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Also luckily, it was a semi-pleasant morning, and even though the sun wasn’t quite up yet, I could still ride the ten minutes to work without sweating my balls off in the Florida weather.
As I rode, I tried to go over what I remembered from last night. And let’s just say it was a whole bunch of nothing.
There was a reason that I didn’t drink. Because I was literally that cliché of not remembering shit. I could’ve done damn near anything last night, and aside from having video evidence for a reminder, I would be blissfully unaware of everything until someone informed me of what I did.
Needless to say, my mind was on other things as I moved.
But I wasn’t unaware.
The first thing I saw as I walked up into the back alley were the lights that were installed in the alley. Then the ones that I could see from where I was standing at the front—we occupied a really weird corner lot where you could literally see both sides of the building, but most employees parked in the back to avoid road parking.
The lights were brighter and more intense than the ones on the front of the building, but it was more than obvious that lights had been installed in both places.
And there was a security camera in both areas that I could spot from the road upon first glance.
Emotion, foreign and unwanted, started to fill me as I hid my bike.
He’d listened to me. And remembered to fix it.
He’d actually fixed it in a single night.
Holy freakin’ crap.
And he’d fixed it in a night when he wasn’t even there!
That was…incredibly sweet.
And I didn’t know how to attribute that sweetness to the man I knew as Kyle “KD” Davis. Or maybe it wasn’t “sweetness” as much as it was “keeping me happy.” If he kept me happy, he didn’t have to deal with my shit.
Maybe that’s all it was…
I got halfway to the door and realized I was freaking smiling. I was actually happy with something the man had done.
That was…odd. I’d never felt happy about anything Davis-related before since he’d rebuffed me when we were young teenagers.
Mind elsewhere, I ignored a lot of the warning signs that would’ve normally had me questioning things.
Such as the way the back door to the taxidermy office was cracked slightly open when I came in. Or the way all the lights were off, when they were normally blazing because Herb was somewhat blind and could barely see. Meaning the moment he passed a light switch when he came into the office, he flipped it on, and it stayed on until I turned it off when I came into the building.
The last warning sign wasn’t actually something I saw, but something I didn’t hear.
The loud sound of his television didn’t fill the back half of the building as I started walking toward it.
“Hey there, Herb!” I called to my boss. “How was your night?”
There was no response from Herb, which wasn’t technically a surprise.
What was a surprise was that the lights were all out in his office. Not even the television was on. Which was never not on.
What the…
I flipped on the light to his office with confusion lacing my features.
That’s when I saw the dead body.
The very dead, very stabbed to death with the knife still sticking straight out of his chest, dead body.
Herb’s usually glassy-blue eyes were milky and vacant as I stared into them from four feet away. There was a red, congealed pool of blood surrounding his body, and it was very apparent to me that the body had definitely been there for a while because it was now stiff as a board.
I watched enough crime documentaries and listened to enough crime podcasts to know that rigor mortis set in within two to six hours after death.
“Holy shit,” I breathed.
That’s when I ran.
I sprinted away as fast as my numb legs would carry me.
I wound up in the lobby of Davis Protections and Security, almost as if I’d conjured myself there.
I blinked at the brightness of their lobby compared to the dimness of the taxidermy office I’d just come from.
My feet squeaked as I made my way across the crisp white tile, and I walked right past the woman at the front desk who was looking at me oddly.
“Hey, I need to check you in!” she said, but I ignored her.
I didn’t know where Davis’s office was, but I had a vague idea.
I moved straight to the door behind the lady, only to find it locked.
I started banging on the door, normally at first, calling his name. It went from normal to frantic the longer it took him to come see what was going on.
It was forever and a day later when the door finally caved inward, and I saw Davis standing there.
