He stays slumped there, this dead weight in my office chair, then slowly he tips forward, he gains momentum, then his forehead

cracks heavily into the edge of the desk, jarring his head upright as his body falls, keeping him balanced for a moment longer, the back of his head almost touching his shoulders, his face exposed and his empty eyes staring at me, before he continues down to

the ground where he lies in a clump that five seconds ago was a person but is a person no more. He lies on the gun, and still I sit here, watching, waiting: perhaps someone will come along and

tell me that this is what I get for following up a line of questioning into an investigation that isn’t even mine.

The pink mist slowly settles; the smell of the gunshot starts to fade, replaced by urine and shit; and the ringing in my ears slowly dulls to a shrilling noise.

I stand up slowly, as if any sudden movement might cause him

to pick the gun back up and try prefixing his suicide with the word ‘murder’. I move around my desk to the body, careful not to step in any blood. I think of his last words. They deserved the dignity. He wanted me to take him seriously, and he succeeded. Only problem is I still don’t believe he’s innocent. Shooting himself in my office isn’t the action required to prove innocence over guilt; if anything, it helps suggest insanity over sanity. I’d have told him this if I’d been given the chance.

I crouch down and put a hand on his shoulder. Without rolling

him, barely without touching him, I go through his pockets.

There is a small envelope that has my name written on it, only he’s spelt it wrong. In the bottom of the envelope is a small key.

I’m about to sit it up on my desk when I see the blood mist has coated the surface. I fold the envelope in half and tuck it into my pocket. I go through the rest of his pockets. I find car keys and a wallet; I find tissues, two packets of antacids, a broken pencil and one of my business cards. I leave them where they are.

I use my cellphone to call the police because my office phone is covered in blood. I ask for Detective Schroder but get transferred through to Detective Inspector Landry. I’d rather not talk to him, but I’m not running high on options. I tell him the situation as if giving just any old police report. Before I finish I ask him to bring coffee.

‘Jesus, Tate, this isn’t my first homicide,’ he says.

‘You mean suicide.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’ He hangs up.

I sit on the ground out in the corridor, putting a cushion

between me and the wall so as to not stain it with the blood

splatter on my jacket, and lean back. I think of what Bruce told me. Why kill yourself if you’re not admitting any guilt? How

could you possibly believe he buried those girls but had nothing to do with their deaths?

I pull the envelope out of my pocket. The key looks a little

different from others I’ve seen, and I can’t identify it. There are no marks on it, no numbers, no letters. It could be for a house, a lockbox, a safe, a boat — could be anything. It’s just one more item that I’ve taken from somebody today. The ring is still in my pocket, and the wristwatch is still on my desk. I head back into my office and slip it into a plastic bag before dropping it into my pocket. This whole area is a crime scene now and I don’t need

awkward questions.

I’m still in my office when I hear them arriving. The elevator pings, the doors open, and half a dozen police, including Landry, spill into the corridor. Soon there will be others as they come to

question and photograph and document and study. The cemetery

crime scene was taken away from me, but this one is mine.

I stand by the doorway and watch. I have worked with most

of these men and women in the past, but they look at me as if I’m a stranger. Their greetings are curt, and I am told to step into the corridor and wait.

chapter thirteen

The night drags on. My office is quarantined from me, and from the rest of the world, by yellow boundary tape with black lettering.

Forensic guys dressed in white nylon overalls move slowly around inside, searching every square centimetre in case the vital clue is a microscopic one. Nobody asks to search me, but my hands are

tested for gunshot residue and my jacket is taken from me because of the blood dust that has settled on it. I’m not concerned at all, because the evidence will show that the shooting happened exactly as I said it did. It can’t go any other way. They can’t come back to me tomorrow and say they’ve weighed it all up and their conclusion is I put the gun into his chin and pulled the trigger.

Still, it’s a clear-cut case of suicide that can’t be that clear because of the time they’re taking to studying the angles and

blood patterns. At least that’s how it feels. They’re taking this long to deal with it because they’re dealing with me. They don’t trust me the same way they trusted me when I was one of them.

As an outsider I fall within the scope of their suspicions, and for this I only have myself to blame. I was a different man two years ago. A very different man.

Their questions begin to repeat after a while. The phrasing

alters somewhat, but they’re only variations of the same theme — one that fast gets tiring, and one which seems to suggest there is a degree of blame here that is mine. Only there isn’t. I didn’t force the caretaker into my car. Didn’t force him to come back here. Didn’t force him to shed brain and bone matter across my furniture.

In the end I’m told to go home. I’m not sure how happy I am

to do that, but I’m not sure what the alternative is either. Hang around and watch, I guess, though there isn’t much to watch. Just a bunch of guys doing the kind of tedious work that guys like me don’t have the patience for. If it was daytime there’d be a crowd of onlookers tripping over each other to sneak a peek at the corpse, but I’ve already sneaked a peek, and more — I stole from it.

‘One last thing,’ Landry calls out as I make my way to the

stairwell.

I turn around but keep my hand on the stairwell door. Landry

isn’t one of my biggest fans. There was a time when we were

rather alike, but his life became his work while I did what I could to keep a balance. He’s the same age as me, but he hasn’t aged very well in the two years since I’ve seen him. He doesn’t look good at all. He smells of cigarette smoke and coffee.

‘What did you take?’ he asks.

‘What?’

‘Off your desk. There’s three clear spots. All that misted blood, except for three places. Two are from your hands. Which is a

good thing, because it shows where you were when he pulled the trigger. But there’s something else. A much smaller patch.’

‘My keys.’

‘Doesn’t look like you took keys.’

‘There was so much going on. I don’t know. Maybe it was my

phone.’

‘Didn’t look like a phone. If I was to search you, I wouldn’t

find anything else?’

‘What’s your point, Landry?’

“No point. Just curious as to what would be important enough

for you to steal from a crime scene.’

‘I’m not stealing anything, and anyway it’s my office. Everything in there belongs to me.’

“Not everything,’ he says, and he looks back towards my office where the body of Bruce Alderman is being carried out in a dark canvas bag.

Outside, it’s drizzling again. It’s almost two in the morning. My car is still damp inside, but at least there’s no one in the back holding a gun. I drape one of the ambulance blankets over the

driver’s seat to protect it from any blood still on my clothes, then begin the drive home. The hookers and the homeless stare at me as I pass. I could be their salvation, their next meal, their next drink, their next score.