Lionsuit

Chapter Two

 
     Signing legal documents while riding in the back of a Prius did not seem to Marcus like the proper procedure for these kinds of events, but by now he’d picked up on the fact that Gus was not exactly a proper person. His questions about taxes, electricity bills, and insurance were largely met by “doesn’t apply here”s and “I can send you a specific number later”s, or even the occasional “I’m not an accountant”. If it weren’t for Tamsin Raubner’s plea, Marcus might not have signed the deed so readily.
     He passed another cluster of sheets to the passenger seat. “So, Gus, how much have you talked to the police about what happened?”
     “Not a whole lot. They contacted me after Selwick’s parents but still before the story broke. I already had the documents behind his trust in my possession.”
     “How long has he actually been dead for?”
     “About a week, they think. The police were responding to a noise complaint when they found him.”
     “And they’re certain it was a suicide?”
     “Oh yeah. I’ve seen the body myself; don’t need a coroner to spot those ligature marks. Red as a Babybel.”
     “… No offense, but your bedside manner is fucking abysmal.”
     “None taken. I’m far too close to retirement to give a singular shit about appeasing ’n’ easing the minds of old rich assholes or the latest trend of young celebrity anymore. And there are people, like Selwick, who appreciated that.”
     “What kind of legal work were you doing for him? Aside from handling his estate.”
     A squirrel leapt in front of the car. Gus screeched the car to a halt, to the honking chagrin of those behind him. “You were in his sphere. You’re probably more familiar with my line of work than you think.” The squirrel scurried safely to the other side, and Gus continued on his way.
     There were certainly plenty of times where he could have used the advice of a lawyer. Copyright disputes, threats to sue over defamation, and even the occasional fake claim of harassment. However, Marcus navigated these threats well enough on his own, knowing full well that the primary judicial threat to his life was the court of public opinion.
     He looked outside the window and into the sun-hazed bowels of the San Fernando Valley. They had driven from Brentwood over the Santa Monica Mountains and were now high in the hills of Studio City. The clustered gated mansions of Brentwood had been replaced by large thickets of brush and palm trees with the houses between them steadily growing sparse.
     After a rare minute of silence, during which Marcus had seen nothing but leaves and barren dirt, Gus croaked, “We’re here.” A few homes began to appear on either side of the avenue, each at least a hundred feet apart. Gus pulled next to a lonely CRV in a wide asphalt driveway, the house beyond it barely visible over a thick wooden gate and a vast fence of tall conifers.
     Both men exited the car, Gus removing a stack of papers and envelopes with him.
     “Where are the police?”, Marcus asked, inquisitively gazing into the tinted windows of the tan CRV.
     “They cleared out of here yesterday. Again, not much to this, to hear them tell it. Autopsy’s the only real piece of policework left.”
     The lawyer pressed a long combination into a black keypad to open the gate. The house beyond was of the American Foursquare style. The windows populating every side suggested that it only had two floors, yet its size was as if the volume of a small mansion had been compressed into its boxy shape. A somber shade of maroon painted the wooden paneling of the building’s sides while its pointed roof bathed in a black sheen.
     A wide overhang fully shaded the rustic porch that Marcus and Gus approached on a stone pathway flanked by an overgrown lawn. Gus fumbled with his stack of papers until he produced a silver key which he roughly inserted into the brass lock of the wooden door.
     They stepped into an interior of dark-green painted walls, oak-wood floors, and high white ceilings. The front door led straight down a corridor with a ceiling that extended both floors to a set of sliding glass doors at the back of the house. Staircases occupied either side of the corridor, their black steps producing the feel of an escalator. To the left of the entrance was a long family room, populated solely by furniture and lit by a perimeter that was more window than wall. To their right was a cluttered kitchen, which Gus swiftly entered so he could plop his stack of papers onto the granite-topped island.
     “Go ahead, give yourself the grand tour, I’m just going to sort through some documents.”
     “The car outside, is that—?”
     “Yours now, provided you get insurance once Selwick’s runs out.”
     “Ah” Marcus mused with mild resentment toward how much of his lifestyle Selwick was going to change through his death.
     He began to comb the house, his gaze constantly drifting upward to ascertain what structures could have supported the weight of Selwick and the noose that supposedly killed him. Hidden behind the family room, the first floor offered a personal gym with its own treadmill, rowing machine, and enough barbells to make Marcus blush at the subtle slope of his gut.
