James Knapp - State of Decay

“Valle had a cam set up,” I said. “That would explain how he knew the person who responded on the chat wasn’t Rebecca.”

Leave it for the experts.

On the camera display I could see one of the investigators cross by in the hallway on the other side of the room. They were still there, looking for clues.

“He probably looked right at the killer,” I said, watching. “That camera probably recorded him.”

“I’ll have a look,” Shanks said. He started to move toward the computer station when something inside the house made a thump and he froze. The sound came from the direction of the kitchen.

He looked back at me, and I nodded toward the doorway. He readied his gun and crept back out into the living area. I got ready to follow him, but first, there was one thing I wanted to do.

My intuition had told me not to mess with the information on the computer, but my intuition didn’t seem to be as sharp as maybe it once was. There was a chance I might blow it, that I might be responsible for triggering something that would erase the data, like what had happened at the previous victim’s place, but this one time I was going to go against what my intuition was telling me.

There was no time to look at it now, but I fished a data card out of my jacket pocket and slipped it into the first available bay. Working quickly, I dumped the entire contents of the client’s buffers onto the card.

“Dasalia,” Shanks hissed. I pulled the card and slipped it back into my pocket.

Following Shanks’s flashlight beam, I looked into the kitchen and saw papers and envelopes scattered across the floor. A wicker basket lay overturned off to one side, and two kitchen knives lay on the floor beneath a butcher’s block on the counter above. As we got closer, the air smelled like bleach.

The noise didn’t recur, and it looked like it might have been the remainder of the stack of envelopes that had fallen from the counter. Listening carefully, there were no signs that we weren’t alone; the house was completely silent.

The kitchen opened up into another short hallway where a door led into a half bath, and across from that was another door, which was closed. The bathroom was empty, but there were beads of water still in the sink.

The door across from it opened into a stairwell leading down to what looked like a small cellar or storage area. The smell of bleach was coming from somewhere down below.

I flipped the light switch and a light flickered on at the base of the stairs. The stairs creaked as we headed down and looked around. It was a small area, but it had been converted into some kind of hobbyist’s machine shop. There was a workbench covered in tools and a bunch of small mechanical parts I couldn’t identify. The walls were lined with shelves, which were stacked with uniform containers of screws, washers, nuts, and wire. The bleach fumes were strong enough to make me breathe through the fabric of my sleeve.

“Dasalia,” Shanks said, nudging me. A foot wearing a slipper was sticking out from behind the bench. I holstered my gun and moved around to the other side of the work area, where a man’s body lay sprawled on its back. He was an older man, dressed in casual clothes. It looked like there had been a struggle—the floor around him was scattered with tools, and a cardboard box had fallen down, partially covering his head.

The end result was the same, though; the killer had overpowered him and landed his signature blow. A deep puncture wound gaped from the middle of his chest. Clear liquid had been splashed across the floor a few feet away over by the workbench, where a plastic jug of bleach lay open on its side.

“Damn it,” I muttered. Shanks spoke into the radio.

“We’re too late,” he said. “Craig’s here. He’s already dead. Get CSI down here.”

“On their way.”

“How the hell did he beat them here?” I asked. It was impossible. We’d called the locals from the road. If he’d flown, he couldn’t have beaten them.

“I don’t know.”

“He didn’t surprise this one,” I said. I moved the cardboard box aside and saw his eyes were wide open. The man’s right forearm was bruised in a pattern that looked like it had been gripped tightly, and there was a gash on the wrist above it, in the center of a swollen knot. Shanks knelt down and fished out his ID.

“Harold Craig,” he said. “It’s our guy.”

Looking around the room, I could see there was no other way out except the way we had come down.

“He had some idea about what was happening,” I said. “On the messenger he asked, ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ Who’s ‘us’?”

“Are you asking me?”

“He seemed to think the killer knew something about him. He knew the killer knew that he’d seen him. Why didn’t he call the police? If not for his friend, then why not for himself?”

“Maybe he figured he was safe way the hell out here.”

“The chair upstairs was pushed away from the computer like he moved in a hurry, like he was surprised. The study door is between the front door and the kitchen, where the struggle took place. So the killer came in through the front and startled him, then chased him into the kitchen. After what he must have seen, he just sat there at the computer and waited?”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Shanks said. “Maybe it happened sooner.”

“It would take forty minutes to get here.”

You’re assuming the killer worked alone , the voice said. You’re assuming there is only one killer. Maybe he made the same assumption.

Could that be? Could the reason Harold Craig hadn’t called the police after witnessing the crime at Valle’s apartment be because he didn’t have time? Because he was attacked shortly afterward himself?

The time of death will tell us that , I said to myself.

I’m just saying. With what we have so far, we can’t definitively say others aren’t involved. Right?

The fumes were making me light- headed. For all I knew, the bleach had combined with some other chemical down there and had created some kind of toxic gas. Why did he come down into the one place he had to have known there was no way out of?

They struggled in the kitchen, and he came down into the basement. The killer overtook him again at the workbench and they struggled. There was a wound on the side of Craig’s wrist that looked like it was from an impact, like it had been smashed against something….

“A gun,” I said.

“What?”

“He kept a gun down here; that’s why he came down here.”

He managed to get it too. The killer closed the distance and grabbed him. He smashed his wrist against the workbench, forcing him to drop it. Had he gotten a shot off?

Yes. That’s what the bleach was for. It hadn’t just fallen over; the killer dumped it out. He did that to compromise any sample of his blood that might be collected.

“He shot him.”

Using the ALS light, I adjusted the beam’s spectrum and scanned the area around the body, then over near the workbench. There was nothing on the walls or ceiling, and nothing on the surface of the bench. The bullet, if there was one, must have gotten lodged inside its target.

“Come on,” Shanks said. “Let’s get forensics in here.”

“Hold on.”

Kneeling down and shining the light up under the bench, I could see a spatter there. He had been hit. I scraped off a small sample.

“Come on, before we both pass out.”

If he had any kind of record, it would identify him. Even if he didn’t, we’d have his entire genome. After six crime scenes and not one hair, not one speck of saliva or sweat, not one thing that could be used as a reliable identification, he left behind the most damning thing he possibly could have.