Lies You Tell (DE)

60.

Detective Miller held a glove to his nose, blocking the pungent odor seeping out of the upscale condo as he dipped under the red crime scene tape blocking the door. The condo was filled with crime scene investigators— evidence technicians, crime scene analysts, forensic investigators, sweeping the thousand foot condo from top to bottom. The CSI teamed worked like a busy bee colony, buzzing around all for one greater good— to set the foundation for a good case.

Detective Miller squeezed through the tight hallway occupied by people coming up on the living room where the three bodies were discovered, two adults and one child. Miller still holding the glove to his nose, looked up at the decomposing body still hanging from the ceiling scrunching up his face at the sight.

He still remembered working his first crime scene, a murderer-suicide. A man shot his wife and then hung himself right next to her. Up until then he'd never seen a dead body in person. Miller was only thirty at the time, still fresh faced and just graduated from the academy. He took one look at the body and puked his guts out right in the middle of the room contaminating the whole crime scene.

Miller then turned, fixing his attention to the two bodies on the couch— the luxurious couch soiled with decomp fluids that ran down onto the floor and began to eat away at the wood.

" What are we workin with Ang?" Miller asked his partner Angelina.

Angelina was a young woman who'd gotten into the field young. She showed great aspirations in doing the job so Miller took her under his wing as nobody else was taking her seriously. Their field of expertise was mainly dominated by men, it wasn't often a woman joined that department. The job was stressful, emotional, and called for long strenuous hours. Angelina had a certain spark to her and paid great attention to detail and Miller had great faith she'd make a good detective one day,"

She looked down at the small notepad in her left hand where she'd been walking around jotting down notes as she twirled a black ink pen around in her right.

" On the couch we have one black adult female with one gunshot wound to the head and one black juvenile male with one gunshot wound to the head," She said reading from the pad before looking up at the body hanging from the ceiling. " And one black adult male no visible trauma or lacerations to the body from what I can see, just hanging,"

Miller nodded, crouching down to get a better look at the victims on the couch.

" With the current state of decomposition, I'd say they've been dead for 5-6 days now," One of the CSI techs said before pulling a plastic baggy containing two gold shell casings from his bag. " I found these two casings, nine millimeter shells and we have one fire arm in evidence,"

Miller nodded. " Good, get those into the lab and have them run for prints and ballistics,"

" Who called this in?" Miller asked, turning back to Angelina.

" Um I think the neighbor did? She called in reporting a foul odor so some officers were sent to do a welfare check and found this. It looks like a murder-suicide," Angeline shrugged her shoulders.

Miller twisted his lips to the side, looking around and observing the scene. That answered seemed to easy and as a seasoned detective he knew that when something seemed too easy, there had to be more to it.

" Look around," He said, holding his hands behind his back. " What do you notice?"

Angelina looked around. " I don't know.." She said slowly feeling like that question had a trick answer.

" The scene is un-chaotic. Let's say this was indeed a murder-suicide. Husband gets into it with wife, they fight, husband shoots wife, shoots son and then kills himself. Don't you think it would be more of a mess in here?" Miller asked.