     The furnishings of Marcus’s home were surprisingly few. Marcus was naturally suspicious of the humble spaces that even his friends on the internet advertised, but it appeared Selwick’s taste in decoration was genuine. A modest layer of dust caked the family room aside from a few seats clustered around a table, which Marcus guessed may have been the fault of the police investigators.
     After a complete circuit, he ascended the flight of stairs. The lower corridor cleanly divided the top floor into two sets of three doorways. The first set began with what appeared to be a guest bedroom, its bed and furnishings expertly prepared like those of a hotel. The next room over was a near identical twin, differing from the final room of the set, a storage space. Aside from utilitarian items such as fans, toolboxes, and gardening implements, shelves of records, books, and videogames populated the spacious closet.
     The rightmost set of rooms—which Marcus had to descend and re-ascend the stairs to reach—started with an independent bathroom. Its shower was larger than Marcus’s studio. Under the window sat a plastic toilet more technologically advanced than any other piece of bathroom equipment he had seen in his life. Marcus quickly exited the room, eager to escape this uniquely gaudy display of Selwick’s wealth.
     His flight took him into the next chamber. Upon opening the creaking door, Marcus’s eyes snapped to the mass of computer equipment opposite him. This was his first time seeing Selwick’s bedroom from this angle. The shade of green that coated the whole interior felt particularly oppressive here, given the narrow nature of the room. Between the king-sized bed, trio of wardrobes, low celling, and disorganized workspace, it was a wonder anyone could spend so much time in such a room without being struck by claustrophobia. Marcus hustled straight to the array of computers. Aside from the audio equipment, Selwick’s setup was sufficiently less advanced than Marcus’s own to satisfy his pride. However, some of the fixtures surprised Marcus. There were plastic sliders covering every camera and a fingerprint scanner sitting on his desk. Marcus never knew Selwick was so anal about online security, yet those precautions were now a detriment to the task Marcus had been given by the Raubners, in addition to his own desire to access the trove of Selwick’s unfinished work.
     Resolving to avoid touching surfaces where prints might remain untarnished, Marcus proceeded to the last room. A recording booth awaited him, one stretched out to cover every inch of its chamber aside from the floor with black and crimson spikes of acoustic foam. A cluster of microphones and audio recording equipment dominated the center of the room with a foldout chair lying next to them. This ghastly display of soundproofing caused Marcus to realize that Selwick’s room, where he recorded his streams and non-musical content, lacked such measures. This was unthinkable to a man who spent all his previous life living in close quarters with strangers who seemed to have noise complaints on speed-dial. Yet a noise complaint had been what led the police to Selwick’s body, despite the space between the houses of this neighborhood. Furthermore, he hadn’t spotted any ledges from which a noose could be hung aside from the banisters of the staircases. Marcus descended the stairs and found Gus still rummaging through papers in the kitchen.
     “Hey Gus, can I ask you something?”
     “What else am I here for?”
     “The noise complaint. You said the police think Selwick’s been dead for a week, so what caused it?”
     “They told me that it was just an animal. They heard it calling on the drive up, but it had already cleared out of the yard when they arrived.”
     “How do they know it won’t come back?”
     “I mean, the police don’t, nor do they care. Ask your neighbors for tips on animal control when you introduce yourself, this probably isn’t the first time they’ve dealt with something like this.”
     “Will do.”
     “What’d you think of your tour?”, Gus asked, grumbling as he searched through his stack.
     “It’s a nice place. More … unused than what I was expecting.”
     “Selwick only bought the house four years ago. He did a lot of the work on it himself though. That foam room, the gym, some of the stuff in the bathroom. He was surprisingly handy.”
     “Surprisingly?”
     “For a guy who sat behind a computer all day to earn his cash.”
     “Right” Marcus actually agreed with Gus. However, his surprise stemmed more from the thought of any rich kid in his trade being capable of such a practical skill. Perhaps Selwick’s guilt at his own wealth had led to him adopt that trait to make himself worthier of his property by building upon it with his own hands. Marcus certainly respected that more than the innumerable YouTube sensations who bought sprawling glass and marble monstrosities before proceeding to trash them in the almighty name of clickbait content.
     “Found it!” Gus produced a black envelope and thrust it into Marcus’s chest.
     He opened it hesitantly, finding a palm-sized key ring within. There was a rotund car fob attached, a small dirty bronze key, and a grooved acrylic puck sporting a rendition of Selwick’s logo—a cartoon cell clutching a guitar with its flagella. Gus extended the silver key he had used earlier to open the front door and dropped it into Marcus’s awaiting hand.
