Killing Hope (Gabe Quinn Thriller) by Keith Houghton Page B

door. Then descended the creaking stairs into darkness. Groped around for the pull switch. Pulled on lights.
     
    I’d converted part of the basement a while back. Planned to use it as a den at the weekends. Hang out with Harry. Watch the game. Guzzle beer. All that kind of childish man stuff. I’d even installed a big plasma TV and a pair of matching La-Z-Boys. But the TV hadn’t been turned on this last year. And my cable subscription had expired I don’t know when.
     
      We all have our obsessions.
     
    One whole wall of the den was plastered with photographs. Print-outs. Post-its. Forming a multi-colored mosaic that spanned the last twelve months of the life of a man I’d never met. It looked disorganized. But I knew where everything was – every scribbled word, every newspaper clipping, every dead end. None of it had been here twelve months ago. Just a poster from an old movie I was trying to forget.
     
    I opened up my laptop. Got an energy drink from the little trendy refrigerator in the corner. Drank it while the computer booted. Then I sat down. Put on my readers. Checked emails. Scrolled through the masses of junk that multiples like bacteria. Promises to enhance my manhood. Promises to get me out of my financial fix. Promises to wire a million dollars to my bank account if I helped the grief-stricken widow of an African despot. Promises, promises. I deleted them en mass. There were several communications from Dreads. I filed them in my Dreads folder without reading them – along with the hundred other unopened emails already in there.
     
    Something was bugging me.
     
    I made some space on the desk next to the laptop. Placed evidence bags on the surface. Switched on the angle-poise lamp. Brought it in close. In the first bag was the torn photograph from the 7th Street Bridge. Bright colors within the cone of hot light. In the other, the faded newspaper clipping left on Marlene’s pillow. Old and yellowed. I had no right keeping them from the evidence lock-up back at the Precinct. No right at all. Didn’t matter.
     
    I peered closer.
     
    Samuels’ strained smile was clear to see. The forced participation of the obliged. He hadn’t wanted to appear ungrateful or even antisocial – so he’d made the effort. Wanted to be at home with his Mozart and his fancy French wine instead. But was going through the motions. Maybe as part of his University contract. Maybe for somebody else. It looked like he was wearing the same tuxedo he’d been laid to rest in by The Undertaker on Saturday morning. The same get-up I’d seen in every one of the photographs displayed on Samuels’ living room wall. But something was different. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
     
    I took the folder labeled The Mortician Murders from the tray on my desk. Crossed the title out. Replaced it with The Undertaker Case .
     
    Okay, so I keep full copies of my case files at home; no crime in that. You’d do the same.
     
    I dug out a CSU eight-by-ten of Samuels lying on his bed in the customary pose of interment. I’m no tailor, but the outfit looked the same as the one in the torn picture. Same dinner shirt. Same cufflinks. Same ten-grand Rolex. The same crimson cummerbund and blood-red bowtie.
     
    So why was my Uh-Oh Radar on full alert?
     
    I fished out a magnifying glass and peered at the photograph through the cloudy plastic.
     
    The shot had been taken in a TV studio. Didn’t know which one. Maybe Samuels had been interviewed on a chat show. There were big TV cameras and boon microphones in the background. The grey-haired guy with the short grey beard I thought of as Pointy Face just over his shoulder. The foot of the person who Samuels was standing next to him at the bottom of the picture. A woman’s foot, wearing a fashionable open-toed pump.
     
    What was I missing?
     
    I sat back and chewed some cheek.
     
    Distantly, I heard the house phone ring. I put everything down. Went to the foot of the stairs.