Leave no stone unturned. Leave no rock unpivoted. Leave no pebble untwirled. Welcome to Night Vale.

###

My brother-in-law, Steve Carlsberg, is still in jail, wrongly accused of the recent bank heist. But I am happy to have my husband Carlos back home. The Sheriff's Secret Police had only taken him in for some questions regarding the robbery of the Last Bank of Night Vale. Sheriff Sam had deemed Carlos a person of interest - which I've been saying for years, but Sheriff Sam meant it differently.

Carlos said while he was being questioned at the police station he saw the other bank employees who were there the day of the robbery. Genevieve Daily, the new bank teller, was being asked if she saw anyone other than Steve Carlsberg near the vault that day. Carlos said she was stone-faced, unhappy with the interrogation. Susan Willman was there, crying, as the police asked her who else other than Steve Carlsberg could have had a key. And security guard Jessie McNeil was there, looking quite ill, almost seasick, according to Carlos, as the police tried to badger him into implicating Steve Carlsberg.

Carlos has been home for a couple of weeks and in a terrible funk. He said Steve has a nearly impossible case. The police are convinced of Steve’s guilt, and all their evidence points directly to him. Carlos hardly has any energy or emotion to work or even leave the house. I feel awful for Steve, too, and we're doing our best to support him and our family. I tried cheering Carlos up by telling him my favorite science jokes.

Like "Two chemists walk into a bar, and one tells the bartender, 'I'll have an H20,' and the other says 'I'll have an H20, too' and the bartender sighs and says 'It's been a long day guys.' And the two chemists nod and say 'Got it. Yeah, just a couple of waters. Thanks.' And later they make sure to tip well."

But Carlos didn't even crack a smile, let alone laugh. I asked him how his doorless fridge experiment was going, and he's welcome to work on it here in his home laboratory. I don't even mind if he keeps staining everything green with that weird gel he's been using.

"I ran out of gel, Cecil." he said, prone on the couch, not opening his eyes. "I couldn't work on that even if I wanted to, which I don't."

###

I want to curl up on the couch too, to stay home from work, but I know that would be terrible for Carlos. There are many times I have felt flat or depressed, and Carlos has been there for me, keeping me company, taking in my sadness, and reflecting back not a false smile, but attentive eyes, a listening posture that makes me feel heard and understood. And that's what I want to be for him.

Besides, I think Steve can beat these charges. Steve may have been the only one with the key to the vault, but they cannot prove he opened the vault, as he was locked inside his own office during the robbery. Besides, Steve keeps very detailed accounting, so they wouldn't be able to find the stolen money, not even if he had taken it.

[getting a little choked up] Steve Carlsberg is the nicest man in Night Vale. He's a good boss, breaking his foot to get free and try to protect his employees. He's a fine father, a loving husband, and a perfect brother-in-law. It's just not... It's not possible....

###

You know, if someone on the inside did this it was probably Susan. Susan Willman is the least trustworthy person in that bank, if not this whole town, so if you're going to...

[rumbling sound effect of Station Management]

Um. Station Management just slid a memo under my door gently reminding me about libel laws. The memo is written in fire on a slate tablet and there's a snake curled around it, so I'm going to leave my Susan Willman theory alone.

But let's say there was an untrustworthy person in that bank, and their name was SuuuuAnnn Willlsssonnn. Sue Ann Wilson. Yes. And this hypothetical jerk was always complaining at PTA meetings about her own personal problems, rather than focusing on the agenda... Let's just say.

And this Sue Ann Wilson once accused Steve Carlsberg of censoring her when Steve was just trying to finish the meeting in a timely manner so that the basketball team could use the gym for evening practice.

This person might well hold a grudge against Steve Carlsberg and want to not only steal from him but frame him for the crime.

Or… What if the Sheriff's Secret Police...

[sound effect again]

was doing a really great job, so great that they didn't have a lot of arrests to make because the town was so safe....

...and they of course would never need to frame someone for robbery simply so they would look like they were solving one of the few major crimes in recent memory.

Or… Maybe it's space slugs. Some distant aliens from across the galaxy somehow found our solar system, spotted our earth, and then randomly chose Night Vale. And for whatever reason they really wanted our money, so they went down inside the bank vault while the building was on fire, and without the safe key, they entered the locked room, because these space slugs can crawl through walls, and then they stole all the money.

