Chapter 1: The Detective

Artist's Depiction of the Tell Tale Heart

“Boy, do I have a good one for you guys,” Detective Dan Greene said as he went to his desk. He walked in holding a file on the man he had just arrested. Dan put the file on his desk and tossed his overcoat on the back of his chair and sat down. The chair squeaked as he leaned back. Propping his legs up on his desk and rubbing his eyes, he was hoping to rub away the things that he had just seen.

“This is one of the freakiest things I’ve ever seen,” Dan said. “In all of my twenty-three years in the field, I’ve never seen anything quite like this.” By now, his fellow officers were curious as to why Dan was so worked up, so he began to gather a small crowd.

The office was located in a suburb of Chicago. The vicinity of the office to such a big city gave them access to a lot of the crime, which makes for some interesting days, though today was particularly slow for the other officers. Big crimes like these don’t happen too often, so when they do, it’s policy to tell everyone what happened.

“I finally figured out where Mr. Jennings is. You remember the missing person from Elgin that we never found?” Dan started.

“Yeah, sorta. Where is he?” one of the officers asked.

“Oh, cut up into about ten pieces under the floorboards of a Mr. Allen Boyd Larsen.” Dan replied. The officers were taken aback by his candor.

“Allen Boyd Larson,” Dan said. “Homicide. Cut a man apart because he had a weird eye. He hid the body parts under the floorboards, and thought he heard the man’s heart beating,” He said.

One of the officers was noticeably disgusted. The thought of a man’s arms and legs being cut off didn’t sit well with him, even considering he was a veteran of seeing the results of hundreds of gang shootings and violent car accidents. The job never gets easy.

“I’ve been working on this Jennings case for about two days now. This Larsen guy was listed as a good friend of his, so I decided to go over there and see what he knew. He calmly said he didn’t know anything, and that he hadn’t seen Jennings in a few days. He offered me a drink, and I sat down with him. We talked for about half an hour, about Jennings, who might have seen him last, what he does for a living, you know, the usual,” Dan recalled.

“After about half an hour, he started getting all weird and fidgety. He kept looking at the floor, as if he was expecting something to fly out of it. I didn’t think much of it, though; I just thought the guy liked to stare. By this time I had gotten all I could from Larsen, so I changed the subject to something a lot lighter. Basketball, television, we started to chat it up. I will say, the guy was easy to talk to. He was calm and cool, except for the staring.

“After about twenty minutes of talking about TV and sports, I decided that I should probably head back to the station. As I got up, I noticed he was starting to get uneasy again. His eyes were dashing between me and the floorboards, and I think he was even starting to sweat. I asked him what was wrong, and he denied anything.” Dan said.

Dan paused for effect as he continued to recall the story.

"I can remember everything in near perfect detail," Dan started. "Allen started stammering about, acting very suspicious about something..."

“Oh…nothing it’s…just…um,” Al stammered.

“What? What is it? Is it about Mr. Jennings?” Dan asked.

“Well….no it’s just….uh….” Al’s voice was rising, as if he was competing with a loud noise. “No I uh…well…UH….YEAH I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MR. JENNINGS,” He screamed.

“By this time I knew something was up. He was screaming at me, and freaking out over this Jennings guy. I asked him if he had any information again, trying to calm him down.” Dan said.

“DON’T YOU HEAR THAT?” Al screamed. “TELL ME YOU CAN HEAR THAT!”

“….um….no I don’t hear anything.” Dan answered, puzzled.

“HOW CAN YOU NOT HEAR THAT?” Al shrieked. He ran off to the garage and came back with a crowbar. He started to rip up the floorboards, while Dan was starting to worry what this guy was doing, so he called for backup.

“This is Detective Dan Green, need immediate assistance over here on Elm,” he radioed in. Al was still clawing away at the floor.

“HERE HE IS!! HERE’S MR. JENNINGS!” Al howled. “THE HEART! IT’S DRIVING ME CRAZY!!”

Dan had no idea what was going on, but as he cautiously got closer he recognized the stench of rotting flesh and dried blood. The smell got to him and he almost lost it. Add to the smell a sadistic man shrieking, and it makes for an interesting situation.

“The man’s eye…I couldn’t stand it. His eye...” Al murmured, calming down now. “His eye was disgusting. It drove me mad. I couldn’t look at him, it was grotesque. Every time I saw him, it was all that I could see or think about. The man was fine to talk to, just as long as you couldn’t see that eye.

“I’m glad he’s gone. I’m glad that eye is no more. I’m glad I can go through life without seeing that eye ever again.” Al went on.

Dan was in shock. In the last fifteen minutes he had gone from a peaceful conversation to witnessing the aftermath of a murder. Dealing with a hysterical lunatic, and smelling the dead corpse of a man who has been dead for at least two days was not the norm for him.

By this time, a squad car was pulling up, and Dan regained his composure. The officer came in the front door and Dan pulled out his cuffs.

“You have the right to remain silent.” Dan began. He continued through the rest of the Miranda rights as he cuffed Allen, who was beside himself at the fact that the eye was gone. Cackling loudly and muttering “the eye….it’s gone. The eye is gone.” Dan escorted him to the back of his car and put him in the backseat.

“Weirdest man I have ever seen.” Dan finished his story back at the office. “Killed a man because of a funky eye….”

Back at the prison, Allen was locked up and awaiting trial. His hair was unkempt and his clothes were now black and white, and he was escorted to his cell where his prison mate was waiting.

“What are you in for?” he asked.

“I cut a man into pieces because I didn’t like his eye.” Al said, trying his best to sput up a bold front.

“Ha ha that’s it? I offed four people in a robbery. You think you can impress me by killing an old man?” the prisoner scoffed.

“Who said that’s all I’ve killed?” Al responded.

For this story I chose to make the office in a suburb of a big city, because that way it still has a little bit of a “small town” feel, but still has access to the big city crime.

I chose to differ from the original story by having the character get arrested by the police and taken to prison, setting up the sequence of events to follow. In the original story, he confesses to the murder and that is the end of the story. Also, I had to find a reason for Dan Greene to go over there. I chose to have him following up on a missing person's report, so that way he had a reason to sit and stay at Allen's house while he started to hear the heart. In the original story, the neighbors heard some shrieks and the police came to investigate. I didn't think this would fit well with what I was tying to do, since I wanted Allen to be above suspicion.

I decided to leave the story on a cliffhanger in order to help segue into the next story, where Allen describes the events of The Cask of Amontillado, where he is the killer.