Chapter 3
Manehattan
January 23
9:46 PM
Shift was dodging around all types of obstacles. He may have missed a few jumps and failed to dodge a few but that was not enough for him to give up on catching that unicorn. The cashier was definitely involved in this crime and Shift knew that.
He saw the unicorn teleport about 5 metres away from him every 10 seconds. If he made it to the exit of the alley way, he would teleport further into the crowd losing Shift and actually going incognito.
Shift, being an earth pony, caught up to the unicorn quite quickly. But as he caught up to him, the teleportation spell of the cashier prohibited Shift from getting close enough for a tackle.
There was still no sight of the alley’s exit just of the black wall that surrounded the alley as well as, cracked windows, hanging clothes, trash cans and containers filled with all kinds of junk. Shift decided not catch up with the pony and went for a different tactic instead.
“Wave! Where am I?” Shift shouted.
“Uh… you’re at 236 Youth Street, alley way.”
“Any agents at 210 Youth Street?”
“Checking… yes, special agent Frost Light is about 1 block away from 210 Youth street.”
---
Frost Light just dropped off Flare at Crystal Moon’s house. He drove the tinted black car towards the police department to begin profiling. The radio was on but inaudible due to the loud car honks and engines, he didn’t care. The shiny city lights brought colour to the night sky. Ponies and zebras walked calmly on the sidewalk and across the roads. It was a beautiful night, even for Frost. But that was long forgotten after he received a call from Shift.
He picked up. “Frost Light…”
“Frost! Head to Youth Street 210 alley way to your left!” Shift ordered.
Without wasting any time, Frost pulled the steering wheel to his left, changing car lane, turning on the sirens and accelerating at maximum speed towards his destination.
---
Adrenaline was pumping hard for both ponies. But a bit more for the cashier. Shift was worried but tried to put that thought to the back of his mind as he tried his best not to lose the pony while avoiding glass shards and items that were spotted on the floor. Suddenly, the cashier began teleporting faster than before. This time every 2 to 5 seconds. Shift thought that the pony would get tired soon since he was using a big amount of his magic energy. After a few seconds, the unicorn’s stamina began to drop and Shift could see his sweat and exhausted face even from behind him. But he was so close to the exit that the unicorn kept pushing his limits.
The pony-filled streets could now be seen and the cashier, as well as Shift, began to sprint a bit faster than before. The cashier was just about 20 metres away from freedom, Shift was 4 metres away from the cashier. As the unicorn got closer to the exit, Shift started to see the gentle yellow glow of the pony’s horn preparing for his last teleportation.
Not a second too soon, a loud car horn was heard dispersing the pony civilians that were at the end of the alley way, scaring some birds away. The loud sound of sirens was also heard very clearly. The two ponies saw the shiny black car that was easy to spot thanks to its luminous lights that shone and reflected around the dark alley walls and floor. The car stopped right in front of the unicorn, blocking his exit.
The cashier stopped in his tracks. Looking shocked and worried, he then turned but was immediately tackled by Shift. As the unicorn’s air escaped his lungs just for a brief second, he gasped and coughed continuously trying to regain it. He opened his eyes only to feel his face pressed against the wet and dirty road whilst feeling the cold hoofcuffs being put on him and to hear Shift’s voice saying.
“We’ve got some questions for you.”
---
Manehattan
January 23
10:16 PM
Police Department
Shift and Frost were looking at the blue unicorn through the one-way mirror. He was in a room surrounded with grey walls and floor. It had a white table and two chairs on each side. One of them was occupied by the unicorn.
Frost was on his phone. “Okay… good job, help Glass’s search, we’ll contact you if we get anything.” He closed his phone then put it in his pocket. “Flare is done talking with Crystal Moon. She’s heading towards the house to help Glass.”
“Good,” responded Shift.
“What was the cashier’s name?” asked Frost.
“Water Flow.”
Frost just nodded.
Shift turned to Frost. “Frost, do you want to begin the interrogation?”
“Sure, I’ll do it.” Frost walked towards the door. Before he left the room he turned to Shift, “just out of curiosity, is there a reason why you always want me to interrogate?”
Shift smiled. “I just love how your personality changes when you do it.”
Frost gave him a smirk. “Yeah, me too.”
As he opened the door to the hallway, he walked to his left and opened the door to the interrogation room. Water Flow looked up to meet his gaze. Frost closed the door then took a seat. To his left was the one way mirror in where Shift was observing them from the other side. Through Frost’s perspective, he could only see his reflection.
