Secrets of the Crown Assassins

02

INDIGO

I held a hand to my nose to block the drowning stench of rotting flesh. My shirt didn't smell like flowers, but it was better than the smell consuming the room.

We were in a humble two-room apartment with paint peeling off the dirty walls. The body sat in the doorway, trapping me in the bedroom as Nydia inspected the body from the entrance of the kitchen.

I rifled through the dead man's clothes, checked under the hard mattress, and behind shelves as I tried to find anything of value. There was nothing offering any clue as to how the man ended up dead in his apartment.

I looked down at Nydia who was holding up his eyeball with her bare hands and squinting at it, her lips curled into a faint smile.

"Was taking out the eyeball absolutely necessary?"

"Of course! A dead man's eyeball offers many clues and important information."

"Like what?"

Nydia shrugged. "No idea."

Still, she dropped the eyeball into a plastic box and shoved it in her pocket. I didn't want to know what she intended to do with it.

"So," I asked. "Did you find anything?"

She shook her head. "Besides the fact that the body had been here for days? Nothing."

"There's no sign of a break-in or anyone else in the apartment either. It's like he was killed by ghosts."

Nydia shook her head and muttered. "Ghosts are more dramatic. Maybe it's the snakes."

I didn't try interpreting her comment and asked, "How did he die?"

Nydia looked at his neck where there was a deep incision with dried blood spilling from either side and pooled at the floor. "Well, he was stabbed in the neck."

"Oh, I thought that was you trying to find clues."

"Don't be ridiculous. I would never stab someone like that. Those are the ones I made," she said, pointing at the dozens of ruthless incisions speckling his body.

"I see."

"I hope so," she replied. "I took out his eyeball, not yours."

Shaking my head, I took a careful step over the body and walked into the empty living room, if you could call it that. The room held a TV and space for only a single chair before the small kitchen took up the rest of the place. Moonlight spilled through the window. I looked through it, watching Streeters scurry by far below, their chins tucked into their chests despite the humid warm air.

"Why do you think they didn't bomb this house?" I asked Nydia over my shoulder.

She shrugged. "Maybe they didn't have time."

I shook my head. "But the body was only discovered days later. No one walked in on the killing since it clearly wasn't rushed and Cree said he found the body already rotting and didn't mess with anything else. So, if no one interrupted the killer and Cree didn't mess with any bomb to make sure it wasn't detonated, then why wasn't this place exploded?"

The windows rattled against the wind and Nydia looked up. "The ghosts were being mean."

I took it as a message that she had no real answer and sighed. We'd been investigating the dead bodies of rebel members for the past three months, the first starting the day I joined. The first one didn't have any victims, but ever since then, the victims were killed before being blown to pieces in their own house.