     “Congratulations, homeowner. And car owner too, I guess.”
     “What’s this brass key for?”, Marcus asked, his eyes still glued to the inside of the envelope.
     “You can take a second or two to live in the moment, y’know. That key’s probably for the backdoor or something upstairs, you’ll figure it out eventually.”
     “Hm” Marcus looped the silver key onto his ring and stuck the whole object in his pocket. Gus spread out a swathe of papers and beckoned Marcus over to begin surveying them. After an hour or two of tedious legal work, Gus departed the property with the spring in his step of a man who just rushed his obligations out of the way.
     After finally peeling off his sweat saturated mask, Marcus toured the house again, making note of every glass or steel surface and searching for hints of animal damage. There appeared to be none, although he realized with nervous anxiety that Selwick’s lawn had grown to a level where critters could easily be concealed in its tall grass. The house itself naturally made Marcus uncomfortable as well, yet the discovery of Selwick’s guest bedrooms provided enough convenience to warrant at least staying the night.
     He exited the house, making certain to lock its doors, and typed the combination Gus gave him into the gate. Once he’d resealed it, Marcus unlocked and entered Selwick’s car. Upon bypassing its tinted glass, he could admire its dark leather upholstery and the dusty black mirror of its touchscreen. On the passenger seat rested a duckbilled mask, a blue LA Rams hat, aviator sunglasses, and a pair of nitrile work gloves. Marcus didn’t touch them, content to let Selwick’s tools of safety remain a monument to his ironically pandemic-free passing.
     He drove through the neighborhood slowly, refamiliarizing himself with his ability to drive. Despite the angry honks of strangers, he was able to make his way back to his apartment, stopping for lunch at a McDonald’s on the way. He parked away from the greedy eyes of the road. Once he’d entered his apartment, Marcus began packing up his precious PC into various boxes from his original move-in. His landlady gave him increasingly suspicious glances with each successive haul from his apartment to the car.
     “Staying at a friend’s house tonight, have to bring some stuff for my job,” he grunted in explanation on his final trip.
     “Oh, alright. Stay safe,” she replied wearily.
     Marcus nodded cordially and walked the rest of the way to the car, eager to begin his work.
   
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     Setting up his computer in Selwick’s home offered a wealth of advantages. The first, and simplest, was allowing him to maintain his online presence. Knowing that the internet’s interest in Selwick’s private life was likely at its peak, Marcus had announced his contact with his family in the name of transparency. This preempted the mob’s ability to decry him if the information were to leak naturally. However, he was also forced to roll a hiatus to his streams and videos into the half-truth, slicing his revenue in half just as a deluge of expenses had stormed into his life.
     The second set of advantages applied directly to the task assigned to him by the Raubners. He took pictures of every fingerprint he could find in the house, from the steel refrigerator, the shower’s outer glass, Selwick’s computer screen, and even the windows. The pictures were filed into his computer, where image analysis software helped Marcus sort them into roughly five groups of similar prints. He eliminated his own fingerprints from the sample, as well as Gus’s—using the prints he got from the island countertop that the lawyer had been groping all day.
     The three remaining groups were primarily comprised of smudges and partial prints. Marcus selected their most pristine examples, editing them to resemble their progenitors more keenly before reversing the images. He then printed them out on one of the sheets of transparent projector paper he’d bought on his way back along with a litany of other supplies. A paintbrush spread graphite powder over the raised ink. Then a smear of wood glue on each print finished their preparation. Hoping the online guides had not lied to him, Marcus set the sheet under a desk lamp to dry and exited his house into its dark yard.
     Evening cast the isolated neighborhood into an indigo miasma of chirping crickets, croaking frogs, and whooping birds. Marcus had never been a fan of the outdoors since he escaped the throes of small-town life. He shuffled down the sloping sidewalk, flinching at the louder animal calls and clutching his upper arms.
     After a minute of traveling alongside the empty street, Marcus arrived in front of another wooden gate, bordered by ropes of light bulbs illuminating the neighbor’s fence of bushes. An intercom straight out of a drive-thru was installed above the gate’s keypad. Marcus pressed a rigid button, eliciting a loud, droning tone that seemed to cow the surrounding wildlife for a moment. After a minute of waiting, a distorted, gravelly voice answered his call.
     “No solicitation … Especially at this hour.”