“Good day Water Flow. I’m special agent Frost Light, how are you doing?” Frost asked with a smile.
Water looked annoyed. “I’ve just been chased through an alley way, tackled, cuffed and arrested. Now I’m being interrogated, what do you think?”
Frost kept smiling. “Technically speaking, being cuffed is being arrested,” Frost corrected. “Oh and I’m glad you’re doing alright.”
Water Flow was very annoyed by Frost’s fake attitude. Water didn’t know that, instead, he thought that Frost was just new to the EBI.
“Look, I can tell that you’re a noob in the EBI so make this quick. I’m even surprised ponies would actually let you interrogate me,” said Water.
“Noob is usually used in violent video games. Do you love violent video games, Water? A bit of practice before you do the real thing?”
Water Flow bent towards the table. “I didn’t kill anypony,” he said defiantly.
“Then why did you run?”
“I was in a hurry.”
“For what?”
“A meeting.”
“Why did you exit the store with an EBI agent waiting for you? We have video footage of you doing that so don’t deny it.”
Water Flow looked down with an annoyed look and just stayed silent.
“After all,” Frost continued. “You’re already being charged for obstruction of justice so you’ll be locked up for a while. So why don’t you confess?”
Water still looked down and still stayed quiet.
“There was an empty gyropick space in your store, Water. It costs a lot of money, somepony wouldn’t be able to afford it. It would make sense to me that you’re the pony we’re looking for.” Every single word that was coming out of Frost’s mouth made Water’s patience drop. “You wouldn’t have to pay for it. You just use it, clean the blood off and then put it back. You punctured every single hole in her horn with your merchandise-“
Water Flow banged his hoofs on the table and looked at Frost in rage. “I WON’T TAKE THE BLAME FOR SOMETHING HUNTER DID!”
Water only then noticed that Frost was no longer smiling. Frost gave him a stare with his normal look.
“Thank you for your cooperation,” said Frost.
He got up and exited through the door leaving an angry but confused Water Flow inside. A few seconds later Water came to the realization and shouted loudly across the room knowing that he would be locked up for a long time.
---
Shift and Frost Light were heading to the exit of the police department. They were walking quickly past all the cop ponies.
“Hunter? That’s not a real name,” said Frost.
“He played video games, maybe it’s an online friend,” explained Shift.
“His house is miles away, we need a separate squad to search it. Wave, send a squad to search Water Flow’s house.”
A few seconds passed. “Got it, sending squads to 145 Apple Shore Street.”
“Tell them to search gaming consoles and computers for a nametag that starts with Hunter, he’s the unsub.”
“Copy that, squads are sent and heading to Apple Shore Street, ETA 15 minutes,” said Wave.
“Okay, Shift, we should rendezvous with Glass Code and Flare at 38 Fresh Road Street.”
“Good idea, I’ll call them up.”
---
Manehattan
January 23
10:32 PM
208 Fresh Road Street
Frost drove to the destination while Shift contacted Glass and Flare. After a talk with them, Shift put down his phone and faced Frost.
“They’ll arrive at the rendezvous point soon. Once Wave gets the location of the unsub we’ll need to breach in.”
“Glass too?”
“Yeah, why are you asking?”
“Well, because he’s new.”
“He’s going to have to start eventually Frost, this is a team effort.”
“Yeah, right.”
As they approached the meeting location they spotted the two agents waiting for them. Frost stopped the car and got out with Shift.
“Hello, I’m Shift,” he said while shaking Glass’s hoof.
“Good to meet you sir,” said Glass.
“We’ll have plenty of time to chat after the case but for now we need to standby for the unsub’s location. We’re breaching it.”
“Me too sir?” asked Glass, a bit worried.
“Yes Glass, we need the whole team.”
“Yes sir.”
Flare approached Frost. “Frost, what did you find out?”
“I just interrogated somepony but he’s not the murderer, apparently its somepony called Hunter in his video game console or computer.”
“Hunter?”
“Yes. Wave will send us his real name and address once squads search his computer and gaming consoles.”
They all waited for Wave’s call. Frost already gave Glass his earpiece so he could hear Wave. Flare and Frost stood next to the car while Shift leaned on it. Glass removed his small water bottle and drank sip by sip continuously. Not long after, he had drunk the whole bottle in less than half a minute. Frost noticed that then walked towards him.
“Umm, Glass? Why are you drinking so much water?”
“Hm? Oh this? I usually drink a lot of water when I’m nervous. It’s just a habit of mine.”
