Foundation by Marco Guarda

morning. She was shocked to see him like that. She said he was the best tenant in the whole building; always kind, never complained about anything, always paid the rent on the day it was due. Still, she can’t believe he killed himself.”
    “Well, it’s all yours ...” said Diggs after he had jotted his conclusions in his pad and had issued Boyd’s death certificate. “Suicide is fine with me.”
    Trumaine kneeled over the corpse. Boyd’s pale face was set in stone now. His eyes still bulged a little from below his closed eyelids and his lips were blue, but not even his mother would notice. Apart from the thin, black bruise he had now for a necklace, he could as well be fast asleep.
    Trumaine searched the pockets of the suit, but found nothing.
    “He didn’t leave a note or anything?” he asked.
    “Nothing,” said Firrell. “But we haven’t checked his books.”
    Trumaine groaned.
    Maybe Boyd really didn’t leave anything. Still, suicides usually left behind a clue to why they ended it all. Be it their will. A late apology. One last farewell. A resentful tirade about the evils of the world. If only to say, “Don’t forget to pay the bills,” they left a note.
    “Maybe he realized you were after him,” suggested Firrell. “He felt trapped and flipped out. What if he’s the mole we’re after?”
    Trumaine stroked his chin, looking up from Boyd’s blank face. “What if he’s not?”
    Firrell shrugged.

    It was the same apartment and the same day—just late in the afternoon. The body of Jimmy Boyd had been removed. Gone were Firrell, Diggs, Boyle, the sensitive cop and the sobbing lady.
    Only Trumaine had stayed.
    He had already inspected and put in orderly piles all the books he had found in the room—there was nothing in there. Now he needed to check the books that were on Boyd’s desktop.
    In the dimness that lingered beyond a small corner lamp, the most disparaged titles could be glimpsed. It was a huge, haphazard collection of whatever tome Boyd had been able to put his hands on during his life: from faded children’s books to Shakespeare’s opus, to Lorentz, to Dostoevsky, to Dante, to a decent amount of yellowing and dusty Bibles.
    Pulling it by its spine, Trumaine retrieved a large and heavy Bible from the shelf when, suddenly, it slipped from his fingers and landed hard on the desktop.
    It opened a dozen of pages or so from the cover, on a rich and beautiful late-medieval two-page illustration in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.
    It portrayed the garden of Eden. The author had clearly taken one too many poetical licenses, for at the center of the garden, where the forbidden tree rose, could be seen not just Adam, Eve and the various accompanying animals, but also a throng of young and old people that shouldn’t be there. They were all taking part in a cheerful, mindless spring dance around the tree, which had suddenly become a tree of life.
    Trumaine, fascinated by the extreme detail of the exquisite illustration, couldn’t take his eyes off it ...

    Time had flown; it was almost evening now.
    Trumaine grabbed one last tome from his left, perused it, then put it on the pile of books to his right. He then lunged toward the bookshelf hanging on the wall in front of him and retrieved the only plastic book sitting on it. He opened it to reveal a recent university yearbook. It contained the many pictures of the alumni of the Marine Biology faculty, at City University.
    Trumaine’s finger ran below the many smiling faces, stopping at the familiar features of a younger and smiling Jimmy Boyd. Trumaine studied the face and the smile within the face. Something didn’t add up, he thought—that wasn’t the face of a killer. That wasn’t the smile of a suicide, either.
    Everything was possible, of course. Meek individuals pushed to their limit would become ruthless killers, hard times would change a person, envy and spite would do the rest. All the same ...
    Trumaine shut the yearbook