Young Writers Society

The coroner coughed as he met eyes with Winslow and then directed the duo into the bathroom. They carefully stepped over the marked off pools of blood, ignoring the icy glare from the still seated corpse. Rigidity was starting to set into Sean’s body and his pale, white skin made it all too clear he had been completely drained of life.

“If you take a look at the cuts on his wrist, which were expertly done, by the way,” Reilly began as he used a gloved hand to pick up the man’s arm. “These cuts were not made by the razor blade found in his possession and presumably soaked in his blood postmortem. I’d say, these wounds more likely came from a razor sharp fishing knife judging by the jagged edges of these slits.”

“So what you’re saying is that this isn’t a suicide? I could have told you that from the moment you arrived, Doctor,” Winslow paused to take a closer look at the knife marks and then continued, “There’s no way that Sean could have cut his wrists with a vertical maneuver of a surgeon, soaked his own razor blade in blood, and then magically got rid of a fishing knife.”

Reilly stood up from the body, carefully leaned against the wall and explained, “I am now officially declaring this a homicide rather than a suspicious death. Someone in this house killed Mr. O’Keefe and they were most likely the same person to kill Mr. Johnson.”

“Thank you for doing my job for me, Reilly. It’s like you think us poor detectives are too dimwitted to manage such a theory on our own.”

Winslow inched closer to the body, taking a glove from the open box on the counter and a pen from his pocket to lift up Sean’s collar. He could still see the stains from the snot and tears that he had witnessed rolling down the soft, bearded face. Beneath the collar he could see the glint of someone’s deluxe eyeshadow glint. This type of glitter was something he had seen recently but he just couldn’t place the makeup wearer he had seen it on.

For all he knew it might have been powder he had seen below James’ belt.

“Reggie, come over here.”

“Why?” the spy questioned as he stood against the opposing door with eyes shut tight. Winslow reckoned that the man was attempting not to pass out amid all of the blood that they were standing in.

“Because I need a more culturally aware fag than me to examine the makeup on this man’s collar,” Winslow snapped.

Reggie carefully walked over to the body, crouching down beside Winslow. He took one of the offered gloves from the frowning coroner. The detective guessed that Reilly was getting more and more paranoid about his crime scene getting contaminated, but Winslow doubted they were going to find anything amazing.

The spy spoke suddenly and quickly as he explained, “This is most likely a custom made shade from a local shop. Judging from the stains left on the collar, the powder probably contains some poisonous substances that the user is unaware of.”

“Don’t most shiny powders like these contain poisons and dangerous chemicals?”

“Yes, historically,” Reggie sighed. “But many modern makeup companies that are nation or world wide have changed to safer materials-”

“So then anything with poison would be home made or locally made?”

The spy stood up with a sigh and continued from his interruption.

“That is the point I was trying to get to, Winslow, before you interrupted me. Evidently, you’re a more culturally aware fag than you claimed to be.”

Doctor Reilly was scoffing in the distance, definitely more concerned with how tight Reggie’s pants were versus the crime scene evidence that he had previously been worried about. The detective couldn’t blame him for taking advantage of the view. Winslow could see how the coroner’s eyes were repeatedly drifting over to Reggie’s rear and he shot him a glare when their eyes managed to meet.

“Is there something that interests you on the floor, Doctor?” Winslow paused to run his gloved hand down the spy’s back. “Or was there something else on your mind?”

“My mind is thinking that we’ve found out all we can from polite conversation and you should let me get this body down to the morgue before it heats up.”

The detective backed away from the body, thinking about the possible smell and then remembering that it was still the middle of winter. It wasn’t like they were living in Alaska but Alabama was only a few letters off of that frozen over hell. He thought of some of the winters he had experienced in the trenches

Reggie interrupted Winslow’s dwindling train of thought by saying, “Yes, of course. We should be getting back to Winslow’s apartment so that I can drive to headquarters and report this.”

“And what exactly are you going to report, Agent Smith?” Reilly asked as he stepped over the pool of blood and slid his arm around the twink’s waist. Winslow had to sigh as he continued examining the corpse.

“I…am,” Reggie’s breath shuttered for a moment as his body got closer to the coroner’s. “I am going to report back to Military Intelligence about the loss of one of our own, so he can get some proper honors amid this tragedy.”

Oh I’m sure Reggie is going to go home with me, Winslow said as he watched their careful movements. I’m sure that those two won’t be going home together to sleep in Reilly’s spare bedroom.

The detective lifted up the man’s scruffy jaw with his left hand, noticing more suspicious marks on Sean’s body. The marks appeared to be from a rough cut of rope - it had happened for a long enough period of time to cause scars but there were still signs of it going on shortly before the man’s death.

“Doctor Reilly, have you seen these before?”

The coroner seemed surprised to be called to attention at his own crime scene.