“Are you nervous because you’re about to breach a house?”
“Yeah, I’ve never done that before and I literally just got my shooting license yesterday.”
“You’ll do good rookie, I know it.”
In that moment they all heard Wave’s voice.
“Hunter465’s real name is Cross Trace, he’s an Earth pony and he’s 27 years old. He was a friend of Water Flow for 3 years on his gaming console. He just sent a message 47 minutes ago saying and I quote:
“‘I can’t handle this anymore. I just killed a good friend of mine. I will finally be free in one hour. Don’t try to stop me.’”
They all thought for a split second. The realization hit all the agents quite quickly.
“’I will finally be free, he’s going to commit suicide,” said Glass.
“Sent 47 minutes ago saying ‘in one hour’, that’s in 13 minutes. Wave, what’s his address?” asked Shift.
“He’s about 10 minutes from your location. He’s in 4 Fallen Oaks Street.”
“Let’s go.”
All the agents entered the black car and seated themselves. Frost changed gears and headed to Fallen Oaks Street.
---
Manehattan
January 23
10:57 PM
3 minutes until suicide
208 Fresh Road Street
They arrived at the address. Frost stopped the car not minding the flower pots on the small house’s porch then they all went out. Pistols were all equipped.
Shift went to the right side of the door while Frost to the left. Glass and Flare were next to them providing cover while they entered.
“EBI! Come out of the house!” Frost shouted.
After a few seconds of silence Shift looked at Frost and then they nodded. Shift stepped back and kicked the door open, Frost was the first one to enter then Shift. Glass and Flare followed.
Glass’s heart was pounding yet he stayed calm knowing full well that the task at hoof needed his upmost attention. Once they entered they stopped and looked around. There were 3 doors in front of them. Glass went to the left one, Flare to the right and finally Shift and Frost went to the door in the middle.
Glass was clearing the left room so far, there was nopony but him in it. Flare did the same with the right room which appeared to be a dirty and messy kitchen. Shift and Frost cleared the living room which was also messy. It had a fireplace with a small table on the left wall containing pictures and another table on the right containing more pictures. There was nopony in the room.
But, out of a corner, next to the couch, slowly walked a dark yellow earth pony who appeared to have a pistol. He slowly faced Frost and Shift. Only then did the two agents realized that his pistol was aiming at his own head. Frost and Shift aimed at him quickly.
“Cross Trace! Put the gun down and-“
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll kill myself so I won’t be a burden anymore,” Cross interrupted Frost.
Frost looked to Shift. “Crap, I think I missed something while working on his profile.”
Shift kept looking at Cross as well as the whole room around him. He noticed a round clock hanging on the wall. The short arrow pointed at 10 while the long one pointed at 58. The sound of the tick tocks were heard every single second.
“I will pull the trigger once the clock reaches 11:00 PM, you can’t stop me,” said Cross.
“Cross,” Shift spoke. “You need to stop, you just need help, we can help you.”
“No you can’t, you don’t even know what’s wrong with me.”
“I don’t, because there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just indecisive, there’s no problem with that.”
“Why did I kill ponies then?” shouted Cross.
“Because nopony came to give you help when you needed it. I’m looking at your place, very nice. You have a nice small table with pictures of you and your family. There are pictures of you, your wife and son, they are all in black in white. But on the other table is just you and a couple of friends.
“You made it look like you ordered the pictures from the left table and the right to be placed differently because of color scheme. But you didn’t do it like that, did you? The pictures to your left were a long time ago yet the ones to your right, the ones with you and friends are recent. Where is your family now, Cross?”
Cross stayed silent with watery eyes. He was still aiming at his own head.
“We missed something in your profile,” continued Shift. “Even though we never gave a profile, we still had the wrong idea.” The clock released a loud tick. Everypony in the room quickly glanced at it.
Shift had no time to waste, he continued. “The cause of the reason you started killing was because of the lack of friends and family. You needed to channel that anger towards your worst enemy, the pony who probably made fun of your loss or probably the one who mistreated your long lost wife and kid. You got used to it so you started to kill more ponies while damaging the ones that had horns in the process.
“Every single day you wish you’d wake up from this nightmare but you never do. You wish for a way out, for everything that you’ve done to disappear. That was your one goal ever since the day you started committing murder. The thing is, your goal is right in front of you. We can help you.”
Cross Trace stared at them. “R-really?” he asked with a shaky voice.
“Absolutely, only if you let us,” answered Shift.
