It had a graphic-footage warning. I clicked on that one.
Sure as shit, the cameras were pointed inside his place. From the angle, they must have been right inside the front door. I had stood in that same spot.
“…an anonymous tip alerted authorities to the murders,” a voice said. “A search of the apartment revealed a grim discovery.”
The camera moved past the bathroom I took my piss in and down the hall Luis came from when I walked back out. They turned the corner and went down a hall, where something was pooled on the floor. They moved through a door and focused on what was inside.
There were three bodies in the middle of the room, all lying on the white carpet with their hands bound by plastic ties behind their backs, facedown on the floor. The carpet around them was covered with blood.
One of the cops or someone else must have taken the video and sold it. It was bad, even for underground news. There was blood fucking everywhere.
They killed his family. While I was on the can, he went to look for them and found them back there. I was in that place with three dead bodies and I didn’t even know it.
He knew. That’s why he was so hot to get out of there. That’s why he said what he did. He had no way to help me like he said he would; he just needed out of there and way the hell away.
“…last remaining family member Luis Valle, whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Investigators are not commenting yet on whether or not he is a suspect in these murders, or another victim. If you have any information concerning Luis Valle, please …”
They flashed his mug shot and showed a number. I wrote it down and shoved it in my pocket.
The water stopped, and I shut off the TV.
He was trouble. He was big trouble. He was who the guys that murdered his family were looking for. They tossed his place looking for that storage-spike thing he talked about. Whoever he pissed off, they were hardcore, and they were still out there.
They were looking for him, and I let him right in my front door.
Faye Dasalia—Concrete Falls
“Any word?” Shanks asked. I snapped my phone shut.
“He’s still not answering.” No one had been able to reach Harold Craig. The local police had checked out his place, but at my request they kept it low- key; no one approached on foot. If the killer was going to make his move, I didn’t want to spook him. His place was being watched while they waited for us, but so far no one had shown up.
“Body heat came up negative in his home. He’s not there.” Shanks said.
It had taken too long to get to the neighborhood where Harold Craig lived, and the sky was starting to get dark.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The city had slowly begun to trade its superstructures for tight blocks of duplexes in what looked like a well- to-do area. Crowded brick houses stood tall and slim at the heads of short but individual driveways with individual mailboxes. A woman bundled up in a coat and walking a medium-sized black dog watched as we drove by. The dog strained against its leash and barked.
“This is Detective Shanks with Detective Dasalia,” Shanks said into his radio. “Be advised we are approaching the residence.”
“We see you,” a voice crackled.
“Turn left up here; it should be down this street,” Shanks said.
I turned onto the narrow street and followed the numbers down until I found it. A silhouette watched through a window from across the street as I pulled up to the house. There was a car in the driveway, so I parked on the street and cut the engine.
“Any movement?” Shanks asked into the radio.
“Negative. Nothing on infrared or thermal.”
He looked over at me.
“Tell them we’re going in,” I said.
“Have your men stand by. We’re going inside.”
“Roger that.”
We got out, and when I looked over, the figure watching from the window retreated.
“Maybe he’s walking his dog.”
“Maybe.”
He followed me to the front door and I rang the bell, but no one answered. I tried the door; it was unlocked. I pushed it open and looked inside. The lights were off, but there was a soft glow coming from somewhere inside.
“Mr. Craig?” I called. No one answered.
“Mr. Craig, this is the police,” I called. “We’re coming in.”
I glanced at Shanks, and he shrugged. I drew my gun and he followed suit as I pushed the door open the rest of the way and we crossed through.
The unit was quiet, although I could hear a television through the wall from the connected duplex. The front door opened into a good-sized living area and a pair of French doors leading into a study where the glow was coming from. Another doorway opened into a short hallway that looked like it led to a kitchen.
“Mr. Craig?”
Moving closer, I could see the glow from the study was coming from a computer monitor.
The study was small, crowded with expensive- looking wooden furniture and a single leather chair that was pushed away from the desk. This was where he had sat, conversing with Rebecca Valle over the message client. He had been talking to her when the intruder broke in at Alto Do Mundo and the Valles were killed.
The client was still on the screen, displaying the same snippet of conversation I had seen at the Valle place. In addition, Mr. Craig seemed to have a video display sitting above it that looked out from somewhere above Valle’s monitor.
“Valle had a cam set up,” I said. “That would explain how he knew the person who responded on the chat wasn’t Rebecca.”
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.
