The Final Image

The Senior VP was found hanging in the executive washroom. Her phone sat on the vanity, illuminated with the final draft of a desperate, margin-slashing proposal she had forced her team to rewrite all night to appease a client. An overturned leather chair lay at her feet, perfectly aligned for the drop. The makeshift noose was a pair of cheap, grey drugstore pantyhose, pulled tight. With no signs of struggle or forced entry, the police quickly leaned toward a textbook suicide. But when they showed the crime scene photo to her lead director, he didn't look at the proposal or the chair. He just stared at the makeshift noose and let out a cold laugh. "She was a ruthless tyrant," he told the detective, "but there is absolutely no way in hell she killed herself with that."