Inside, the lodge held yesterday’s violence in stillness.
The front room was dim despite the morning.Old chairs.Empty rifle rack.Stone fireplace.A photograph hung crooked on one wall.Beyond the doorway, the dining room waited with its long table and dried blood darkening the wood at one end.
Selena stopped before entering.
Crime scenes had moods.Not supernatural.Not mystical.Human.The mood left behind by choices.This place had the controlled feel of someone who had done exactly what they meant to do.
Connor stepped into the dining room.“Doesn’t look like anything’s disturbed.”
“That we know of.”
He glanced back.
Selena moved closer to the table.The blood had dried into patches and streaks, black brown against the wood grain.A chair sat near the far end, righted now but still tagged from the initial processing.Evidence markers remained in place.The envelope and paper were gone, taken for analysis.
“Could be forensics missed something,” Selena said.“Killer came back for it.”
“Maybe.Could also be local kids wanting to see a crime scene.”
“Of course.”
“But you don’t think so.”
"Killers sometimes return to the scenes of their crimes to either relive the experience or cover up something they overlooked."
Connor gave a small nod.“If it is that, then what was overlooked?”
Selena looked around the room.“Talk me through the scene as though it were still all arranged.”
Connor stood opposite her, near the end where Warren had died."Warren was found here, seated at the table.Shot once.Entry to the temple.Weapon found on the floor near the rear wall."
“Suicide staging?”
“That was the first thought from Arnold.Matt Price didn’t buy it.Neither did I.”
“Why?”
“Gun placement.Entry angle.No note.The paper in front of him was blank, and there was an envelope with his name typed on it.All a bit weird.”
Selena let the information settle.A void that was quickly filled with blood.
“The blank page could represent something.”Selena studied the blood pattern on the table.“End of a life.No more words.A warning without language.Or it was there for practical reasons, to get Warren seated and focused in one direction.”
Connor leaned against the back of a chair but didn’t sit.“You think it’s symbolic?”
“It all depends on whether Warren put the paper in front of himself or someone else did.”
A fly tapped at the cracked side window, then vanished through the broken glass.
Connor looked toward it.“Warren was a big real estate guy.Owned some parcels, sold others, brokered land deals.You think this could be because of that?”
“It’s a reasonable angle.Land creates grudges.Money sharpens them.”Selena turned from the table.“Do we know why he was here?”
“As far as we know, he had a deer he’d shot.It was tied down in the back of his truck.Maybe he came here to dress it.Maybe he was meeting someone.”
“What about his phone?”Selena asked.
“We were able to access it, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary on it.He didn’t make any calls from it earlier in the day, and if he spoke to someone to organize coming here, it must have been on another phone.A landline maybe.”