There was suspense in the room, dust could be seen thanks to the bright light of one of the lampshades and cars could be heard. The clock ticked.
54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59.
Cross dropped the gun and fell to the ground. Frost walked quickly to him to cuff him. Both of the agents were relieved.
---
Manehattan
January 23
12:48 PM
EBI Base
In the HUB, where a number of agent desks were situated was Glass getting a coffee from the coffee machine. Shift walked up to him.
“Hey Glass, I just wanted to say you did a really good job today.”
“Thank you sir but don’t you think I was a bit too scared while breaching?”
“It’s completely normal if a new agent such as yourself gets a bit scared during a breach. It happens to everypony.”
Glass smiled.
“Well I’m heading home,” said Shift while turning to the exit.
“Yeah, I’ll be heading out in a few minutes. See you tomorrow.”
Shift grabbed his jacket, put it on and then exited through the door. Glass walked towards his desk and began doing the last few checks on his computer. Glass Code was glad he joined the EBI. He’s prepared for the worst.
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Short and sweet. I'd be ok with a sequel.
Greetings, NixWorld! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE.
Synopsis:
You'll normally set off a participial phrase with a comma.
Story:
Just from the first screen, I can tell that I'm going to have to point out a lot of mechanical things. I know that's not among the things you asked me to look at specifically, but it's the window dressing for your story. It's how you present yourself. If you don't get the basics right, it reflects badly on the story as a whole, and the reader has no reason to give you the benefit of the doubt when you break writing rules on purpose.
So, we start off with a weather report. This is so common as to be cliche. It says you couldn't think of anything more interesting to say. Get to the characters and action. If the weather's actually important, then work it in to one of those.
Let's examine that first sentence, though. It needs to do more. All it tells me is a cold fact. Make it mean something and give it some richer imagery. I usually don't like to give examples, in case the author just uses mine instead of thinking up his own, but in this case, since I've already told you not to open with the weather, I don't mind, since I'm doing exactly that. So visualize that street. Give me some evocative detail about it and come up with something to compare it to. Something like this:
The heavy rain collected in puddles, which reflected all the lights and buildings of Manehattan to make a mirror world below all the drenched roadways and alleys.
There's a verb error here: everypony was. Another issue with the early going here: This sentence alone has three "to be" verbs. These are inherently boring, as nothing happens. You really need to choose more active verbs. It's impractical to remove them all, but you could reword most of these, and you'd have a much more active (= engaging) story.
You need a comma after "umbrella," and "cutie mark" is two words. Good use of "flailing" there to impart some action to the scene and create a visual. But look at all of these similarities: dark brown hat, dark, mane, dark blue coat, and you'd just referred to dark building walls a bit ago. There are times repetition can work, when the reader can tell it's done for effect or thematic reasons, but I don't see any such intent here. Come up with some better descriptions. Think of things that are dark brown and dark blue, then use them as references for the colors.
"in which"
More dark. And when you have a multi-word phrase used as a single descriptor, you need to hyphenate it (usually): low-tone. However, that could stand more description, too. Liken it to something. You also need a primer of how to punctuate and capitalize dialogue. If the dialogue ends in a period and a speech tag follows, you replace that with a comma. And if you have a tag after it that identifies the speaker and uses a speaking verb, like you do here, it's still part of the same sentence, so you don't capitalize it, unless it's something like a name that has to be. So "responded" here should be lower case.
This whole paragraph is very sterile. It's your choice whether you want the narrator to stick with Frost or be omniscient, but in either case, I can't get to know the character if you won't let me. Give me some clues here as to how the events make him feel. For an omniscient narrator, all you can do is give factual descriptions of his behavior and appearance, and even relay his thoughts. With a narrator who sticks with Frost, you can adopt a conversational style and have him comment on the events as if Frost is. One of the two will be necessary to make a connection with the character.
Another participial phrase that should be set off with commas. And I think you meant "splitting."
What does this mean when they don't have hands?
This is pretty vague. What does it even look like? What is the waitress doing? If she's yawning, for example, then it defuses the scene's tension. Let her contribute to the scene, since she's probably the most emotional one there.
You've tacked two complete sentences together with a comma. And rather than just tell me he's worried, show me. How does he look? What does he do? Make the reader a witness to the action. Don't have the narrator feed me the conclusion; just present me with the evidence and let me draw my own conclusion.
At this point, I'll note that I'm only pointing out the first instance I see of mechanical and stylistic issues. It's beyond the scope of this type of review to point out every dialogue capitalization error, so I'll leave it at showing you how to correct one and letting you apply that to the rest.