I don't know.

I feel helpless. Reading the news and getting angrier and angrier, but knowing there's little I can do about the terrible things that keep happening. I'm sure you can't relate.

###

Maybe a community calendar will cheer me up.

This Saturday, the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex opens its annual Haunted Halloween Hayride. There were complications this year because Ghost Union Local 31 went on strike for an increase in pensions and maternity leave. Teddy Williams, owner of the Desert Flower, argued that ghosts cannot retire nor get pregnant, but the union countered with vaguely human faces muttering in the shadows while Teddy screamed, and eventually a deal was struck.

Sunday morning is the pie eating contest at the Night Vale Fair. Contestants will be competing for the top prize of a 1991 Buick LeSabre autographed by former US Presidential hopeful and Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson.

Tuesday afternoon is a tedious song.

Wednesday night is the High School Dance Team state-wide semi-finals at the Rec Center. Our own Night Vale High School is competing that night. Their top rival is Red Mesa High School, who will be performing a jazz routine called "Tommy Tune's Broadway," an upbeat medley of classic showtunes. Night Vale's dance team will present Ohad Naharin's (pronounced OH-hodd NAH-hah-reen) post-modern masterpiece Anaphase (ANN-uh-phayz), a contemplative blend of sculpture, opera, and dance, defined by its explosive physical bursts, chanting, and contrapuntal movements borne of a 22-member ensemble who express the human body as a multidimensional art installation. Good luck to all dancers!

And finally, Thursday is sick, so Friday will be covering Thursday's shift.

Nope. Except for the part about the haunted hayride, that did not cheer me up.

###

I'm getting word that the Secret Police have made a breakthrough in their bank heist investigation. (Oh, maybe they've found the real thief, and let Steve Carlsberg go.)

Sheriff Sam said the lab results came back. The fingerprints were inconclusive as their top suspect, Steve, worked at the bank, so his fingerprints were everywhere. But lab reports did detail a strange goo police found on the vault walls.

This goo, a light green gel, was also found on the walls of the cell that the other robbers had escaped from two weeks ago.

(maybe my theory about space slugs is correct!)

No wait.

The Lab results showed that this unusual chemical can render certain metals intangible, allowing people to reach through walls without breaking them. Police believe whoever used this greenish goo, used it to rob the bank's vault and to free the prisoners inside the Abandoned Mine Shaft outside of town.

The Sheriff then said they discovered this exact same chemical on Steve Carlsberg's property. They discovered it inside the shed behind his house, and that this is the final piece of evidence that links Steve Carlsberg to the robbery of the Last Bank of Night Vale.

They believe... oh no... that Steve did not act alone. That he had an accomplice, a scientific mastermind, who created this chemical for him, who generated a complex concoction that enabled them to walk through walls, stealing whatever they wanted.

They have a warrant out now for Carlos's arrest.

###

Oh gosh, I've got to call Carlos. I....

Oh it looks like he left me a voicemail.

CARLOS: Hey sweetie. Listen I've just been arrested. No biggie. I'm fine. This is actually pretty good news, because I wanted to talk to the Sheriff anyway about all of this. I have some new thoughts about what happened at the bank, and they're really interesting. So they're driving me downtown to meet with the... oh! hey those cuffs are a bit tight there officer [reading name badge] Officer Q. Fortier (pronounced FOR-tee-AY). That's a beautiful name. Is that Franchian? If you don't mind, Officer Fortier, I'm going to finish my voicemail to my husband.

Cecil, when I get downtown I'll explain everything to them. Steve and I clearly did not do this, and that's what I'll tell them. They're police. They just want to know the truth, and oh! Officer Fortier I'm not done with my call yet. What are you doing with my phone? [last word cuts off as phone hangs up]

CECIL: I…. Let's go to the weather.

###

WEATHER: “Good Luck with That” by Fathom All the Animals

###

CECIL: Listeners, we go now live to Steve Carlsberg's press conference at City Hall.

STEVE: This has been a difficult month for me, and for my family. I thank you all for hearing me out today. I'm glad to know that these criminal charges are behind me, and I thank Sheriff Sam and their Secret Police, as well as their Overt Police, for listening to reason and overturning the charges against me.

