Page 5 of Stay in Your Lane!

But nooo, this department insisted on handing them off directly to us, which meant the officer posted to guard the scene had to stay there until I physically showed up and took over. And since they were cracking down on overtime, I had to get herenowunless I wanted the city to decline to renew my contract atthe end of the year. As long as I was here, I might as well get started.

God forbid the crime scene cleanup people had things like“social lives”and“shit to do.”

Not that I had either of those things. My only plans tonight had involved cleaning the fish tank, which I had managed to accomplish before I got bitten or got the call. A win, I guess?

Eh. It was money.

With all my usual gear on and a pen and notebook in hand, I headed inside. No cleaning supplies yet—first step was checking out the scene and making notes of what I would need for the job and what I should check with the owner about before starting.

I pulled off the police tape and pushed open the door. Even through my respirator, the air was heavy and coppery with blood. I was used to that. In fact, this was already better than a lot of the death scenes I’d cleaned. The decedent had been found… yesterday, I thought? Might’ve even been today.

Anyway. I closed the door behind me and scanned the living room. Nothing in here that I needed to deal with, aside from a half-eaten slice of pizza sitting on top of the box on the coffee table. I always gave the kitchen a once-over and took out the trash as part of my services; it went a long way toward making a place smell a skoch less ripe.

But the pizza slice gave me pause.

That was… odd.

Wasn’t this a suicide?

And like, people who were in the state of mind to take their own lives were never in a good place. I felt for them, you know? When ending it was the only way to stop whatever pain they were living with—I couldn’t imagine.

I’d been to the scenes of alotof suicides. Though no two were alike, there were common patterns.

I was no expert, but I didn’t think I’d ever encountered a suicide where someone literally got up in the middle of a meal, went in the other room, and took their life.

That was for people with a lot more letters behind their name to figure out. I was just here to clean up the scene so the trailer could be sold or rented or whatever.

Except it still bothered me. Even as I continued down the hall, my mind kept going back to that slice of pizza.

Halfway down the hall, I stopped, and I rocked on my feet.

I had to clear it away. It was part of my job. But what if the CSI techs hadn’t made a note of it? Maybe I should snap a photo.

Yes. Yes, that was what I needed to do.

I made a note to grab the disposable camera I kept in the back of the truck when I went out to get cleaning supplies. Like hell was I using my phone—that was how phones got confiscated by the cops. Fuck that.

For now, I continued my sweep. The hallway had some bloody shoe impressions. Small ones, like someone had a little bit of blood on their heel or something; they were faint smears that probably hadn’t gone all the way through. In theory I could just remove them, but I’d text the owner and ask if he wanted me to clean it, cut out the affected pieces of carpet, or rip out the whole thing instead.

The bedroom—that was another story. I’d been to the scenes of suicides by shotgun before, and they always gave me chills. The sheer amount of destruction someone could do to themselves with a single blast was… a lot to process.

I pulled my attention away from the all too familiar fan pattern of blood and viscera, and analyzed the whole scene. Everything in here would need to go to the incinerator. There was no salvaging the bedclothes or the mattress. The frame—well, we’d see how the wood looked after I cleaned off the blood.Sometimes furniture like that was salvageable, especially with some sanding and a coat of?—

The front door creaked and the air pressure changed.

I froze.

Aww, fuck.

The reason the city insisted on keeping a cop posted here until the cleanup crew arrived was that vandals, thieves, addicts, and bored kids—not to mention true crime influencer wannabes, God, I hated those fuckers—would break in. Sometimes in search of things they could steal (I couldn’t count the number of scenes I’d been to that had been stripped of any trace of copper) or gory images they could upload for clout or whatever.

They weren’t always friendly or lucid,especiallyat night, and that was the reason I carried.

The trailer’s floorboards creaked under someone’s weight.

I unzipped the pocket of my Tyvek suit so I could reach my sidearm if necessary.

“Hey, anybody in here?” a voice called out.

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