the series of r/nosleep | volume one: the {smile} series

{M}oth

"Coffee?"

The young officer working the door looks at me with half-glazed confusion. "Um, no thanks. Or, um, do you want me to get you some, sir?"

I smile and pat him on the shoulder. "Burnt grounds, man. It's how we label the scenes." He stares at me and nods, then the nod rolls over into a slow shake. He doesn't follow. "The smell. If it's really bad you shove some burnt coffee grounds in your nose or wipe some Vick's or somethin' on your top lip."

The lights click on in his eyes. "Oh, um, no. No, sir. No coffee. It's, um, it's – what's the opposite of coffee?"

My eyebrows rise. "I got a call that this one was pretty brutal."

"Oh, it is, sir. It... it just doesn't, um, smell." He swats at the side of his face as a large Chytolita morbidalis flutters by his ear.

"Interesting," I say and walk into the hotel's storage room.

The space is small, squarish, with a large cabinet taking up the majority of the left hand side. A cut deadlock is hooked into a latch holding two large doors closed. One single bulb flickers on a frayed line suspended from the center of a seven foot ceiling. I duck to avoid the light and follow the CAPs to the right rear corner. There are no windows, and the room feels overwhelmingly ...

"Dry?" a voice says from in front of me.

My mouth sticks, my tongue is swollen and lethargic, as I say, "Yeah, what's up with that?"

"Some sort of desiccant. Silica gel, it looks like. Lots of it." The voice belongs to a woman. She stands with a red-striped evidence bag. "You the CSA?"

"Lead analyst, actually," I say and extend a gloved hand. "Max Mcleritin." She shakes it without saying anything, so I add, "Where's Georgie?"

"Detective Brown was pulled into another 10-45d outside of Crestwater." Her radio beeps to life, there's a second of static and then it cuts out again. "Due to the circumstances I was asked to cover."

"And you are?" I say coyly. She's cute, way too uptight, but cute. I throw in a wink for good measure.

"Detective Lafferty."

Hard to get, I think. I like that. "Do all your friends call you detective?"

"My husband calls me Marcia," she replies stone-faced.

"Oh," I say and my flirting dries up like the room I'm in. I turn in a half circle to take in the entire scene. Left side, cabinet. Right side, bare wall. Corners, nothing. Floor, empty concrete. "So where's the John Doe?"

"We'll get to that," she says. She's watching me, waiting for my initial analysis.

"Alright. No smell means the body is post-decay or sealed. No stains means it was done somewhere else or cleaned verythoroughly afterward. Single door, no windows, means there was limited external contamination." I look around the room again to make sure I didn't miss something, and then add, "No body means I get to go home and relax." I smile. She doesn't.

"Look closer," she says.

I step forward to the next CAP plate and look at the rear wall and floor. A cracked corner in the concrete opens into a tiny black hole between the floor and wall. There's a faint trail of powder that leads from the wall, past the metal stepping plate I'm on, and into another hole made by a rotting baseboard in the cabinet behind me.

Detective Lafferty follows my eyes. "The desiccant, I think." She hands me the baggie.

"Bug trail," I say and take the baggie. I look at her and then look at the cabinet. "What's in there?"