into the adjoining one. He paced out measurements, doing rudimentary architectural calculations in his head. Having satisfied himself, he walked outside, around the building, examining the walls that contained the scene from the prying eyes of the outside world. He was confident in what he could see, and returned to find Lane sitting on the floor, his head hung in despair.
    “I can't find anything out of the ordinary. There's