     “Hi! I’m … Marcus, a friend of Selwick’s, your neighbor. I was wondering if I could ask you a question or two?”
     “… You a reporter?”
     “Not since last I checked.”
     “Because if you don’t tell me, that’s illegal.”
     “… Right”
     The intercom shut back off with a beep. Marcus heard a door creak open behind the gate and a tirade of not-so-quiet grumbling approach him. The gate opened, greeting Marcus with a gentleman even older than Gus. His hair was a disheveled mess of silver that descended into a robust pair of mutton chops. A thin tee-shirt stained with sweat and a pair of khaki shorts covered his jaundiced skin. His lower lip constantly groped its upper twin, quivering along with his jaw.
     “What’d you want?”
     Marcus hesitated, peeking behind the man at the sprawling mansion that occupied his neatly trimmed yard, and marveled at the contrast between their appearances.
     “You gonna ask your questions’re not?”
     “Ah, sorry sir. I’m just a little shaken, with all that’s happened.”
     “No problem, Mark. Loss is never easy. I’m just old enough not to be surprised by it.”
     “Did you know Selwick?”
     “Not well. Only talked a handful of times. He introduced himself when he first moved in. Apologized for any noise I’d hear from him makin’ those videos of his.”
     “Was that ever an issue?”
     “No, he kept things quiet, up until the end anyway.”
     “The end? The police told me they found him on a noise complaint?”
     “Yeah, I actually called that one in.”
     “You did?”
     “Well, I heard a scream, you know? Figured it was better to be an ass then a bystander.”
     “You heard a scream? He committed suicide.”
     “That’s what the police’ll tell you. They also told me that it was probably just a fox. Stupid bastards … no offense if you know one of ’em.”
     “None taken—What do you mean a fox? They scream?”
     “Like the devil. It’s called a vixen’s scream. It can certainly sound human, but I’ve lived here for twenty damn years and those idiots were trying to tell me that I got an honest-to-god human scream mixed up with the critters that leave squirrel skeletons in my spice garden.”
     “What do you think happened to cause a scream like that?”
     “I couldn’t say. Maybe a burglar got in and saw the body. Didn’t sound like Selwick’s voice, higher pitched.”
     “Did a lot of people go in and out of his house?”
     “Hm. No, not really. He did a fair amount of driving, even after the pandemic. Had at least one girl over. Loudest that house ever got, y’know?”
     Marcus gave an awkward, crooked smile. “Uh huh. Well, I shouldn’t take any more of your time, Mister …”
     “Jacob Etters.” Jacob extended an arm.
     Marcus shook his wrinkled hand despite the health risk. “Goodnight, Mister Etters.”
     “Same to you kid. Hope I helped you get some closure.”
     A curt nod sent Marcus on his way. He traveled back up the sideway, casting a few glances behind himself to check that Jacob wasn’t following him. The old man had given him a lot to consider, much of it fear. Of all the possible causes for a noise complaint, why did it have to be a scream from the home he was now obligated to occupy? Perhaps this was why the Raubners wanted him to investigate Selwick’s demise; it was certainly enough to arouse his suspicions. Selwick also appeared to have been more of a ladies’ man than the suave bachelor persona that he had given off. Marcus might be able to get some information out of a girlfriend of his, assuming he could find her.
     When he arrived back in front of the house’s gate, a five second inhale prepared him for the anxiety he was about to experience. Furtive glances to either side of the stone path assured him that the yard was empty, at least of anything taller than the unruly grass. Marcus made a mental note to trim the yard as soon as possible, even if he had to borrow a mower. The front door creaked as it opened just enough to send his heart racing, but the lights he had left on when he departed quickly showed him that nothing was amiss from before.
     He went straight back to his guest bedroom. He would have locked the door, but only the doors of the right side of the stairs possessed locks. The first thing he did on his computer was search the term “vixen’s scream”. The audio clips that awaited him were haunting, more akin a screeching banshee than any human scream he’d heard, although the resemblance was certainly there. A human scream being a misidentified fox call began to sound more and more like a convenient excuse for the police not to investigate an otherwise clear-cut case of suicide. The summer protests already had their resources stretched as thin as their understanding of the first amendment.
