I can’t say the job made me this way. More like me being this way made me right for the job. I can’t see myself doing anything other than what I do, it’s what I do best and I’ve got the success to prove  it. My name is Dwight Dorado and I solve crime. I think of myself as a crime solving, crime busting, mastermind and a very modest person. I’ve solved every case I’ve ever had and I intend to keep it that way but this particular case is the one that tried to ruin my perfect record    and came very close to doing so. This is the story of my best case to date; it made me famous.

I remember it like it was just the other day; it was a nice sunny Californian day and I was in my office typing up some emails, doing paperwork, filing documents the usual boring office work. When Paul, one of the senior policemen came and told me about this suspected murder report that had just come in.   A woman had been on her early morning run before work, she was on her usual route along the beach when she spotted a strange shape floating in the water. She ran past, without paying much attention, however on her way back it was much closer to the shore and was shocked at what she saw. A piercing screamed shattered the silence of the morning, when she realised what it was; and called 911 immediately from her mobile. Floating face down on the water was a body. She was unable to distinguish any facial features however she knew it was a man due to his size and shape. She stood still rooted to the spot just staring at him not able to take her eyes off the man, not sure what to do.

This was what the officers down at the beach had just reported to the office. Paul said that it will need investigating and the case was mine if I wanted it, of course I said yes. I couldn’t wait this was going to have been my first case in weeks and it felt good, really good to be getting away from the desk and back to doing what I loved. Grabbing my coat off the peg I put it and my aviator sunglasses on and shut the door as quickly as I could without slamming it. I wanted to be at the scene as fast as I could, I was determined to be the first man on the scene and see what else this woman knew, was this murder or just an accident that happened out at sea? Either way it needed investigating I was just hoping it would be a murder. I was not letting Henderson get there first, this was my case, and this was the one that would put me in the history books. I launched myself into the driver’s seat of my car, and sped off to the beach.

 Pulling up at the beach I was happy to see that I was the only one there besides the two officers that had first gone to the scene, they were down on the beach, and one was taping off the area while the other was talking with the witness reassuring her. Walking down the steps onto the beach, the officer that had been taping the area off came over to me. He was one of the few officers I didn’t know. However his appearance told me everything I needed to know, I knew he took his job very seriously due to his shoes being polished, his shirt and trousers had been ironed the previous night, his gun and all his other equipment had been thoroughly cleaned, he was clean shaven and had almost every police decoration on his uniform. In short he was hard working and respected, but he also hadn’t been sleeping great. His eyes looked weary, was this due to being guilty of something, or a relationship problem. He hadn’t even had breakfast because he had come right here. That was beside the point I was here for a reason.

 The officer was now right in front of me; “Are you Dorado” he asked “Yeah (I flashed my detective badge), can I speak to the witness” “sure but if you want to see the body you’ll need to go to the morgue, some guys areon their way to take the body away to be examined and identified.”  He went back to taping off the area while I went over to the other officer and the woman. I was not here for small talk I just wanted to speak with the woman that saw the body. So I went straight up to her ignoring the officer who I doubted would be worth talking to anyway. I was right not to talk to the officer who was a rooky and he didn’t appear to have found out anything from the woman because the first thing he said to me was, “she seems upset.” What an idiot. “Thanks” I replied in the most sarcastic tone possible. That shut him up.

I approached the witness “Hello I’m Detective Dorado can you tell me exactly what happened this morning”. She replied “I told them everything I know on the phone”. That annoyed me because, I could have been looking at the body but I was sure she did know more. I looked her dead in the eye and asked her if she had any idea where the body came from but she knew nothing. The more senior officer had come over to join the conversation so I asked him if the body had any ID he replied no with a sigh. This was terrible the witness knew nothing I didn’t know anything about the body other than that it was male. This was turning out to be my worst case yet and after all that excitement too. The men from the morgue had arrived and were taking the body away so I ran off up the beach up the steps and into my car. I quickly ran my hand through my jet black hair to fix the wind damage. I could feel the wax all over my hand but my hair was fixed and I could head to my next stop, the morgue.

I arrived at the morgue hoping that Henderson one of my rival detectives hadn’t beaten me there. He was my main rival; he was good, not as good as me though. I knew he would be there, he must have known that there was a team collecting the body and went straight to the morgue. As expected I arrived and he was already there. I was mad with myself, how could I have been so stupid my excitement got the better of me I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I should have got more details before I rushed off. The worst part was that I could have seen the body but I chose to go to the witness first. Now Henderson was going to be one step ahead of me. He was unmistakeable with his long, messy, brown hair, bushy eyebrows, tall skinny body, high tops, a hoodie jeans and a t-shirt. Oh, how I hated the sight of him. I can’t believe he calls himself a detective with an image like that. He only gets away with it because he is a private investigator not employed by LAPD. I dress in a suit for work; I don’t wear the tie though, and mostly wear Vans.

