The Real Criminal

It’s two in the morning and we’re recording episode forty of our true-crime podcast in my garage. My co-host, Dana, is on her fourth coffee. I’m on my fifth.

“Tonight’s case,” I say into the microphone, “is the strangest murder we’ve ever covered. Except there was no murder.”

Dana looks at me. “What do you mean, no murder?”

“The police thought it was a murder. A man disappeared. There was a criminal record, there was even some evidence — a broken window, a missing car.”

“So what happened to him?”

“He was bored. He told his wife he was going fishing. He was actually planning the whole thing for months.”

Dana leans into her microphone. “Wait. So it wasn’t illegal?”

“Not exactly. It was his own car, and his own window. He just drove to the coast and never called home.”

“That’s the worst trick I’ve ever heard,” Dana says.

“It gets better. When they found him, he was annoyed. He said the police had ruined his holiday.”

Dana stares at the microphone for a long moment.

“Forty episodes,” she says, “and the real criminal was the victim.”