The only color in the room was from the grotesque splatter of bodily fluid, all too reminiscent of a Pollack painting, and a pool of coagulated blood that encompassed the body of the victim, the late homeowner. Aside from the new crimson décor, the crime scene was immaculate. Not even a minute amount of trace evidence could be found by the now-haggard looking forensic investigation team.

             They had scoured every nook of the eight by eight panic room that opened up off of the master suite. A space constructed solely for the purpose of avoiding events like the one that took place this evening, it had been the key selling point for the current owner according to interviews with several of the neighbors. The gentleman living in the adjacent brownstone quipped, "Kinda odd when you think about how much of a recluse he was, I never saw him leave that place once he moved in three months ago. I heard he was so excited when he saw that room for the first time, he offered cash for the place right there on the spot."

             "I was in there once during an open house, before Hodges' bought it. That room creeped me out, it seemed more like something you might see in an asylum than somewhere I'd go to keep safe," added another.

             However on this night, the blindingly white room with the ten inch steel door and padded walls only further complicated the details of an already mind-boggling homicide. Against the far wall laying in a crumpled mass was the body of Simon Hodges, the decedent, stripped to his under things. If not for the large shotgun wound in Hodges' back and the remnants of his bodies reaction to death now resting in his boxer briefs, the pale figure could have blended in with the color of the room or the absence thereof.

             Missing from the scene were the assailant and their weapon of choice, a ten gauge shotgun used at very close range. The perpetrator of this crime had been in such tight proximity to Hodges that the blast of the weapon literally blew a hole, about the size of a cantaloupe in diameter, through the body. Aside from the murder scene, nothing else in the three story home seemed out of place, nothing missing, nothing left behind.

#

             "It just isn't possible, no trace evidence at all?" was the question that came from the lips of the lead detective.

             A member of the forensic team stammered back, "I know. I know. In fifteen years, I have never run into such a clean crime scene. Never."

             The detective gave a shout into his radio. "What we got in the house?"

             The replies came in rapid succession.

             "Zilch."

             "Nothing here."

             "This is the cleanest damn house, like a freakin' museum."

             The home of Simon Hodges' was more like a shrine than a museum. Framed photos of woman very senior to Hodges', his mother as later discovered by a stack of laminated obituaries that were intricately catalogued on a shelf in what appeared to be a seldom used third floor office, adorned the walls of every room. From any given vantage point in the entire twenty-eight hundred square foot home, at least two photos of the woman were visible. Simon Hodges' had an Oedipus complex, an insatiable fixation with his late mother.

             "I think I have something," yelled a detective working the master suite for evidence.

             "What is it?"

             "A nail. It looks like a finishing nail."

             "A nail? The vic probably dropped it when he was hanging all those damned photos. Bag it just in case."

             By midnight, every floor had been gone over in excruciating detail. No sign of forced entry, no sign of struggle, not a single clue as to motive. A homicidal maniac was on the loose and without any evidence; there was no way of knowing if they may strike again.

#

             Across town, a lone figure sat on a weathered couch, probably acquired at Goodwill, in a studio apartment not much larger than the panic room where Simon Hodges' body lay. The man on the couch sat there mumbling, while the flicker of a small television on the floor in the corner of the room served as the only means of luminescence in the entire dwelling. Next to him on the couch sat a grand portraiture of a woman, the woman in the countless photos Simon Hodges' had hung in his own home, and at the man's feet rested a shotgun that had been recently acquired at the In-N-Out Pawn and Loan, just down the block. The man sat there caressing the frame of the painting, like one might pet the top of a dog's head.

             "Left me nothing. Well, now I got something, Mother, I got something indeed," muttered the man as he began to look around the small room for a nail to hang his treasure upon.

Copyright 2005 by Erik Smetana