SCENT

June: The Breathless (1)

"HE wasn't here."

I closed my eyes, trying to pierce through the white noise filling the room. It felt like pushing through a garbage pile without gloves on. I had to brush each piece of trash away with my bare hands, and for each I threw out of sight, three more fell at my feet. It was hard, exhausting and gross – but not impossible. With enough practice, you could get used to it.

I was practising garbage diving for my whole life. Few piles of trash that smelled as horrifying as this one.

"Are you sure?" Dan's voice was soft, there wasn't an ounce of doubt in it. Still, this didn't augur well. After a year and a half, I'd already picked some of his patterns and habits.

"There's no trace of him."

"Check again, just to be sure." Sure as eggs is eggs, Dan double-checked everything. It was his work ethics. As his partner, I was supposed to adapt it. Better safe than sorry, he claimed, and I couldn't argue. It was a wise policy, especially to a police detective.

Also, it was mighty convenient since he dumped the really nasty bits onto me. I don't think he'd ever realised that, and I doubted he ever would.

I sighed, closed my eyes again and dove head-first into the garbage pile.

The first layer was a dark rusty brown – a thick crust of dried blood. Traumatic blood, rich with haemoglobin and platelets, full of adrenaline, cortisol, catecholamines and other stress hormones I couldn't name. The high-charged blood spilling out of a critically injured body, desperate to survive. It was everywhere, covering the room like a shroud, mixed up with terror, aggression, violence and pain.

Sweat filled with testosterone, fear and a cocktail of chemical poisons, covering the bodies in a layer almost as thick as the dried-up blood. Torn flesh and ruptured organs, the faintest trace of burned flesh where super-sonic bullets pierced through.

Just beneath that, an unmistakable trace of smokeless gunpowder, oil and overheated metal. A lots of it, from both sides, both the vestibule we were standing in and the devastated interior. Broken wood. Torn leather and sponge filling, burned plastic and smashed electronic circuits still going live.

The carnage was so intense that it covered up everything else in the room.

If I were to convince Dan, I had to show him that I got to the bottom of things. To do that, I had to smash this filthy carapace into finer details. I concentrated my sense and began to drudge through.

At first, I didn't discover anything I couldn't tell just by looking. I could point to all four bodies with my eyes closed, show both the biggest pools and the finest splatters of blood, find each bullet-hole in the wall. That wasn't enough, however. I brushed it aside and-

- ah, there it was.

"There was a survivor."

I opened my eyes and walked into the crime scene with small steps, careful to avoid trampling down any evidence.

"He's wounded, not critically, though. A flesh wound, most likely. He..." I leaned forward, searching for the track, "... escaped through that window. The splatters on the frames are his, we'll most likely find more down there."

"It's the second floor," Dan pointed out.

"That it is," I agreed. "He was desperate and there's a garbage dump down there. It might have cushioned the fall, somewhat. Most likely, he's in a really bad shape."