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Silence. Barbara reached for a light switch and flicked it on. The house was pretty much a two up two down, with a staircase bisecting it.
Two doors led off the hall. Barbara pushed open the one on the right. Two things struck her straight away. The overwhelming smell of weed and the fact that the room had been trashed. Sofa cushions slashed, drawers pulled out, contents scattered, lamps tipped over, coffee table smashed.
“Whoah!” Tucker walked in behind her.
“Yeah,” Barbara said.
“Someone was looking for something.”
“Maybe.”
Barbara wasn’t so sure. Why tip the lamps and smash the coffee table? In Barbara’s experience, when people searched for something, they didn’t slash the sofa cushions and yank out drawers. That was just for the movies. Normally they were more methodical—and who the hell hid anything in sofa cushions? Searches tended to involve phones and computers. This looked more like someone wanted them to think the room had been trashed in a search.
“I’ll check upstairs,” Tucker said.
“Okay.” And although Barbara didn’t think the house was occupied, she added, “Be careful.”
There was a small kitchen in an alcove off the living room. It was hard to tell if this had been disturbed as the space was already strewn with half-opened packets, moldy cups, tins and dirty crockery. She looked around, wondering if she was brave enough to actually touch anything, just as Tucker emerged back downstairs.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“Nothing seems to be disturbed up there. Our friend, Mowlam, doesn’t carry much baggage. Few sweatshirts and jeans in the wardrobe, toiletries in the bathroom. Found these in the bathroom cabinet.”
He held up two large baggies—one full of green weed, the other white powder.
“I’m guessing that isn’t smelling salts and seaweed,” she said.
“Nope. Plus, there were some OxyContin in there too. Maybe he has a bad back or…”
Or Mowlam is fond of his pharmaceuticals. Something else that linked him to the Doc.
“Okay,” she said, stepping over some broken glass. “One room left down here. Let’s see what else we’ve got.”
They crossed the hall. The bad feeling ratcheted up. Barbara placed a hand on the door handle and pushed it open. She flicked on the light.
“Shit!”
Bad. Bad. Bad. She took in the scene. The room was set up as some kind of studio. Inks and a tattooing gun sat on a table. Flash art adorned the walls: anti-vampyr, white-supremacist, Helsing symbols. These were mixed with brutal photographs of dead vampyrs, beheaded, eviscerated. Sturdy storage cases were stacked along one wall. A cabinet held a gruesome display of vampyr artifacts. A woman’s hand, a heart preserved in a jar, a skull crafted out of vampyr teeth and another skull, which appeared to be prepubescent.
In the center of the room was a large chair, similar to the type you sat in at the dentist’s.
Kurt Mowlam reclined in the chair.
He’d been shot in the head and a stake had been driven through his heart.
“Taking a wild guess, I’d say we’ve found the Doc’s accomplice,” Barbara said.
“Yeah,” Tucker replied. “Shame someone else found him first.”
Barbara wondered how this had gone down. Although the living room was trashed, it didn’t look like the scene of a struggle. The destruction had come later, after Mowlam was dead. It looked likely Mowlam had known his killer and let them in. They had walked into his studio and the killer had pulled a gun. Why? To shut him up. To send a message? The shot to the head would suggest the former—an execution. The stake through the heart suggested the latter. Hoisted by his own petard, she thought.
Tucker walked over to a small computer desk in one corner of the room.
“What you got?” Barbara asked.
He held up two phones. The screensaver on one looked like the cover of some kind of heavy-metal band. Mowlam’s, she guessed. The other showed a beautiful portrait picture of the Doc’s house and icy lake.
“Dalton’s phone,” Barbara said.
