“Stop being a wuss. Nothing's going to happen to us. No one around here would dare do anything to put this place back on our radar. It's like when you have a bee flying around your head. If you leave it alone, it'll leave you alone.”
“I always get stung.”
“That's because you're a schmuck. Just keep your mouth shut and follow me.”
Hinges hung by threads, the door held in place by the grip of dirt. Detective Knox pulled gently, and the door wobbled and almost fell on him. He pushed it aside, exposing the entrance to what could optimistically be called a building. The structure was failing, the cracks counted like the rings on a tree, telling the story of how long it had been since anyone considered it worth inhabiting.
Detective Lane swung his flashlight through the darkness, illuminating the way before he dared step inside. Knox had left him behind, venturing in, chuckling at the thought of his partner frozen in fear. Knox switched on his own light, looking into the folded corners of blackness. Nothing about the room looked out of place, if such a thing could be said about a crumbling remnant. Broken glass and bits of machinery filled the corners, dust and grime painting them all the same flaccid shade of invisible.
Detective Knox had seen enough, and spun around on his heel to leave, a habit he’d adopted as a youth, one that wore out his shoes in a way that made him appear an inch shorter than he really was. As he spun to a stop, his eyes were blinded by Lane's light, barely a foot from his face. Knox shielded himself, blinking hard to clear the ghosted image. Seeing ghosts there was likely enough but he did not need to add to the confusion.
“What are you shining that damn light in my eyes for?”
“Sorry, I thought you saw what I did.”
“What did you see?”
Knox turned around again, still blinded by Lane's light. The edges were hazy, and Knox could not see anything. Frustration tinged his voice as he spoke, a level of angst that Lane could see something he could not.
“Nothing. I see nothing.”
“What's so special about that? This place is empty.”
“It's too empty. Look again, the entire middle of the room is bare. There's not a shard of glass, or a piece of dust, to be found. It looks like someone swept it up, and not long ago.”
Detective Knox hated to admit it to himself, much less to Lane, but the observation was keen. The scene did look too clean, too organized for being in the middle of a rotten husk of a building. He stepped forward into the center, wincing as he knelt to the floor, getting a closer look.
“Something happened here.”
“Do you think this is where he was taken?”
“I do now.”
Knox spotted a discoloration. He moved closer, to verify his instincts. Putting a handkerchief over his finger, he touched the spot, then held the red blot to his eye.
“Is that blood?”
“Yes, Lane, it's blood. Get a sample, and we'll send it to the lab. We'll have to wait for confirmation, but I think we found what we were looking for.”
“A clue.”
“Yup. Now we have something to work with.”
“So we might just solve this case after all.”
“There's hope.”
“See, I told you optimism pays off.”
“Work pays off. Optimism just makes you unaware of how miserable you are until you get there.”
“Forget I said anything.”
“I always do.”
Chapter 16
Unreflected Sunshine
Home for Detective Knox was not where the heart was, it was a distraction from his work, an unwelcome pause in the obsessions running roughshod through his mind. He had been told it was important to have balance in one’s life, but there were times when trying to act like a good and normal person got in the way of what he truly wanted and he struggled to muster the effort to engage in personal interaction.
For him, being antisocial was not a choice, it was a genetic predisposition. People were an allergen, and isolation was the only medicine he knew of. The others at the precinct wondered how he had ever acquired a life outside of work, since he displayed no desire to have one. The truth of the matter was that everyone and everything that mattered to him outside his job had been acquired before there was one. In those days, when he did not have an endless string of puzzles to consume his every waking moment, he had had the energy to put on a brave face and attempt human intimacy.
Remnants of his former life lingered, mostly in the form of his wife, Kat. She was an odd choice to stand by Knox's side, a ray of sunshine that had no surface to reflect off. Anyone who saw the two of them together was left confused, and the inevitable jokes would ensue about how much Knox had to pay her to stay. She understood, because Detective Knox was not the man she had fallen in love with, nor the one she had married. That man, Dylan, was a different animal than the one she now found herself stuck with.
They had met before Knox's bitterness had fully brewed, when the depths of his cynicism were still covered up by the honeyed taste of hope. Back then, she swore, he was a happy person who sometimes played the part of a misanthrope. Now she could only remember the shape of his smile, though she swore the man he once was still resided inside him. He loved her for this, because she was the only person in his life who could see anything in him other than the grizzled old cop who lived inside his memories.
Their life together was not without its challenges, mostly due to Detective Knox's inability to decipher human feelings. For a man who spent his life putting clues together to form solutions, Kat was a puzzle he was unable to solve. As frustrating as it was for her to spend her life with a man who did not understand many of the basic tenets of her foundation, she had to admit a sense of pride in being the one mystery her husband had yet to solve. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, that was why he stayed with her. He simply couldn't leave a mystery unsolved.
Detective Knox drank his scotch in oversized gulps, not worrying about the flavor of the cheap liquor, using it merely as a conduit to a different state of mind. Alcohol, he decided, was not an art that needed to be loved and savored with every sip and drop. To him, alcohol was a tool, so it didn't matter to him if he was drinking the finest example of distilling technology, or gussied-up paint thinner. As long as he got to the point where he could no longer remember who he was, or why he started drinking in the first place, he was happy, or at least as happy as he could ever be.
Knox heard footsteps behind him, the muted sound of skin on wood. They were not the light approach of a covert operative gaining position without being detected. Kat was not afraid of him, even when he was in no mood to put up with any human, her included. She knew enough about him that the distraction of having to turn on the part of his brain required for caring enough about another person, even as an act, would help him escape the labyrinth of troubles he had trapped himself in.
“I know you're there.”
“I'm always here. You're the one who forgets to come home.”
Knox expected the remark to come with that tone of voice he hated, the one that reminded him of his many failings as a man and husband. Instead, she spoke with the soft inflection of a nurse consoling a dying man before he stepped into the light. Whatever his faults, she refused to let him believe he had erased the memory of who he once was.
“It's not that I forget, or that I don't want to be here. You know how I get. I become so focused on the problem that I can't sleep until I make some sort of progress, or at least come to the conclusion that there isn't an answer to be found. If I can't sleep, I might as well be at work trying to figure it out.”
“You say that every time, and it's still not an excuse. Drinking yourself to sleep so you can deal with a problem doesn’t work. Why don't you try talking to someone instead?”