Sherman Holmes
There was only one other person strong enough to flip Dan Killian over a rooftop railing, and he was in the penthouse office suites at the time: Sherman Holmes. Now I know that most accountants who have committed a crime have been found guilty of fraud, embezzlement, or other failings of a financial nature. Not too many have been accused of murder. Our unlikely suspect, Sherman Holmes, was certainly a mild-mannered accountant, as anyone would attest. For decades, he quietly, almost invisibly, dealt with other people’s money, sometimes millions, while living an ordinary life in an unexemplary manner, until envy, resentment and greed got the best of him. He went to the roof shortly before 1:00, having seen that everybody else was back in their offices, Helmut was downstairs and Pat had left. He told police later that he wanted to talk to Dan about getting more money for his work, getting a percentage of the business profits, even though he hadn’t bought into the startup. Standing on the roof behind Dan, who was facing away from him, something came over Sherman Holmes. He described it as an action almost without thought. He grabbed Dan by the ankles and lifted the startled man up. Dan’s reaction was to make his body rigid and tightly grab the bar he was leaning on, but his grip wasn’t strong enough and his hands slid around the bar as he was lifted and tossed over the side. Sherman admitted he really had nothing against Dan in particular; his rage came from, as he put it, “a lifetime of mediocrity, even though my work was always of the highest standard.”