There you go, but there isn't much here, and it comes far after she would have reasonably given a reaction, so it doesn't feel right. You have to keep on top of the timeline.
Direct address has to be set off with commas.
Describe it to me. You provide the visual, and I'll reason out the emotion. It's all about having a little movie playing in my head. In this case, you're making me think up how it looks.
Use a proper dash for cutoffs. In word processors, you can get this through the following codes: Alt+0150=–, Alt+0151=—.
That's already apparent from the way you punctuated it, so you don't need to say it again.
Passive voice has its uses, but it tends to stop the action, which isn't a good idea during an action scene.
Show me these emotions, but since one is internal to him, you need to decide what kind of narrator you want. An omniscient one can tell me what Frost thinks, and a limited narrator can state those thoughts for him.
Note how certain punctuation can break smart quotes. These are backward.
You make it sound like the cutie mark is covered by her clothes. If so, why bring it up? For that matter, the full description of her doesn't belong here. It's a tense moment in the middle of action, and by saying all this, you imply that the ponies present would take the time to note all those details about her. That's not really reasonable.
Around here, you waver back and forth between past and present tense.
You should spell out numbers that short.
Why are you capitalizing that? You haven't been with the other races.
Typo.
You said everyone already saw that. So why does she need to point it out?
So we have cars? I'm a little lost as to the tech level here, then. Is this supposed to be current-day Equestria or some time in the future?
I don't see how that bit about the rain is relevant. I mean, it's raining, so it's pretty self-explanatory.
You just had them do this exact action in the last paragraph.
Given what she says, this is redundant.
Who are these other ponies? What are they doing there? That "further into the room" is oddly placed, as it seems to refer to the other ponies, not where Frost and Flare are walking.
How do they know it's comfy? This is coming out of nowhere.
What does that "where" refer to? It makes it sound like the vases were somehow on the shelf and the floor at the same time.
This is really symptomatic of the whole story. It's just a list of actions. The characters don't come alive. This mare might as well be a statue. Even in a brief encounter like this, you can infuse her with some personality. For all I can tell. She's just standing there doing nothing. What was she up to before she saw them? How did she react? Once she sends them on, does she go back to whatever she was doing before? As it is, there's really not a point to her even being in the story.
They're both unicorns, right? This is ambiguous.
That's odd. And awfully convenient.
Odd line break here.
To whom? You haven't given the narrator a perspective.
I don't get why he immediately jumps here and is so sure. Couldn't the murderer have been drunk? Lame? Epileptic? Any number of things?
You've mixed phrases. It's either "meanwhile" or "in the meantime."
This is characteristic of a lot of conversations in the story. It's just back and forth dialogue for a while, with the narration only contributing speaking actions. This is what we call "talking heads." The characters might as well be floating disembodied heads. What's happening while they talk? Do they move? Have facial expressions? Check the time, yawn, scratch their heads? This kind of things adds realism. Also consider that half of a conversation is nonverbal, and you're neglecting that.
What's the point of saying so? Is there any significance to the plot? There could be an emotional significance to one of the characters, but you need to make that apparent.
That's a very spartan description of the place. And it's pretty redundant to say the smell of wood is coming from wood. What condition are these shelves in? What kind of wood? There's a wide variety of smells. Something dusty and old? Something fresh-cut?
No reaction? We find out later he's guilty of something, so aren't there any telltale signs of that? Would he recognize their behavior as police?
That sentence just doesn't parse. I can't help fix it because I can't figure out what it's trying to say.
That's some awkward phrasing. "Loud car honks and engines"? Is he in a lot of traffic? I haven't seen any description that said so.
It's pretty redundant to call them "car lanes" in a street. He has multiple sirens? And it's pretty self-explanatory that he's going toward his destination.
Yes, that'd be how a one-way mirror works.
That's not true. Cops can cuff someone on the scene and then let them go if the situation warrants. That won't show as an arrest on that person's record.
I can't figure out what it is that Water doesn't know. This is confusing.
You've confused "its" and "it's."
Odd paragraphing here. Not sure whether you meant to have another line break or not to do this one.
That was a pretty vague explanation of what motivated the crimes. And the suspect sure changed his mind quickly. This is the high point of the story. Don't blast through it like that.
The ending's pretty weak, too. It just peters out without coming to any sort of conclusion and moves over to a fairly minor character. You have to end it in a memorable way. That's the impression that's going to stick with the reader. You have to start strong to draw interest and finish strong to seal that perception. What message do you want the reader to take from your story. Cement it there.