     As Marcus sat back in a plastic wheelie chair, thinking about the noise complaint, a thought occurred. He typed Jacob’s name into Google. Sifting through the results, he found a matching person native to Los Angeles. The picture on their Wikipedia page confirmed their synonymity with the old man next door, although Marcus nearly double-took at the gap in class between them. Jacob Etters was the former CEO of an insurance company who retired in late 2017. His picture put the humbly dressed old man into a prim suit and shaved his hair down to a level as professional as his lawn. Information about Jacob’s personal life was limited, and given the status of his company, wealth, and home, Marcus could only assume this was intentional on Jacob’s part. He filed all this information away with a flippant curiosity, doubting it would have anything to do with Selwick’s death.
     His fake fingerprints should have dried by this point, so Marcus took the sheet from his desk and returned to Selwick’s bedroom. He cut the three prints out of the transparent sheet. After awakening the PC, he pressed the facsimiles onto the reader with his own index finger. One after the other, each resulted in a “Not Recognized” displayed over a default Windows background. Marcus grimaced and tried his own finger to no avail.
     He had no way of knowing whether the issue was with the fake’s identities or their quality. There were other ways to replicate prints, but each was too time dependent for Marcus to bother with this late at night, but he also had no streams to do or further leads he could follow at this hour, so he resigned for the first time in months to get some sleep before midnight.
     However, when Marcus was about to exit the room, he remembered Jacob’s claims and lamented the unsecure status of the guest room. With the slyness of a guilty child, he glanced over his shoulder at Selwick’s supremely comfy-looking bed. There was no debate that this would be a disrespectful action, yet Marcus’s temptation trumped his sentimentality.
     He checked and locked all the house’s entrances before preparing for bed. He searched through the set of three wardrobes, unable to appreciate the efficiency of Selwick’s sense for fashion. Stripped to his tee-shirt and boxers, Marcus crawled under Selwick’s thick blankets and nestled himself to sleep, surrounded by looming walls of dark green and underneath a spinning fan.
   
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     The cold assault of the fan woke Marcus up. He discovered that his blanket had tumbled into a messy pile on the carpeted floor. His phone informed him that it was past two a.m., earning an exhausted grumble. He rose and swung himself off the bed. A patch of wetness awaited his bare feet. The abrupt sensation froze his movement. He listened closely, finding only the muffled sound of frogs and the fan’s loud whirring.
     Marcus reached up, fumbling for the fan’s pull chain. When it found his hand, he roughly yanked down, flooding the room with light.
     Which revealed … nothing. The door was still closed, the wardrobes still slightly ajar from when Marcus had rummaged through them. He looked under his foot. The shag carpet was darkened with moisture. Droplets of clear fluid clung to the brown fibers. He noticed another smaller patch further from the bed, and then realized that there was a field of such moist pastures between himself and the door.
     His heart beating like a jackhammer, Marcus did his best to silently slip off the bed and creep to the door. He twisted the knob with his thumb pressed on the lock’s button to quietly ease the mechanism open. However, the door itself he swung open forcefully, unable to bear anymore damned creaking.
     His voracious gaze found nothing at the bottom of the steps or the area between the halves of the second floor, yet the patches continued, from the top of his half’s flight of stairs over the banisters to the top its twin flight. On the hard-oak panels, the collections of droplets glistened like small puddles in the moonlight. Marcus descended to the first floor. He checked the front and back doors. Both were unopened and unbroken, same as the windows. 
     He ascended to the second half of the trail of moisture. It led to the guest bedroom he’d claimed. The doorknob slipped through his first attempt to grasp it, his hand slick with sweat. Upon his second try, the door swung open. He fumbled for the light switch, cursing in hindsight at his decision to shut the curtains.
     When they flickered on, he found more of the patches. He followed them around the corner to his computer desk. They stopped just before its chair, leading Marcus’s eyes up to a dimly lit dark screen. He shook the mouse, waking the computer from sleep. His desktop was visible, along with his file explorer window, which was opened on his downloads folder. Shaking with equal parts fear and confusion, Marcus searched his virtual world for signs of intrusion, checking for missing files, going through his edit history, sifting through his recycle bin.
     There was nothing. No files were copied, deleted, or downloaded. He had absolutely zero memory of leaving the computer like this. Of course, leaving applications open before he went to sleep was old hat, yet the enigmatic puddles converted what would have been mild confusion to pure terror.
     He quickly setup a temporary password and exited the room. He combed over the house multiple times, clutching a steak knife from Selwick’s kitchen. Nothing was amiss; everything aside from the area between the bed and computer was dry as bone. He shone the flashlight of his phone out the windows into his yard, unwilling to venture outside. The illuminated grass remained still and unoccupied under his gaze. When there was nothing left he could do to comfort himself, Marcus retreated to Selwick’s room. He locked the door and curled up under the covers, phone in hand and knife hidden under the mattress.
