I was following this man for three days. He looked suspicious to my boss; I should have known the man was innocent. The only thing he was guilty of was his obsession with signs. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. My boss thought him as a suspect because he was seen at the scene of every murder case that was by the Cracker, the most ferocious killer in the U.S.

The man I was following was insane. His name, Bob Cratchet the Third, was written on the back of all the signs in San Francisco. What was so curious about him was that he would get a sharpie and write what a sign means on the back of a sign. Well, he wouldn’t just put what it really mean, he would make up a meaning. Though he would always put what it really meant as well as the pretend meaning. For example:

(S – Share
T – tea
O – or
P – pay)
(S – silent
T – the
O – octopus
P – please)
(S – speakers
T – there
O – on
P – platform)


Then he would write the real meaning “stop before this sign… signals that there may be traffic and you need to look before you cross the road.”

It was fascinating how creative Bob was with his meaning. I didn’t understand why my boss would suspect him being the killer. He was an innocent crazy man. I admit he was there at the death of everyone of them, but that doesn’t mean he killed anyone. It just means that he was set up.

By every body we found a sign with the letters PIV on them. Maybe that is the sign he was trying to find. It was proven b those signs that he was there around the time the people were killed. It was really odd that Bob didn’t include the real meaning on those signs. These were the fake meanings:
(P – pretend
I – it’s
V – vanished)
(P – pick
I – in
V – vans)
(P – pretty
I – is
V – vacant)

I went to the office. It was night. I wasn’t to my boss’s office, extremely angry.

“I’m not getting anywhere with this guy!” I slammed my evening report down on my boss’s desk. “You know that this guy is innocent. If you wanted to fire me, why did you not just do it?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, Steve,” my boss said calmly, reading the report that was in his hands. This man was ridiculous just ignoring me! I think he gave me this assignment just to try to get me to quit. But its kind of hard to tell with my boss. Whe knows what is going on in that man’s head?

“Why are you trying to make me quit? This is a ridiculous game you are playing, and I don’t want to be apart of it.”

“What?” Oh now I get his attention! He stands up and looks at me in confusion. “Why would you wanna quit?”

“Because I’m not getting anything out of this guy. You know good and well that he is innocent but you are making me follow him! Do you know how boring this guy is? Why are you doing this if not to make me quit?”

I think at that point I made him angry because his face turned bright red as he looked at me with those red eyes.

“Your job is boring!” he mocked me, “If you don’t enjoy being a detective then you should quit! Get out!!!”

He pushed me out of there and then slammed the door in my face. I had forgotten, in my anger how passionate he was about being a detective, I’ll just have to make it up to him somehow. I’ll apologize to him later. I’ve got to go spy on my man, now though.

So, I went back to the guy’s house. On my way there, I saw the sign. VIP in huge letters on the sign. I got out my camera and waited. Soon I saw Bob, walking over to the sign.

Then I heard a shot. Pain! It echoed all through me and everything turned black. I was having some weird dreams too while I was blacked out. People were putting me in a car and driving off. Then they dragged me into some sort of building and into a room where they placed me on a bed. Then I was completely out, dreamless.

I woke up in a hospital bed. I had an aching pain in my left shoulder. Bob was standing over me.

“Detective Stephen Wood, welcome back,” Bob held up a badge. Good God, was he a cop? I was so confused, “You ruined my work, man. I thought you were the Cracker when I pulled that trigger! Why were you even there? I’ve been working on that guy for months! I thought I found him, but you came before I could have figured it out! My boss almost killed me because of you!”

“What?” At this point I was very confused, “Who are you? I really have no idea what your talking about.”

“I’m Bob Hamilton with the CIA. The CIA has been chasing the Cracker for months now. I knew you were following me, I just didn’t think that you would get in the way of my job. You are going to have to stop following me.”

“No problem.”

Bob left the room.

It took me my entire recovery to figure out what was going on. I was so confused. How could I have not found out he was a CIA agent. I usually know these things. I felt so surprised.

They found the Cracker and he was sentenced to death. I watched the man die. It was horrible finding out that I couldn’t get my job back. The boss made me retire after my little episode. I followed my dream and became a writer. I wrote this story about my experiences and my life was really good from then on.
Years after this, I finally found out the real meaning of that sign: placed in vacuity.