 His intelligence makes up for his image, there is no denying that he was good at his job but not quite in the same league as me. “You’re late” Henderson said in the most irritating way possible. He was mocking me. “How long has the body been here?” I asked Alison the mortician, trying to ignore Henderson who at this point was looking very smug knowing now that I didn’t know much about the body. “It just got here” she told me. Excellent I thought, Henderson can’t know that much.

 I looked at the body placed on the slab it was obviously a man; he was quite short, shorter than me which was rare being only 5ft 10. He was rather plump, but most importantly his body was covered in second degree burns worst effected was his face which I found both unfortunate and interesting. The burns appeared to be the only injuries he had. Unfortunately these burns made the face unrecognisable, a coincidence? My heart was already racing, pumping with adrenaline, this case was starting to get very interesting. How did he end up in the sea? Did he jump in the ocean to extinguish the fire from his body? If so where did this fire happen? Was it on a boat, a restaurant or a house next to the sea? So how did he die was it from drowning? The burns weren’t serious enough to kill him. This was brilliant! A man had mysteriously died and washed up on the beach covered in burns. I took a sample of his DNA in case I would need to match it up at any point. Then decided it was time to start using the only information I had and investigate this case further.

I decided to call the fire service and asked them if they had been called out to any fires by the ocean. Hopefully I would get a location that would have some clues as to how this man died. I took out my mobile and started putting in the numbers. “Who are you calling” Henderson asked, he was taking samples of the body testing for poison or any substances that could have killed the man, “the fire department” I told him. I held the phone to my ear “Hello which service do you require”, “fire department” I told the woman. I asked about what I wanted to know as soon as I was put onto the fire department. Unfortunately the operator said I would have to go to the main fire department building in Los Angeles to find out what I need to know. Before leaving I glanced at what Henderson had been working on whilst he was in the restroom. Henderson had found alcohol in the man’s blood. This was great another clue to work with. Now, time to go over to the main LAFD office.

Once I was there I managed to get access to one of the computers that had all of the fire reports on it and found that in the last 10 hours there had been 6 fires reported along the coast in a 3 mile radius of where the body was found and one of them was at a party at which there had been alcohol. The perfect description! The fire had taken place on a $1.4 million yacht that had been just off the coast when the fire began. Hopefully someone that was there would be able to give me more information on who this man was and what happened to him. The yacht was in the Marina Del Rey; Los Angele’s main marina, so that’s where I went. Thankfully despite the marina being huge the Yacht was relatively easy to find. The reason being it was almost twice the size of any of the others it had three floors, a jet ski on the back and it was about 40 metres long by 10 metres wide. This thing would take me ages to investigate and Henderson could have solved the case by then and I didn’t want to take that risk. I would have to search the yacht fast.

I parked my car then walked over to where the yacht was. There was a man standing just outside the door, he was a crew member. As I walked down towards the man who appeared to be slightly hung-over (obviously from the party the previous night) asked me with a slight weariness in his voice “can I help you”? This was his first job, he could have only been 19. When I started to get closer he started to fidget a little and get quite worried. “It’s all right I’m a detective” I told him. He still seemed uncomfortable with me being there.  I thought that this was strange, what could he possibly be so worried about. I proceeded to walk towards him asking if I could speak to someone about the fire that happened. At that moment a beautiful looking woman poked her head through the door she was wearing a red dress that went down to her knees and had a rather short trim. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties. She had a lot of make up on and dark blue eyes, full of mystery. She had long, blonde hair that was clearly dyed. “Hello, I’m Hanna, how can I help you” she said with a certain kindness in her voice. “Yes, you can, I’m Detective Dorado, and I’m here to investigate the fire that took place last night.” “Follow me” she replied.

 The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was how it screamed money at you. There were crystal champagne glasses everywhere and a bar with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of alcohol. There was a pool table, classic arcade machines, 50inch TVs in almost every room I’m sure I saw a chandelier somewhere. She had led me to a cabin in which almost everything was burnt. It had a balcony, a TV, various cabinets and wardrobes, a king sized bed that was badly burnt and a singed carpet that’s burn marks were dotted around the room and not all connected, very strange. The fire had taken a strange pattern and looked almost as if it had been chasing something because there were only burn marks in certain places. There was a burn line that seemed to go around the room in the middle of the wall between the floor and the roof. I had realised that this fire was no accident. Then something caught my eye as one of the curtains (one of the few things in the room that wasn’t burnt) blew in the wind revealing some sort of blow torch. Something wasn’t right here.