   
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     Marcus did not get a wink of sleep that night. He searched the house again in the morning, keeping himself from losing consciousness with a deluge of expresso and energy drinks. The moist patches almost completely dried overnight, yet he was able to scrape a half a finger’s worth of the fluid into a Tupperware container from Selwick’s fridge.
     When his physical search ended, Marcus dropped his exhausted body into a chair and fished out his phone. He was committed to the Raubners’ investigation now. Something was off about the police’s investigation of his friend’s death, and his new home could not be comfortably plundered until he secured it with understanding. He added Tamsin Raubner to his contacts list using the card she slipped into his hand.
     He texted her, “Hello Mrs. Raubner. This is Marcus. I’m still looking into what I can find out here. I was wondering if you knew about any girlfriends Selwick had, especially recently. I think it could help if I talk to them.”
     The reply came within the minute.
     “No current girlfriend that I knew of. I doubt he’d tell us unless it was something serious and even then, I’m not sure. There were some names he mentioned in passing though. I could come by and see if any of the messages on his computer are familiar.”
     “That’s alright. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll text again when I have something for you.”
     No reply came. Marcus slumped in his chair and had to blink his drowsiness away. He had to think that any girlfriend Selwick was serious about would have trumped him in importance to his inheritance.
     Suddenly, a tone chimed through the house, nearly sending Marcus into a panic attack. The doorbell rang again. He picked himself up, pounding the wooden table in frustration as he crept toward the door. He peeked out from behind a staircase, finding Gus’s smug face behind the door’s window. He rushed up to the door and yanked it open.
     “Good morning,” the lawyer greeted with a raised eyebrow.
     “Just let yourself through the gate, huh?”. Marcus replied aggressively.
     “I wanted to see how you’re doin’. Poorly, appears to be the answer.”
     Marcus glowered at him before sighing heavily. “Come on in.”
     Gus found his way to a couch in the family room. He lowered himself and stuck his sunglasses into a shirt pocket. “So, what put those bags under your eyes?”
     “I-I don’t know; you tell me! First the old dude next door tells me that the noise complaint was from a fucking human scream that the police mistook for a fox, then I wake up and someone has been in here looking through my computer!”
     Gus’s eyes widened. “Someone broke in?”
     “They must’ve. I don’t know how though; all the windows are fine, and the doors were locked.”
     “How do you know someone was here then?”
     “There was water or something on the floor leading in a trail from my bed to the computer, which had been turned on since I went to sleep.”
     Gus took a moment to ponder, resting his chin on a raised finger as if the trope would increase his brain power. “Do you ever sleepwalk?”
     “Sometimes when I was a kid, but not for years.”
     “Well, you’re in a new environment. The stress and grief could have led to an episode.”
     “But the water?”
     “Drool or piss, I dunno. Take some to a drug test center if you really want to know.”
     “B-But why would I look through my own files, and shouldn’t I remember something? And I relocked the door to my room?!”
     Gus’s eyebrow raised again. “So you’re sleepin’ in his bed?”
     “W-Well I—”
     “Hey, I don’t really care … Look, use Ockham’s razor for last night. What’s simpler? That you slept-walked over to your computer for a second and them came back to bed, drooling all over the place, or a cat burglar came in, tracking water over the floor and looking through your computer while taking nothing.”
     “… Whatever. Did you know if Selwick had any girlfriends? Maybe he mentioned them in his trust.”
     “What brought this on?”
     “I talked to the neighbor who made the noise complaint. He disagreed with the police; said it was a human scream. He also mentioned that Selwick brought women over frequently. I figured one of them might’ve stumbled on his body and left before the police came.”
     “What does it matter? Doesn’t change much at this point.”
     “… Mrs. Raubner wanted answers about her son’s death. I’m just looking into what I can.”
     “You really think those vultures care about that?”, Gus asked with a broad smirk.
     “Just because their … priorities … are a bit uncomfortable doesn’t mean they can’t care.”
     “Eh, I suppose it’s possible. But in any case, everyone who was mentioned in Selwick’s trust was present when I played his video, and we didn’t exactly have the relationship where he was bragging to me about scoring. I figured you would.”
