Page 47 of Body Count

But it was like Darnell’s threat.It was like Peterson’s decision to put me on leave.

Thatifwas too big.If they took this away from me, after they’d taken everything else.

On my fifteenth pass through the kitchen, I noticed the folded paperwork.Someone—probably Darnell—had tucked it into the mail organizer that hung on the side of the fridge.But it wasn’t mail.It was a thick sheaf of official-looking documents.I thought I knew what it was.I’d had to type up a few of those documents in my life.I’d had to hand out a few of them too.

It was from the Dore County Sheriff’s Department, and it was an inventory of everything that had been taken while the deputies had been processing the scene.My bedding—I hadn’t noticed that; Darnell must have made up the bed with fresh sheets before bringing me home from the hospital.A sample of the carpet from my bedroom.Some of my clothing.My guess was that the clothes had been in or near the bed, and they wanted to see if they could match any trace evidence to the body.A set of kitchen knives.

That stopped me.Everything else had been from the bedroom, where the killer had left Tip.But the knives were in the kitchen.So, there was only one reason they’d have taken them—if they had a reason to think they were connected to Tip’s death.And that meant that whoever had killed Tip had used a knife.I saw, in my mind, his body again.In my bed.Sprawled out, his underwear tangled around his legs.No visible wounds.Which meant he hadn’t just been killed with a knife.He’d been stabbed in the back.

I dropped onto the sofa, still holding the inventory, staring at it but not really seeing it.Knives were ugly weapons.And they made for ugly deaths.I mean, every death is ugly, but knives—they were different from guns.The psychology was different.The physical proximity of a knife attack meant you had to be right next to the victim.It meant you didn’t have the distance, the illusion of detachment or anonymity, that a gun provided.And it wasn’t as simple as pulling a trigger either.The human body doesn’t like having things stuck in it.Don’t let a twink hear me say that.With a knife, you have to have enough physical power to drive it into the body.And you have to have the right mindset.To want it badly enough, to put it crassly.To feel the shock of impact, the knife slicing flesh and muscle.You have to be able to stand the blood.

Which was why a lot of knife-related violence had to do with desperation or rage.People driven to extremes.Especially knife-related killings.

Who hated Tip enough to kill him with a knife?

I made myself stop.Go back.I was jumping to conclusions.Yes, the psychology was important.But it wasn’t a hard-and-fast rule.People used knives because they were convenient.Because they were cheap.Because they were easy to get and even easier to get rid of.Lots of people carried knives—lots of violent, dangerous people.Tip could have been murdered by a dealer, by some white nationalist prepper, by a serial killer.

But if it had been something like that, the other pieces didn’t fit.Stranger killings didn’t lead to elaborate cover-ups.Whoever had murdered Tip, they wanted me and Darnell to take the fall for it.That’s the only reason they would have gone to the trouble—and the risk—of bringing the body here.

So, we were back to a killer Tip had known.That was actually the norm, if you could use the word norm for anything related to a murder.In spite of how TV shows and movies made it look, most killings were done by people the victims knew—often, people they were close to, either family or sexual partners.

Eddie Wheeler in his fucking recliner with his fuckingESPN.

That was a jump too.But it brought me back to the right question.If Tip had been killed with a knife, and if his killer had been someone he’d known—someone who had struck out at Tip in a moment of intense emotion, grabbing a weapon close at hand, in a dysregulated moment when the usual constraints of socialization were stripped away—then, who could it have been?And why?Most humans had a lot of built-in safeguards to prevent them from killing another human.Some were social.Some were biological.But that’s why psychopaths were the exception rather than the rule.So, what had pushed Tip’s killer beyond those safeguards?

That was the million-dollar question, I was starting to suspect.

A related question, and almost as important, was why the killer had chosen to target me and Darnell.The first answer that came to mind was that it was because we made such perfect fucking patsies.I mean, Tip’s injuries had been similar enough to mine that it wasn’t difficult to draw the connection.And I hadn’t helped things by—well, screwing the pooch, as my dad would have put it.And Tip’s story about the big, bearded man who had attacked him—even though I still thought it was bullshit—also made Darnell an easy target for a frame job.

