Chris Carter - I Am Death

Nothing but what was expected — dust.

He pulled the wardrobe away from the wall and checked behind it.

Nothing on the wall.

Nothing on the back of the wardrobe.

Hunter reached for the plastic bucket and checked inside it. Completely dry. Not even a drop of water. He brought the bucket to his nose. It carried the same faint smell of bleach and disinfectant with a hint of orange as the living room.

Hunter put the bucket down and checked the string mop. There was still a little bit of moisture on its strings. It smelled identical to the bucket, only not as faint. Hunter guessed that it had been used no more than four, maybe five days ago.

He returned the mop to its place, turned and stepped into the small, white-tiled bathroom. There was a washing basin on the left with a fixed mirror on the wall above it. The toilet was against the wall opposite the basin, with the shower enclosure to its right. On the basin, Hunter found a shaving razor and a half-used tube of toothpaste — no toothbrush. The piece of soap inside the shower enclosure looked like it had only been used a couple of times. There were no towels of any sort inside the bathroom, paper or otherwise. No toilet paper either.

Hunter paused in front of the mirror and stared at his tired reflection for a moment, as though if he stared at it long and hard enough, the mirror would either tell him a story or reveal the reflection of who had last been standing before it.

Neither happened.

Hunter returned to the bedroom.

There was no doubt that apartment two-eleven was nothing more than a crash pad, a place Mathew Hade used from time to time and for only a day or so at a time. This was not where he lived — and if he really was who they were looking for, it certainly wasn’t the place where he kept his victims.

While Hunter searched the bedroom and the bathroom inside Mathew Hade’s apartment, Garcia checked the rest of the flat.

At least, this won’t take long, he thought, approaching the only three furniture items in the barren living room.

The desk and chair seemed relatively new, but the old-looking two-drawer cabinet looked as though it had been salvaged from the city dump. It was covered in nicks and scratch marks. The good news was that the drawers had no locking mechanism, which made things a lot easier.

From his pocket, Garcia retrieved a pair of latex gloves and slipped them on before pulling open the cabinet’s top drawer. Inside it, he found several sheets of regular, white printer paper, nothing else. He removed the sheets from the drawer and quickly fanned through them.

They were all blank.

Just to be sure, he swapped hands and fanned through them again from the other side.

Yes, all blank.

He returned them to the drawer before closing it and moving on to the bottom one. It slid open a lot less smoothly than the first drawer, as if one of its runners had been severely damaged.

From the look of the cabinet, Garcia didn’t find that at all surprising.

The drawer came open only about halfway before jamming.

Garcia tried again.

Same result. It was certainly jammed.

He tried once more, giving it a firm pull this time, but it made no difference, the drawer got stuck at the exact same point. But the firm pull made something that was lying at the back of the drawer roll forward — a red, BIC Cristal, ballpoint pen.

A millisecond later, Garcia’s memory spat out images of the note the killer had sent Mayor Bailey, and the one that had been slid under Hunter’s door. Both had been written on crisp white sheets of printer paper, and forensics had identified the pen used as a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.

Garcia reached for the pen inside the drawer and for a quick instant he felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. On the body of the pen, in tiny white letters, he saw the BIC logo, followed by the words ‘Cristal 1.6 mm’.

In his hand, he was holding a red, BIC Cristal, large ballpoint pen.

Garcia curbed his excitement and retrieved a plastic evidence bag from his pocket. He dropped the pen inside it, sealing the bag.

Squatting down, Garcia looked inside the jammed drawer. It seemed empty. He stuck his hand inside it and felt around. Nothing. He closed the drawer and reopened the top one. From the paper pile inside it he retrieved the topmost sheet, before lifting it up to the window to study it against the light.

He was looking for impressions that could’ve been left behind. Depending on the pressure a person applies to a pen when writing, if a second sheet of paper is used as a base for the one that is being written on, partial and sometimes even full indentations might be left behind.

The sheet of paper was completely clear. No impressions of any kind.

Garcia reached for the sheet at the bottom of the pile and repeated the process, just in case he had returned the pile to the drawer the wrong way around after fanning through them.

Nothing.

Still, together with the red BIC Cristal, they would all be taken back to the forensics lab for further analysis.

Garcia left the living room and entered the kitchen. It was even more barren than the living room. There was a fridge-freezer at one end of the short kitchen worktop, a sink at the center of it and a small stove at the other end. Just under the worktop, Garcia saw two drawers together with three cupboards. Three other cupboards were mounted on to the wall above the sink. The only item on the chrome-plated dish rack to the left of the sink was a sponge. An electric kettle was to the left of the stove. There was no dishwasher, no washing machine and no microwave oven. Just like the rest of the apartment, a faint smell of bleach and disinfectant with a hint of orange lingered in the kitchen.

Garcia started by checking the fridge. There was nothing inside it except two small and unopened bottles of water. The inside of the fridge was sparkling clean. The freezer was completely empty.

Next he checked the three cupboards on the wall.

First one on the left.

Empty.

Middle one.

Empty.

Last cupboard.

Garcia found a can of tomato soup, a jar of coffee and a small pack of sugar, nothing else.

He moved on to the cupboards under the sink.

First one on the left.

He found a bottle of bleach, one of washing-up liquid, one trigger spray bottle of Orange Plus, two large sponges and a pack of cleaning cloths.

Middle one.

There were two plates, two tumblers and one coffee mug, all of them plastic.

Last cupboard.

Empty.

Garcia closed them all and reached for the sponge and the dish rack. Both were completely dry. No one had used either in a while.

He placed the sponge back on the rack and opened the drawer by the fridge.

Empty.

He walked to the other end of the kitchen worktop and opened the final drawer. All he found was one fork, one knife and a teaspoon — again, all of them plastic — together with a plain black book of matches with no logo on the front or back cover. He picked it up and flipped it open. The matches were also black with a bright red head. Five of them were missing. The inside of the book of matches differed from the outside because it was white instead of black.

Garcia stared at it for a couple of seconds before he finally realized what he was looking at.

Goosebumps rose on the back of his neck again. ‘Fuck!’

With his back flat against the wall, Squirm sat alone in the darkness of his cell. His knees were pulled up against his chest and his arms hugged his legs so tightly they were starting to go pale. The tips of his toes were moving up and down robotically, as if tapping to the beat of a slow song only he could hear. Despite the darkness, the boy kept his one good eye open, staring at nothing at all. The pain in his left eye was still there but Squirm simply didn’t care anymore.