Page 10 of A Deeper Darkness
“Did you observe any cigarette butts or ashes on the premises?”
“No, sir. But Crime Scene will be looking at everything.”
“Excellent, son. Thank you. You can get back to your post now.”
Jimenez sauntered off looking pleased with himself, no doubt thinking he had made a good impression. Fletcher watched him go.
“All right. Let’s do it. Lonnie, you pick. Body or house?”
Hart shrugged, the overbuilt trapezius muscles of his neck flexing. “House.”
“Fine. I’ll go find out what I can about Mr. Croswell there. If you get a chance, can you track down that call? In this kind of neighborhood, you’d think someone might have heard or seen something, even if itwasthe middle of the night.”
“They’re all out there now.”
He pointed out the door, where a small crowd had formed.
“Let your buddy Bay-Neat-Toe start talking to them. He seems keen to help.”
“You’re the boss.” This was said without rancor—Hart had been his partner for eight years now, and they both liked the setup. Hart was an excellent cop, one hell of a detective and seriously lacking in any ambition to rise above his current post. Fletcher, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to get out of Homicide. He was five years from his twenty, and counting down every second. He’d take a promotion, push papers, ride a desk, anything to get out. He’d seen too much. Been in this position too many times. It wears on a man. If he’s sane. And Fletcher would like to think he was, after a fashion.
He watched Hart talk to Jimenez, saw the young man’s eager smile and shook his head. He’d been like that once. Full of piss and vinegar, titillated by his proximity to evil. So certain he could make a difference. Not unlike the gaggles of twentysomething college graduates that flooded the city each May, buffed and polished to a high shine—no more jeans and sweatshirts, but dark blue wool suits, crisp white shirts and red power ties for the lads, skirts and dresses over the knee, nipped at the waist and lightly shoulder-padded for the lassies. Drinking venti coffees, staring at their handhelds, talking earnestly over single malts and pitchers late into the night at the various Capitol Hill watering holes. He watched them on his way home, on his way to work, and marveled at their hope.
Hope that wouldn’t alter this empire of dirt. D.C. was immortal: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Even Icarus flew too close to the sun. But in D.C., the sun moved out of the way for the chosen ones, only singeing them around the edges in punishment. Nothing ruined a career in D.C. except for the obvious: a dead girl, a live boy or pictures of your junk all over the internet. Still, no one was ever totally destroyed. Even in death, the vanquished took on mythic qualities.
Confident things were well in hand, Fletcher shook off his melancholy and went back to the stairs, looking for anything out of the ordinary. The house was too clean, the scene too quiet. Soon the body would be moved, the cleaners would arrive, mopping the blood, replacing the carpet in the bedroom, and things would go back to normal. Normal. As if that could ever happen. More than likely, the owner of the house would decide to sell, unable or unwilling to stay behind where a life had been lost, and the thread of the day’s events would be gone in the ether. Empty, the house would collapse in on itself little by little: first the paint flaking, the porch sagging, a roof leak or two, until one of the many polite neighbors got upset and grouched to the owners, who by now were in Florida, paying a fresh mortgage, allowing the bank to foreclose on the property they couldn’t sell.
It was his job to find the answers before the trail was dead and gone. He didn’t need another cold case cluttering up his desk.
Crime scene techs crawled all over the second bedroom, dusting for latent prints, attempting to lift electrostatic footprints from the hall, accumulating the evidentiary elements that would be needed down the road to prove the identity of the murderer. Even the tiniest bit of matter could solve a case, and no tech wanted to be the one who missed it.
Fletcher let them work. He leaned against the wall and pulled out his iPhone, searched for Harold Croswell, Falls Church, VA. It would be just the first of multiple computer searches through multiple databases, but why not start with the easiest?
Bingo. With the treasure trove of information the internet could yield, detecting was sometimes made easier.
Facebook. MyLife. Twitter. “Hal,” as he was known, was married, with three kids and two dogs. Great. Notification would be fun.
“We’re all done here, sir.” A freckled worker, laden down with bags, flagged him down in the hall. “M.E.’s gonna move the body now.”
“All right. Thank you. Who’s on this morning?”
“Lurch.” The tech grinned at him. “Have fun.”
“Great,” Fletcher groaned.
“You are talking about me, I presume.”
Amado Nocek emerged from the hallway. He was cadaverously pale and extremely tall. Fletcher always thought he looked like some sort of translucent praying mantis, hands rubbing together in glee over the dead. They called him Lurch behind his back. He would suck them dry if they tried it face-to-face, but he knew what they said. In the manner of all great men, Nocek ignored their ignorance.
Fletcher shot the tech a look. “Of course we aren’t talking about you, Dr. Nocek. How have you been?”
“I am fine. Suffering from a malady I’ve not yet been able to discern, but it involves a great deal of mucus.” He proved his point by sniffing hard and long, his reddened nose closely resembling a proboscis. When the insect invasion came, Nocek would be flying in the lead formation.
“Keep that cold to yourself. When will you do the post?”
“You’ll have to call the office. We had a rash of deaths this week, and I’m afraid we’ve fallen behind. Some of that is my fault. The illness I alluded to has precluded me from working for the past few days.”
“Will you let me know?”