But that only moved the question back a few inches.Because—why us?Convenience?Something more?Was this about us, instead of about Tip?Had the whole frame been planned from the beginning?

I didn’t have any fucking idea.

I got up and paced the house.I stopped at the fridge and stood there with the door open and cold air washing over my bare legs.No beer.I made coffee.It wouldn’t be as good as Darnell’s.But it gave me something to do, gave my body familiar motions: filter in basket, water in the reservoir, scoop out grounds.The water heated.The machine made its weird hissing, bubbling sounds.Then the coffee began to drip.I’d spilled some of the grounds, and I thought Darnell would probably clean those up.I got a paper towel and wiped them up anyway.How long did it take to make coffee?

I was right: it wasn’t anywhere near as good as Darnell’s.It was strong enough, in fact, that I thought I could feel it stripping the enamel from my teeth.But the caffeine hit my system, and the warm mug felt good in my hands as I resumed pacing.

If it weren’t me, I thought.If it were somebody else.If this were a case.

Most cases, you worked backward: you started at the scene of the crime and worked your way out from there.You worked the scene.You worked around the scene.You followed anything you got—the victim, physical evidence, witness reports—and kept moving outward.You moved backward in time.And you looked for where things started to cross.Where things came together.

I looked around the house.The recliners.The comfy, hideous sofa.The tangle of charging cables.Here we are, I thought.The scene of the crime.Oroneof the scenes, since Tip had been murdered somewhere else.

If there’d been anything to find, the deputies would have found it and taken it.What had they taken?My clothes, my bedding, my knives.No incriminating footprints.No latents that pointed to a stranger in the house.Nothing that said anyone but Darnell and I had been inside this house.But someone had been in here.And they’d brought a dead body inside.

For the first time, that fact really registered.I mean, I’d understood it—I’d touched Tip, and I’d seen him, and I’d known.But now, trying to think about this like it was a case, I saw what else it meant.And the questions it raised.

I let myself out the back door, carrying my coffee with me in spite of the thick, muggy air.The concrete slab of patio was rough under my bare feet, and then, after that, the grass was cool and whispered softly.I made my way around the house to the driveway.My car was parked there now, but the night the killer had brought Tip’s body here, it would have been empty.I’d been fucking around at the Beaver Trap, and Darnell had been wherever he’d been.

I made my way to the sidewalk and studied the house from that angle, sipping my godawful coffee.The driveway ran from the street up along the side of the house.It didn’t go all the way to the backyard—it stopped at a chain-link fence about three-quarters of the way back.But at night, if a car pulled in there, it would have provided a conveniently deep patch of shadow.Especially if the back porch light was off.It had been off when I’d come home; I remembered that.All the lights had been off.I’d thought, at the time, that had been Darnell’s little message to me.

Was it that simple?He—if the killerwasa he—had parked in the driveway, where the side of the house hid him from view, and then taken Tip through the backyard and into the house?If I were doing it, that’s what I would have done.

That meant, of course, that the killer knew the layout of the house.He’d planned this.He’d had some sort of idea about how to get inside.He might have even known that Darnell always left the door unlocked for me.And he’d either known or suspected that he’d be able to find a time when the house was empty.I didn’t like that.Without truly thinking about it, I’d had the half-formed belief—or maybe it was simply expectation—that Darnell was always home.He was a homebody, after all.He didn’t particularly like going out.But he’d been gone the night the killer had come here.And gone how many other nights as well?Gone, and I hadn’t known because I’d been out trying to nut.What else didn’t I know about Darnell?What else had I taken for granted in the last year?

I gave the street a considering look and then barefooted it across to Mrs.Estes’s house.The asphalt was hot enough that I immediately regretted the decision.I tried to hop from one foot to another, and that meant trying to keep the coffee from spilling.When I got to the grassy verge, the soles of my feet were broiled.I’d saved the coffee, though.

Mrs.Estes answered the door in a housedress.She was somewhere in her eighties, her graying hair in curlers, and what I could see of her neck and shoulders and chest was covered in age spots.She had one of those security doors, and even though we’d been neighbors for more than a year, she didn’t open it.

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