Watching.
Chapter 2
The smell hit him first. It always did.
Blood. Copper and iron, thick in the cold air. Mixed with the sharper scent of fear-sweat and the staleness of a house that had been closed up too long.
Carson stood in the doorway of the bedroom, taking it all in before he stepped inside. Old habit. His dad had taught him that—look first, process second, act third. Don’t contaminate the scene with your assumptions.
The victim was male, early sixties, lying face-down near the bed. Single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Execution style. No signs of struggle in the immediate area, which meant he either knew his killer or never saw them coming.
“Detective Black.” One of the uniforms—Patterson, young guy, maybe sixmonths on the job—approached with his notebook out. His face had a greenish tinge. First body. “We got the call at oh-six-hundred from the daughter. She came by to check on him when he didn’t answer his phone.”
“Where is she now?”
“Ambulance took her. She was pretty shaken up.”
Carson nodded, still scanning the room. Nightstand drawer open. Empty. “Anything missing?”
“Daughter says his gun is gone. Kept a .38 Special in that drawer.”
So the killer took the murder weapon. Smart. Made his job harder.
Carson pulled on latex gloves and stepped carefully into the room, staying close to the wall to avoid the blood spatter pattern. The techs would map all of this later, but he needed to see it fresh. Needed to feel what had happened here.
The victim wore pajamas. Slippers on his feet. He’d been getting ready for bed, or just waking up. The alarm clock on the nightstand read 6:47 AM—probably when the daughter had unplugged it to call 911.
“Time of death estimate?” Carson asked.
“ME says sometime between ten PM and two AM.”
Night kill. The shooter had come in dark, either through the unlocked door or a window. He’d check the entry points after he finished in here.
He crouched next to the body, careful not to touch anything. The angle of the wound suggested the shooter was taller than the victim, or the victim was already kneeling. No defensive wounds on the visible hand. He’d been taken by surprise.
Something nagged at Carson. Something wrong about the scene beyond the obvious.
He stood and looked around again. Bedroom was neat—bed made, clothes hung in the closet, nothing out of place except that open drawer. No signs of a search. If this was a robbery, the killer had known exactly what they wanted.
The gun.
“Patterson, did the daughter say if her father had any enemies? Anyone threatening him?”
“She said he was retired, kept to himself mostly. Widower for the past eight years.”
Retired from what? He made a mental note to run a full background. Could be a grudge from his working years come back to haunt him.
Carson’s phone buzzed. Text from Captain Holloway:My office when you’re done. Need to talk.
Great. That tone meant he’d done something he didn’t like. Again.
He spent another twenty minutes processing the scene, talking to the techs, making sure every detail was documented. The crime scene photographer, Kim, was thorough as always. She’d have three hundred shots by the time she was done.
“Get me close-ups of the entry wound,” Carson told her. “And the empty drawer. Something about this feels personal.”
“You got it, Detective.”
Personal murders were usually the easiest to solve—lover, family member, business partner. Follow the emotion and you find the killer. But they were also the hardest to stomach. All that rage and betrayal, turned into violence.
