Sworn Affidavit
Sworn statement of Detective R. Salamandez, lead investigator, Swamp PD, testifying against the case his own department built. The witness requested this be noted for the record. It is so noted.
I caught this case. I want that on the record before anything else, because what I'm about to say is going to cost me a commendation and I'd like it understood I said it anyway. I built the file on PeePoo. And then I did the one thing the prosecution forgot to do: I looked at the two tongue-prints side by side under a lamp.
Exhibit A is two casts. One taken from PeePoo in the interview pond, freely given, no lawyer, no complaint — he offered his tongue before I asked, which is not a thing guilty frogs do. The other lifted off the seventeen checks. And they don't match. They're close. Identical-twin close. But at the tip, the forgery curls. PeePoo's lies dead flat, honest as still water. The check-tongue hooks at the end like it's reaching for something that isn't its. That curl is the whole case, and it points away from my defendant.
I ran the alibi too, because a good detective runs the alibi even when he doesn't want it to hold. It held. Three ponds over at 3:47, admiring a gnat, seen by a neighbor with a bad knee and confirmed by the gnat herself. You cannot be forging checks in one pond and complimenting an insect in another. I've been doing this for twenty years. The timeline is clean. It's the cleanest timeline I've ever tried and failed to break.
There is a second frog. Same face, same clutch, a pad across the water I'm advised not to name in open court. I have not been able to interview him. He is, I'm told, 'thriving,' and he does not answer his door for detectives. Make of that what you will. I have. PeePoo is guilty of exactly one thing: being a really chill amphibian who trusted the wrong brother with his own face.