Mechanically, there were quite a few problems. I pointed out the different types I saw, but only one or two instances of each. That's often the last step to fix, though, since there's no use correcting a passage that's going to be rewritten anyway.
So on to the more aesthetic things. The writing style is very stoic and similarly structured. It suffers from what I've seen called "list syndrome," which is a two-part thing. The narration just lists actions. This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened. The other effect is that it can be repetitive in structure, where all those actions have the same wording to them. When you just get clumps of sentences in a row that all start with the subject, it gets into a rut. So throw a little more variety into the sentence structures and sprinkle a healthy dose of how the characters react to and feel about those actions.
More on those reactions and feelings, then. Don't just tell me how a character feels. There are times when it's fine to, like an unimportant moment or a minor character. But for the most part, you need to get at emotions subtly. Your characters are your actors. Does an actor just declare how he feels? No, he gets you to interpret that from how he looks and behaves. It's much more engaging that way and gets you to identify with him more. Watch out for words or phrases that directly state a mood or emotion.
Conveying emotions is a big part of building your characters, as it shows how they tick inside. Some of the bigger facets of their personalities may come through in their actions or via archetype, but the details are in how they respond to minute-by-minute things. So without that, I don't feel I know your characters at all. After reading the story, I couldn't provide a list of personality traits for any of them. One minor thing, but Flare and Frost have similar enough names that it's easy to confuse them. This adds a bit to the problem. Writing guides often tell you to make your character names very different so they don't blend together.
The plot actually was not bad, up until the reveal of the criminal. I've already commented that the scene went by very quickly and that his change of attitude was awfully abrupt. What kept my interest was this discussion of how the crime matched the way a villain had been killed. That was an enticing thread that brought up the possibilities of cults, revenge... really, a lot of things. But it went nowhere. It's a Chekhov's gun. Why bring it into the story if you weren't going to shoot it? Even if it ends up being a dead end, they never took the investigation in that direction. So on the one hand, it might make for a nice red herring, and on the other, it could have some significance to this criminal. But there just isn't a reason right now to have it there.
Whether it warrants a sequel is entirely up to you. Did you have fun writing it? Then go for it. I see in the comments that you had readers who enjoyed it.
Keep writing, and have fun with it!
fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/349/4/b/reviewer_logo_longver03_01_by_burrakupansa-d5o60h2.png
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
5418938 Thanks for the review!
That's it? Huh. Please do a sequel.
Aside from the technical errors that could be dealt with using a prereader or proofreader, I thought this was an enjoyable read. If you do write a sequel, I'd recommend a proofreader or even just a friend who'd be willing to go over it: especially if you don't realize that it's strange grammar (due to English being a second language, for example), then even an untrained read will yield a massive improvement.
I wouldn't have minded seeing more of each character, though. It's an issue I have with a lot of crime shows in general: a lot of the characters end up blending together and there wasn't too much too differentiate them (or at least not to me), but your reviewer has gone on about that so I won't yammer on about it more than I have to. The good news is that it wasn't that big of a deal for me: I was much more interested with the method they used as opposed to who they were. It would have helped, but it wasn't really the end of the world.
And the one thing I was very happy seeing is the absence of spelling mistakes. If there are any in there, I didn't catch them. There really isn't an excuse for spelling mistakes, but they still seem to crop up often, especially in stories with a lot of technical errors. I got the impression a lot of effort went into purging them, so major points to you on that front.
I wouldn't mind a sequel, myself. Practice makes perfect, so if you do make another I can only assume it will be better. Not to mention I enjoy seeing mystery stories.
5431048 Thanks. That means a lot. I had so much fun while making this story and I'm glad you liked it.
5431066 Frankly, that's always been my number one rule: enjoy what you write. That's not to say there isn't a lot to improve, as I and your two reviewers mentioned, but if you didn't like writing it, how can you expect anyone to like reading it? I'm still learning loads, and my first story was so full of writing problems that when I submitted it to AppleDash group it got the holding pen folder (the evil folder). I enjoyed it a lot, though, and I didn't really feel the need to have perfect prose and grammar, so I was happy, and a few people who read it were too.
As for improvement, practice makes perfect. A proofreader/editor is just a way of making up the difference until you know what you're doing enough to manage without (and even then, they still help: extra eyes are always welcome), however long that may take.
So yeah: take the advice your reviewer gave you (all good points: unlike me, they probably know what they're talking about) and do better next time.