     He was wrong, at least for the most part. Marcus and Selwick were not wingmen. Marcus had a stable relationship with his girlfriend, and Selwick had detected early on in their friendship that trying to engage in chauvinistic banter made him uncomfortable. “We weren’t that crass.”
     “Oh ho ho, excuse me, Mr. Exposé. I didn’t realize you could report on the latest online gossip alike to strangers but were too good to say anything oh so vulgar to your real friends.” Gus’s tone remained aloof despite the criticism in his words. He was more amused than angry.
     “I’m surprised someone of your advanced age could navigate such advanced technology to understand my job.”
     “I asked my grandson to give me a rundown of your ‘content’. He called you a ‘Keen Star’ wannabe or something, whatever that means.”
     “It means your grandson is a little shit.”
     “Ha! That he is. But the point remains: you’re in no position to be so snooty, ’specially when you’re ‘investigating’ death.”
     “Uh huh. Thanks for the advice, but don’t you have some other grieving families to mock?”
     “Nope. But I’ll leave anyway if you’re going to be like that.” Gus rose to his polished black shoes. He strutted as Marcus walked him out and waved a farewell with the back of his hand. Marcus listened for the roar of his car’s engine before finally letting his shoulders relax.
     He needed to change the combination on the gate, Marcus concluded. Gus might not be the only one who Selwick gave access to his home. That might explain how the intruder had entered without a trace. Plus, Gus’s insistence on finding excuses for the odd occurrences in his house roused Marcus’s suspicion.
     As he walked outside and began to fumble with the panel, Marcus pondered how he would proceed with his investigation. Breaking through the security on Selwick’s computer was vital, so next he would prepare a fresh array of fake fingerprints, using different models from his collection. As they dried, he would drive to the nearest drug test center and follow up on Gus’s advice.
   
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     He underestimated the remoteness of Selwick’s neighborhood. A half hour of laborious L.A. traffic with him hunched over the steering wheel next to his Tupperware sample finally brought him within view of the testing center. He swiftly pulled into the sparsely populated parking lot. The building was a concrete hovel topped by a flat blue roof with all the size and charm of a convenience store.
     He knew that the virus had likely changed how these places operated but was hoping the pesky insistence of a seemingly naïve civilian would earn the answers he desired. He got out of the car, donning his mask, and walked into the building through an automatic glass door.
     The lobby was a depressing affair. The waiting room, constructed of beige, barren walls, was populated by socially distanced chairs and less than a handful’s worth of occupants. A curved receptionist’s desk bordered the waiting room to its left. The middle-aged woman behind the counter struggled to scrawl on an official form as her glasses periodically fogged up from the black gaiter sheathing her lower face.
     “Excuse me?”, Marcus greeted amiably.
     “Yes? Do you have an appointment?”
     “Aah … No, sorry. I was looking to get an unknown fluid tested. Do I need an appointment for that?” Marcus held up the Tupperware container at a high angle so she could see through the bottom to the clear substance within.
     The receptionist eyed him with routine wariness. “Are you aware that an unknown substance test costs over six hundred dollars?”
     “Ummm … no I was not,” Marcus responded genuinely.
     She sighed and extended a hand. “Can I take a look?”
     He gladly gave her the container. She eyed its bottom carefully, opened the top a crack to take a sniff, and finally swirled the contents with a flowing circular motion of her delicate fingers, producing a light froth. “It’s saliva.”
     “What? Y-You’re sure?”
     “Mm-hmm. That or plain water. Doesn’t smell, froths, is clear. Probably just saliva. I can set up a test though if you like.”
     “No, that’s alright. Thank you.”
     She returned the container with an expression that emanated disappointment. Marcus shuffled out of the building, his embarrassment tempered by the answers he received. If she was to be believed, Gus’s theory wasn’t so unrealistic.
     While this idea needled at Marcus’s pride and mental confidence, it also gave him an increased hope that he really had slept walked his way into a misunderstanding. He got into his car with an exhale of relief, tossing the Tupperware container over his shoulder onto the back seat.
     When he arrived back at Selwick’s home, forgetting the container in the car, Marcus tried his new set of prints. They failed, one after the other, just as before. The only comfort he could take was that one of the prints took a full ten extra seconds of analyzation to be rejected. He resolved to center his efforts around that fake’s family of images but was unwilling to pursue the matter further at the moment. He made himself a crappy meal and sat himself in the family room. 
