The owls are not what they seem

Witnesses stated that the deceased yelled, "The owls are not what they seem." moments before jumping.

"Does anyone have any idea what that means?" I asked, without much hope.

I was not disappointed, no one had any clue as to what such a bizarre statement might mean. Naturally I was given the task of investigating, and I visited the late Ms. Palmer's room later that afternoon.

I didn't find any owls. I did however discover Ms. Palmer, seemingly asleep in her bed. She didn't respond to my attempts to wake her, so I called in a 911 for an ambulance.

There's definitely something screwy about this case. Corpses aren't usually found unconscious in their beds. I called the office, got them to check out the morgue.

"Yeah she's still dead Boss, you were expecting her to do a Doctor Who on us?"

"Something like that." I replied tersely, then filled them in on the woman in the bed.

"Weird. Oh by the way Boss, Tina's got a lead on that owls thing. Seems it is a quote from some ancient television series. Pre Zoober; hell it's even pre Tik-Tok."

"What does it mean?"

"Not sure it means anything. The show was a mass of red herrings and weird shit going on."

"Just like this case then?"

The ambulance arrived, and they couldn't wake her either. Couldn't find anything obviously wrong with her either. Their best guess was she's taken sleeping tablets, but we searched and didn't find any. They took her to hospital. I stayed and began to search the place.

The owl call freaked me out.

Then I realised it was the woman's phone.

I swiped up and listened.

"Hello detective. Did you find any more twit-t'clues yet?"

"Who is this?"

"My name's Laura Palmer, Ms. Detective."

"Which one? The corpse or the unconscious one in your bed?"

"Who knows!" The call was ended.

This case was starting to get seriously weird.

On a hunch I called the office.

"Tina? Yes, I need you to do something for me. Get some prints off the corpse. Send someone to the hospital and get some off the unconscious woman. I'll bring back some from here."

Identical. The prints matched in every detail. It seems our Ms. Palmer is simultaneously both dead and unconscious.

"Boss?"

"Yes Tina?"

"I ran the prints through the system."

"Did you get a match?"

"Y..yes we did boss."

"Well?"

"They match your prints Detective Palmer. Exactly."