The Man Who Loved Pie

by Karl El-Koura

About the Author: Karl El-Koura was born in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and currently lives in Ottawa, Ontario (Canada). More than sixty of his short stories and articles have been published in magazines since 1998, and in 2012 he independently published his debut novel Father John VS the Zombies (in 2015 he published the sequel, Bishop John VS the Antichrist). Karl holds a second-degree black belt in Okinawan Goju Ryu karate, is an avid commuter-cyclist, and works for the Canadian Federal Public Service.

Excerpt

My first case as a detective involved the murder of an English professor, shot in his office on March 14th at one minute to two o’clock in the afternoon—a precision communicated to the police department by one of the many people who called in the crime, and relayed to my partner and me by our lieutenant with a sardonic smile.

I’ve been accused of being too serious, so I was glad to find that the lieutenant’s callousness seemed to bother my partner just as much as it bothered me. He was suddenly in a quiet and pensive mood, which, although we’d only met that morning, I already knew was an unnatural state for him.

“My car or yours?” I had concerns that my partner, Bellock, wouldn’t fit—or, to put it charitably, fit comfortably—in my small Honda Civic’s passenger seat.

“Your car,” Bellock said, still seeming a bit distracted. “I don’t drive.”

When we arrived on campus fifteen minutes later, Bellock pushed open the door and grunted as he stepped out of the car. He started walking briskly, but in the wrong direction.

“The building is this way,” I called out after him, trying to mask my surprise and concern at a detective who got lost in the first minute of our first investigation together.

Bellock was already crossing the street (against the light, and ignoring the honks of disgruntled drivers), his destination seemingly a 50s-style diner. For such a big man with such short legs, I thought, he sure could move quickly.

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