     Shoveling green peas and burnt potatoes into his mouth, Marcus stared out the panoramic array of windows which provided a sweeping view of the lawn. As he ate, anxiety crept into the gaps of his newfound comfort. Just because the fluid was saliva didn’t mean no one had broken into the house; there was no way to tell if it was his own. Selwick’s house was so isolated that an intruder could probably do away with him with only his elderly neighbors’ ears to consider. There were so many windows to be broken into, so much valuable content to be scavenged from Selwick’s possessions, and such an unkempt yard to conceal one’s coming and going.
     Swallowing the last baked potato with a grimace, Marcus knew he had to address his fear in some capacity. He walked out the back door of the house. A modest extension off the outer wall of the weight room formed a rudimentary shed. Inside, Marcus found a quality mower filled with gasoline. He wheeled it out of the shed and yanked its ripcord thrice before the machine roared to life.
     He began his work. Marcus was an inexperienced mower, leaving thin rows of grass in between the paths of trimmed grass which he seemed stubbornly unwilling to let overlap. The vindictive L.A. sun hastened both the appearance and evaporation of sweat on his usually dry skin. The yard was vast, but the simplistic shape of Selwick’s home and fence made the task more monotonous than difficult. However, on a circuit around halfway to the perimeter of the yard, an unusual sight interrupted Marcus’s focus.
     A piece of white, dirt-encrusted fabric lay snagged on the ends of a clump of dandelions, nearly hidden by the tall grass surrounding it. Marcus released the mower’s handle, causing it to sputter into silence. He leaned over the rag and pinched it between his index finger and thumb, bringing it closer to his eyes with an expression of tepid disgust.
     The rag was part of some piece of clothing, as evidenced from the hem which comprised its only untorn edge. The material was thin, almost translucent, like lace. However, what occupied Marcus’s attention was fully separate from the traits of the scrap itself. A round, coffee-colored stain dominated the space between the flat hem and its jagged counterpart. Anyone could spot the resemblance of that stain’s color to the appearance of dried blood, and the size was just great enough to discount the papercuts that immediately rose to Marcus’s mind as excuses.
     Something caused both substantial bleeding and a ruined garment. Marcus’s fear-addled mind immediately made the connection between this fact and the narrative of a break-in which still haunted him. Perhaps they cut themself during the escape? He searched the immediate area more closely and found a likely candidate. A viciously sharp piece of a broken DVD was stuck into the dirt by its round edge. There was no blood on the disk, nor was its surface marked with any identifying words or illustrations. It could certainly have injured someone severely depending on how they fell on it.
     This appeared to confirm his fears and cemented the necessity of his actions. His sneaker crushed the disk into smaller fragments which he kicked under the soil. An emphatic tug on the mower’s ripcord resumed his work. He completed just a few revolutions before it halted again.
     Something crunched under the mower’s front left wheel. He lifted it up and off to the side. Underneath the tread marks was another disk, now in pieces, yet he could tell it was arranged in the same position as the other: vertically, with its most dangerous side sticking up. By the time Marcus would complete his task, he would find twelve more of these disks spread evenly throughout the yard. This could not be dismissed as careless littering. This was a deliberate defense network of the most improvised kind. He would find the proof later that Selwick had constructed it himself in a half empty box of blank CDs in his storage room. Marcus remembered that jackass lawyer mentioning Selwick’s home improvement skill, but this was ridiculous and irresponsible.
     Why would he use the equivalent of caltrops in the age of electric fences and camera networks? It was certainly a cheaper alternative, but Marcus, for all his stingy impulses, could not justify such a lawsuit-worthy setup. He tried to make excuses for Selwick, focusing on the isolation of his house and the animals that probably lived in the area. However, none could heal the faith in Selwick’s state of mind that this discovery had shaken. This could be only part of a litany of strange behaviors leading up to his suicide, if Selwick was indeed responsible.
     As he stood next to an empty box in the upstairs storage room, staring out over a job hastily done, a thought occurred to Marcus. This house was creepy, and it seemed to only get creepier by the day. He could go back to his apartment, but that would leave the house vulnerable to further intrusion. The police would likely be no help, given their recent track record and the fact that the disks remained after their “investigation”. Yet the issue remained of how he was meant to spend the night here all on his own. He didn’t want to ask the Raubners for something like that and the irritation Gus would cause wasn’t worth it. That left him with a final, unfortunate option. 

「This is a work of fiction. Any references to real places, real people, or historical events are used fictitiously. Other characters, names, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places, or people, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.」

Copyright © 2021 Matthew Cammarano
All rights reserved.