The Electrician's Code by Clarissa Draper Page A

him in the chest.”
    He led her to the front gate and pointed over the fence. “That’s where he was stabbed. He was fetching the paper. The knife was found in the bushes there.” He pointed to his left.
    “Did he do that often?”
    “What, fetch the paper? Yeah, every day apparently.”
    Sophia looked up and down the street. It was pretty deserted. Only two cars had passed since they had arrived. His house sat in the middle of the block. “I guess the bushes could hide someone short from his view, however, whoever stabbed him would stand out on the street. Did no one notice anyone walking?”
    “There were many people who noticed many things but nothing we could go on. A white woman. A black man. A young woman running. A teenager wearing a school uniform. All the statements were vague and led nowhere. No one could give a proper description. No one saw Mr. Tipring get stabbed.”
    “The murderer could have arrived in a car and left the same way.”
    “Either way, it’s still nothing we can follow up on. CCTV in this area has not been helpful. Come, I’ll take you inside.”
    The house was quiet and dark and Theo had difficulty finding the light switch but when he found it, the house lit up throughout. Sophia took her time going through each of the rooms before saying anything.
    “He’s very neat. What was he wearing when he died?”
    “His pajamas and a bathrobe,” he said and then stopped. Theo reached into his jacket and pulled out a photograph. “We did find this in his robe pocket.”
    “Why run backwards you’ll vomit,” she read. “What does it mean?”
    “It’s an electrician’s code,” replied Theo.
    “Oh, I see why you rang me. Was Mr. Tipring an electrician?”
    “Yes.”
    “So then, the code could mean nothing at all.”
    “We suspected that,” he said quietly.
    “You were hoping I would come in and enlighten you about it, hand you the name of the killer based on that alone?”
    “No, nothing like that,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “I hadn’t really any expectations.”
    “Was he still working as an electrician?”
    “No, he was retired.”
    “Was he a clean person?”
    “He’s very clean. Look at the state of his house: not cluttered and clean.”
    “How did a one-legged man clean his house so well?”
    “Oh, he had a nurse.”
    Exactly. “So then, how were his clothes? Were they clean?”
    He squinted at her. “Yes. They were clean as far as I could tell. Why?”
    “Well, it’s an odd thing for an electrician, one who does not work in that field anymore, to have that mnemonic in his pocket.”
    “Maybe he’s sentimental. He does keep things for sentimental value.”
    “Oh, like what?”
    “He had a box of earrings. We don’t know what value they held for him, but they were important enough that he wanted the box buried with him.”
    “That seems a bit odd, doesn’t it?”
    “Everything about the case is a bit odd.”
    He led her to the drawing room. “Have you seen anything like it? I really don’t see the purpose of the room.”
    She went over to the chair and sat down. She could feel the springs in the cushion. The victim must have sat there a lot. “Turn on that light will you, the one near the fireplace.”
    Theo flicked the switch. Spotlights above the tiled art lit up. Sophia turned on the lamp and looked at the table. She opened the small drawer. Inside was a blank pad of paper and a pencil. She ran her hand over the top of it. She could feel the indentations the pencil made from the previous page. She took the pencil and rubbed the top of it.
    Only a few words could be made out: girl, Rosie, brush. They weren’t even in a line, it was as if he wanted to remember a word and wrote it down.
    “I wonder if he was fond of crosswords.”
    “I’m not sure we found any crosswords but he could be. He did collect the paper every morning. He could have done the one inside each day.”
    Theo went to the kitchen and came back with a chair. “So what