"Russell, is it true you used to be one of these nut jobs?" Russell nodded without smiling in return. Avingyou said, "well here's the story. They all know who the dead man is, one of their traveling ministers, evidently. Some kind of supervisor. But that's all they know. No one knows why he was here, or who else might have been here to meet him. No one knows anything negative about the victim. No one knows if he has any enemies or is involved in anything suspicious. There's no sign of a break-in, but the victim doesn't have his own key to the building, according to the priest." Russell interjected, "he's an elder, not a priest."
"Whatever. So if it's true he didn't have a key, then someone had to let him in. All the ministers here" ("elders," muttered Russell), "well they admit to each having a key, but they all say that they have their keys and haven't loaned them out to anyone."
"Well they're making themselves look like suspects, then, aren't they?" Russell replied. "Oh no," Avingyou said, "they all claim they were out in 'service' and have an alibi. What the hell is 'service'?"
Russell didn't really have the energy to explain, so he just said "you know, they go out knocking on doors and preaching."
"So they'd be with other people all the time and have witnesses to their alibis?" Russell felt as though this was going to be a long, tedious investigation if he had to explain every aspect of the Jehovah's Witnesses religion to his superior. "Not necessarily. The elders get the field service started, assign people to work along a specific street, and then the elders often go off to make return visits and just check back in now and then to see how the service group is doing. To tell you the truth, sometimes an elder will get everyone else started preaching, and then go off by himself to have a donut and coffee before going back to check on the flock."
"So what you are telling me is that they don't really have alibis after all, unless they stayed with the group? Well, that is going to give us a lot of work, checking those alibis. By the way, even though there is no sign of a break-in, and no sign of any vandalism, these folks claim that it had to be a hate crime, that they are being persecuted by the local churches."
"Well yeah," admitted Russell, "a persecution complex is a big part of the religion. It's what they feel makes them special. But that just means more work, trying to find out if there is actually any persecution going on, or if it is just a red herring to keep us from looking at them as suspects." "Well, you know we're going to look at them anyway. They can't sidetrack us that easily."
