DARK CITY a gripping detective mystery by CHRISTOPHER M. COLAVITO Page A

been since anyone considered it worth inhabiting.
    Detective Lane swung his flashlight through the darkness, illuminating the way before he dared step inside. Knox had left him behind, venturing in, chuckling at the thought of his partner frozen in fear. Knox switched on his own light, looking into the folded corners of blackness. Nothing about the room looked out of place, if such a thing could be said about a crumbling remnant. Broken glass and bits of machinery filled the corners, dust and grime painting them all the same flaccid shade of invisible.
    Detective Knox had seen enough, and spun around on his heel to leave, a habit he’d adopted as a youth, one that wore out his shoes in a way that made him appear an inch shorter than he really was. As he spun to a stop, his eyes were blinded by Lane's light, barely a foot from his face. Knox shielded himself, blinking hard to clear the ghosted image. Seeing ghosts there was likely enough but he did not need to add to the confusion.
    “What are you shining that damn light in my eyes for?”
    “Sorry, I thought you saw what I did.”
    “What did you see?”
    Knox turned around again, still blinded by Lane's light. The edges were hazy, and Knox could not see anything. Frustration tinged his voice as he spoke, a level of angst that Lane could see something he could not.
    “Nothing. I see nothing.”
    “What's so special about that? This place is empty.”
    “It's too empty. Look again, the entire middle of the room is bare. There's not a shard of glass, or a piece of dust, to be found. It looks like someone swept it up, and not long ago.”
    Detective Knox hated to admit it to himself, much less to Lane, but the observation was keen. The scene did look too clean, too organized for being in the middle of a rotten husk of a building. He stepped forward into the center, wincing as he knelt to the floor, getting a closer look.
    “Something happened here.”
    “Do you think this is where he was taken?”
    “I do now.”
    Knox spotted a discoloration. He moved closer, to verify his instincts. Putting a handkerchief over his finger, he touched the spot, then held the red blot to his eye.
    “Is that blood?”
    “Yes, Lane, it's blood. Get a sample, and we'll send it to the lab. We'll have to wait for confirmation, but I think we found what we were looking for.”
    “A clue.”
    “Yup. Now we have something to work with.”
    “So we might just solve this case after all.”
    “There's hope.”
    “See, I told you optimism pays off.”
    “Work pays off. Optimism just makes you unaware of how miserable you are until you get there.”
    “Forget I said anything.”
    “I always do.”

Chapter 16
    Unreflected Sunshine
     
    Home for Detective Knox was not where the heart was, it was a distraction from his work, an unwelcome pause in the obsessions running roughshod through his mind. He had been told it was important to have balance in one’s life, but there were times when trying to act like a good and normal person got in the way of what he truly wanted and he struggled to muster the effort to engage in personal interaction.
    For him, being antisocial was not a choice, it was a genetic predisposition. People were an allergen, and isolation was the only medicine he knew of. The others at the precinct wondered how he had ever acquired a life outside of work, since he displayed no desire to have one. The truth of the matter was that everyone and everything that mattered to him outside his job had been acquired before there was one. In those days, when he did not have an endless string of puzzles to consume his every waking moment, he had had the energy to put on a brave face and attempt human intimacy.
    Remnants of his former life lingered, mostly in the form of his wife, Kat. She was an odd choice to stand by Knox's side, a ray of sunshine that had no surface to reflect off. Anyone who saw the two of them together was left confused, and the inevitable jokes would ensue about how