But of course, I am sad to learn about their most recent arrest. It breaks my heart to know that such a dear friend of so many years, someone who has been in my home many many times, someone who I consider family, could betray me, my bank, my town, in this way.

I don't even know how to talk about such a breach of trust by someone so close.

[almost crying]

Carlos.

Oh, Carlos.

[note: you can draw out this fake reveal of the true criminal here]

Thank you, Carlos, for your brilliant and thorough evidence that put Jessie McNeil in jail today. Our security guard of nearly 50 years committed a heinous crime, and he nearly sent the two of us to prison for it.

When Carlos arrived in my cell this morning, he was all smiles, saying he had figured it out. He called the Sheriff over and said: "Check Jessie's skin for the same chemical they found on the doors."

Carlos had been experimenting with a gel that allowed him to reach his hands into refrigerators without opening the door and thus lowering the temperature of the food inside. He developed this chemical in his temporary lab in a shed behind our house.

The problem with the chemical wasn't its effectiveness at intangibility. He had been able to make that work. No, the problem with the chemical is that it stained everything it touched a dull green, including skin. Carlos showed me his own hands, which were green from the fingertips to about halfway up his forearms.

He said the last few times he had seen Jessie, Jessie looked ill, not like a flu or cold, more like seasick... queasy... green in the face. Carlos didn't put it together right away, because we all felt sick about not only the robbery, but the false charges against me.

The police reports also showed that none of the cash tills on the teller wall were affected by the fire that broke out during the robbery last month, which means the fire had to have started on the opposite wall, which is by the front door - Jessie's usual station.

The smoke from the fire and the three robbers waving guns provided a distraction for Jessie to cover himself with Carlos's intangibility gel, sneak downstairs past my office where he had locked me in earlier that day, and then unload the cash from the safe and carry it into the alleyway behind the bank where his car was parked.

When the fire trucks arrived, Jessie ran, deliberately, in front of their hoses so that the gel would all be removed from his body before the police began questioning those of us who had been inside during the robbery. But as Carlos pointed out, the gel stains the skin for a long time. Water alone won’t remove it.

Sheriff Sam brought Jessie back in for questioning, based on Carlos’s statements, and found Jessie's skin was the same dull green as Carlos' hands. But unlike Carlos, the green stain covered Jessie’s whole body, not only his hands, indicating he had used it to walk through walls rather than merely reach through a door.

Carlos explained that he had Jessie in his lab many times. Jessie and all of my employees come to my house regularly for dinners. (Like I said, they're family to me.) Jessie had taken an interest in Carlos' science projects, so Carlos showed Jessie his doorless-fridge experiment. Not long after that, Carlos noticed that the rest of his intangibility gel was gone. He thought he had just run out, even though he had made plenty of it. It never occurred to Carlos until he saw Jessie's green face a few days ago that Jessie had stolen it to remove the money from the vault and his criminal colleagues from their jail cell.

While I was the only person with the key to the vault, Jessie - as security guard - was the only person with master keys for the rest of the building. My office door is never locked, so I don't carry a key for it. Jessie knew this and locked me into my own office. Then his three collaborators - Richard, William, and Emma - created a fake robbery of the cash tills to distract from his heist of the vault.

Sheriff Sam was impressed with Carlos’s explanation and arrested Jessie McNeil on the spot. Jesse turned to Carlos and Sam and said: "I guess I'm going to jail now."

And Sam said: "Don't flatter yourself."

Anyway, I finally get to return home, thanks to my brother-in-law, Carlos. Thank you, Susan Willman for managing the bank in my absence. Abby. Janice. I'll be home in a few.

I can’t wait to see you both again. Oooh. Maybe I'll bake some scones tonight! Carlos showed me a way to do it without letting the butter get too warm.

CECIL: I'm so relieved. And so glad they put the right person behind bars. And I've never been so excited to try one of Steve's scones. Science really is neat.

Stay tuned next for someone playing on a saw. Nope. Misread that. WITH a saw. It's just someone playing around with a saw. Enjoy.

Good night, Night Vale. Good night.

####

PROVERB: Wisdom ages like fine wine. Knowledge ages like Boston lettuce.