 “Whose room is this?” I asked her “The owner of the yacht,” she replied “where is he now” she paused for a moment then smiled “he went out.” Her phone started ringing “I have to take this” she said as she walked out the room. She had the contact saved as MM. I took the opportunity to take samples of something strange on the curtain and to take the blow torch as evidence. I knew it was now time to leave so I checked one more thing and left before she could come back. I now knew why the guy at the door was worried. I had managed to talk to him before I ran along the dock back to my car. I got in, sat down, and stopped for a moment to gather my thoughts. I needed to make sure of a few things so I drove home to search some stuff up.

Bursting through the front door of my house I went into my perfectly arranged and tided office and threw my body into my black leather office chair. Smashing the on button for my computer I then had the antagonising wait for it to boot up. While online I managed to find out that the yacht I had been on, ‘Joy of the seas’ was owned by multi-millionaire Roy Moni. Recently I had read about this guy in the papers, his company just had record high sales making him millions. I now knew that Roy Moni was the victim of this murder, it was all about the money. Unfortunately there was no record of who this Hanna woman was; therefore she hasn’t known Roy Moni for very long. I then found out that he had a brother Michael. Who would now inherit all of Roy’s money due to the fact he was now dead. I then checked the sample from the curtain under the microscope and found that it was an exact match to the sample I took from Roy’s body earlier. It was saliva that had been on the curtain. I had all of the pieces of the puzzle now. There was just one thing left to do; put the culprits behind bars and add another successful case to the list.

 I glanced at a photo of my family as I left, this one’s for you sis, I said to myself.  My sister helped me become a detective; you see my dad wanted me to go into the family business, but that wasn’t for me, I was born to be a detective. Now every case I solve is to prove to my dad that I can be successful as a detective and to prove to my sister that she was right. I twisted the knob of the door and walked out into my car with a smile on my face. I always thought solving a case was the best feeling in the world.  As I sped back to the LAPD to report to the chief I’d solved the case, I managed to collate a few of the facts in my head, making sure everything made sense.

Walking into the chief of Police’s office with a smile on your face is something not many people do. I was bursting to tell him everything I knew. “You solved another case then Dorado” he said seeing the smile on my face. “Yes sir.” “Well please share” So I told him this. The body belonged to the man Roy Moni the multi-millionaire; he was just celebrating his company reaching an all-time sales high, little did he know how his celebrating would end. It all took place yesterday night; he was on his yacht celebrating with all his mates, having fun, getting drunk. When a woman he had been enjoying the company of all night took him up to his bedroom. How do I know this? Well before leaving the yacht I managed to speak with a crew member. He told me that before the fire, Roy and this woman he hadn’t seen before went up to Roy’s bedroom. I then worked out that while in the bedroom the woman tried to burn Roy with a blow torch. Roy then tried to get away from her. I know this from the strange path that the fire took and the blow torch I saw on the balcony. With the room now on fire Roy tried to escape but she then strangled him with the curtain one of the few things that hadn’t burned yet. I worked this out by taking a sample from the curtain and found that Roy’s saliva was on it. Now you’re probably wondering why she didn’t just choke him well it had to look like an accident.

The whole thing had been planned. She set him and the room on fire so it made it look like the reason he was in the ocean was too put the fire out; then in doing so he had unfortunately drowned. However what really happened was she killed him torched his face to the point that it was unrecognisable then pushed him over the balcony and called the fire service to report the fire making it seem like she actually cared. The man I met at the door of the yacht realised that his boss was missing but was too scared to tell anyone. Now why would anyone go to all this trouble to kill someone? The answer is money. Michael Moni the brother of Roy will soon be receiving almost all of his brother’s money now that Roy is dead. Michael set up everything he told the woman what to do and now that she has done her job she will be receiving a large cheque. How do I know Michael is involved? When I was in the yacht investigating this woman received a phone call from someone who she had saved on her phone as MM. MM is the same initials as Michael Moni.

“You never disappoint Dorado” the chief then said “Thank you Chief” I replied. “Thank you for all your help Dorado; we will now use this evidence to arrest Michael Moni and I’m sure this mystery woman will soon join him behind bars.”  “Any time chief it’s what I’m paid to do.” I was then dismissed and went back to my office to wait for another crime to solve. That is the story of my greatest triumph as a detective. My name is Dwight Dorado and I solve crime. If you ever need a mystery solved then come and get me, I’m your man.

This is an English assignment made by my brother.