Oct 4 2022 Plot Beginning

Oct 4 Plot Beginning
Mikołaj Lockwood, not a name one associates with as a private investigator, but that was his trade in the world. Oh, he could have been an author – he penned a total of 14 Young Adult novels under the pen name DeWayne Alexander and 11 ghost story/noir mashup novellas as Nick Locke. He was a professional indoor soccer player for two seasons with the Wichita Pipers of Indoor Soccer of America. He graduated from La Chasse College (State University of New York College at La Chasse) with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Information, worked two summers at the Charlottestown Savings Bank as a computer specialist. He could have been all that and a happily married man, but that all changed on a hot Florida morning when Vanessa Delarosa was murdered, shot with seven other women, by a man who did not want his estranged wife associating with other “harpies and degenerate women.” It all changed when he and several of his cousins brought the man responsible for his anguish and pain.

He spent half a year trying to write, to share what he was feeling, but to no avail. The words never came to him. He tried another few months working back at the bank, but he saw her face whenever he interacted with the attorneys on the third and fourth floors. It took the kindness and empathy from three of his college roommates, three women who knew him as the free-wielding, non-stereotypical computer geek, college soccer player who had a knack for making women feel great or better about themselves, even if society frowned up his and their actions.

“You found the murdering s.o.b.,” Analise Bruijn told him.

“You organized the party that surrounded him and his family,” Sunetra Joshi spoke to him.

And with a hug, Mary-Ellen Douglas whispered to him, “You wrote about them and well. It’s time you become one yourself.”

The character he wrote about became his new identity, his nom de guerre: Longfellow Wright became flesh.