Seeing Is Believing
April Dancer didn’t look up as her partner Mark Slate walked into the
room. She was too busy blinking back the moisture fogging her sight, something
she didn’t need, were they to find any clues in this apartment.
“April?” Mark sounded sympathetic, giving her the
male equivalent to a comforting hug - - a pat on her shoulder.
“Yes, yeah, give me a minute.” She swallowed around the lump in her
throat. What a joke. If they didn’t solve this mystery soon, she was afraid she
would need a lifetime to recover.
She squinted up at Mark’s kind face, nodded, and let her gaze swipe the
living room they were standing in.
Their living room, she knew that now. The evidence was seeping into her brain
and embedding itself in her memories. She took clinical notes of the details.
The two glasses on the low table, one overturned so the content had spilled and
dripped down on the pale rug on the floor. Snacks in a bowl, piles of books,
one lying opened. Babyn Yar,
she read, Yevgeney Yevtushenko.
Not exactly a love poem if it had anything to do with the incident in
On the sofa the soft pillow with a dent like the back of a head was askew, the thick afghan was on the floor, like it had been
thrown off in a hurry. Under the table were four shoes, a brown pair and a
black pair, and one pair of thick-rimmed glasses. Everything looked so interrupted.
“April, I’m checking the kitchen,” Mark’s voice was quiet in the silent
room.
“Uhu.” She bent and
peered under the sofa. There was a darker shadow just…there. Reaching out, her
hand closed around a small tube. Lubrication. Oh. She
dropped it like it burned.
“Mark!” She yelled. “I feel awful.”
Mark’s dark head appeared in the doorway, reminding her of another. “So
do I April. But we must do this. Would you rather anyone else were given this case?”
No. “Absolutely not.” She got up and stood, arms akimbo. “What have we found?”
Mark blushed, but met her eyes defiantly, and started ticking off his
mental list with his fingers. “Two of everything, from
toothbrushes to alarm clocks.” Yes, she had seen the razor and the
electric shaver lying side by side, like objects in love.
Mark was still talking. “Russian books and American
newspapers. Clothes in two sizes. No
communicators or guns. Food in the kitchen.”
He blushed a darker red. “Uh, April, I
don’t think they were ordinary friends sharing an apartment.”
“What makes you say that?” She wanted to hear it, to make it real
outside her mind.
“The bedrooms, both alarm clocks were in one room…uh…only one bedroom is
used. I…you…do you think Waverly knows?
Huh? Oh. “Waverly knows,” she echoed Mark’s voice and pictured the Old
Man’s craggy face and his sharp but compassionate eyes in her mind.
“Okay.” One word that revealed Mark’s scepticism.
“Okay.” April tossed herself back to the here and now, “okay,
Mark.. Waverly knows, this is not
new.”
“If you say so.” Mark still sounded
sceptical, but they really didn’t have time for that now.
“C’mon, let’s go through the hallway once more. We may have overlooked
something.” Searching the hallway was the last thing she wanted to do. Once was
enough. But now the forensic unit had been through the small room, so she could
be more thorough.
The hallway must have been where they had fought for their freedom. Had
they been quiet? Had they screamed for the other to run? Had one of them been
unconscious? The overturned umbrella stand, the broken lamp, the coats lying in
a heap on the floor; everything told her of a vicious fight. She quietly
searched everything, and tried hard to avoid looking at the coagulating pools
of blood on the floor and the splashes on the carpet.
“The blood samples are being analysed as we speak, so I assume we can
lift the soaked clothes now? Mark crouched beside
her, patting her shoulder with his warm hand again. ”I do want to find them
April, after all they’re our best friends.” She could hear the unspoken, hurt so why didn’t they tell us linger in
the air.
Under the stiff, drying jacket April found the clue she had been
hoping for. A small, steel button, imprinted with the picture of a tiny black
bird.