There was a light switch at the top of the stairs, but Decker didn’t move to turn it on. He didn’t know if the electrical short had affected the lights in the rest of the house, but, right now, darkness was his friend. He tested each step before fully placing his weight on it. Still, there were some slightcreaks and he winced with each one. He reached the bottom of the stairs without anyone trying to attack him.
He looked around. It was quite dark down here and he couldn’t see very clearly, but the space appeared to be unfinished. There was the musty odor that one often associated with unfinished basements.
He cautiously moved forward and almost fell to the floor. Regaininghis balance, he quickly retreated.
He had to risk a light now. He skittered back up the steps and flipped the switch. The lights came on. His gun pointed in front of him, he slowly came back down the stairs until he saw what he had tripped over.
The face looked up at him as the electric blue pulses once more started drumming against him.
It was a man, who looked tobe in his late thirties. He had dark hair and pale skin, and was of a medium build. He appeared to be about five-ten, although it was hard to be accurate about that since he was lying on the floor.
All those observations flowed automatically through Decker’s mind from his long career as a cop. And they were secondary to the single most important observation he was making.
The man was in a police uniform.
Decker knelt down next to him and checked for a pulse at his neck.
There was none, and the skin was very cold. He felt the limbs. They were stiff, indicating that rigor had begun. Decker’s experience as a homicide detective caused him to automatically consider both the cause and the timing of the death.
He ran his gaze over the body,looking for wounds, but saw none. He wasn’t going to move the corpse. He had already compromised the crime scene enough.
He focused on the man’s mouth. There was a bit of foaming there. That could be an indication of at least a couple of ways he could have died.
A fit.
Or poison.
Okay, cause of death is not obvious. What about timing?
He lookedat the man’s nostrils. Blowflies. Female. They’d already laid eggs, but the infestation was minimal. Blowflies could smell dead flesh from miles away and were a policeman’s best friend, because with the biological death clock having commenced, the invasive insects would help determine the time of death.
But when Decker put all of these forensic elements together, mental alarms startedsounding. Something was definitely not making sense.
If the limbs were stiff, that meant the deceased had been dead for a while. In fact, the body could be reversing the rigor and moving from the large muscle groups back to the small, which meant the person could have been dead quite a long time. And while that jibed with the coolness of the body, it most assuredly did not align withwhat else he was observing.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of sirens approaching.
He quickly retreated up the stairs, holstered his gun, stepped out onto the front porch, and waited.
A squad car pulled up to the house about fifteen seconds later.
While Decker had been inside, the storm had lessened somewhat, though lightning still crackled andthunder still boomed. At least it wasn’t raining sideways anymore.
As the police officers exited their vehicle, Decker called out and held up his FBI creds. Both cops pulled their weapons and one trained his Maglite on Decker.
“Hands out where we can see them!” shouted one cop, who looked young and a little nervous.
Since Decker already had both hands up in the airwhere they could definitely be seen, he couldn’t do anything more than say, “I’m a Fed. My partner called this in.”
The cops advanced until they reached the stoop. The other cop, who looked to be in his forties, with a trim, graying mustache, holstered his gun, took the creds, and checked them. Then he illuminated Decker’s face with his light.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Two dead bodies inside. One hanging in the living room. One in the basement.” Decker glanced at the man’s uniform. “I don’t know if he’s a cop or not, but the guy in the basement is wearing the same type of uniform you are.”
“What?” snapped the older cop.
“You say he’s dead?” said the young cop, who was still pointing his gun.