Broken in Brief: Bayport Police Chief commits suicide

BAYPORT, USA--A disturbing tragedy that had gripped Bayport for most of the summer came to a startling end yesterday as Bayport Police Chief Ezra Collig, 63, was found dead in his home, the result of an apparent suicide. The beleaguered chief had been hounded by the press and child advocacy groups after the shocking murder of teen detectives Joe and Frank Hardy last month at Smuggler's Cove revealed his facilitator's role in the brothers dangerous after school activities.

Collig was found naked, suspended by the neck from a cross beam in his garage with with a crude noose fashioned out of shoelaces and long scraps of bath towel. His police cruiser was idling in neutral next to him. A note found nearby read simply, "No funeral." The search begins for a new police chief, but it will be hard to find those in the department who weren't tainted by Collig's "Boys will be Boys" policy, which some claim rocketed Bayport's rates of teen vigilantism, crime solving, snooping, and treasure finding to national highs. These high rates preceded a drastic, and some say related, increase in retaliatory acts on the part of Bayport's surprisingly numerous gangs of smugglers, white slavers, counterfeiters, and mob bosses.

Recent weeks have seen more suspicious spikes in criminal activity, as high school sophomore and amateur detective, Nancy Drew, was badly burned in a botched car-bombing. Whether the new chief can stem the rising tide of violence remains to be seen, as he or she will first be tasked with reforming the tainted legacy of Chief Collig.