Empty Room

He sat right in the center of that empty room; he wasn't worried about leaving a trace or contaminating the scene: the regulation sterile white coverall, hood drawn tight, matching shoe covers, and blue gloves buttoned to the sleeves would prevent that. He'd long since grown used to the suffocating, claustrophobic heat of the gear and the mask covering his chin, shielding the scene from his thick beard and stray skin cells. He simply disconnected from the sticky sensation of sweat running down his hair and face.

He chose to sit facing the apparently comfortable three-seater sofa at the far end, its dark blue faded by countless brushes of clothing and accidental bumps. The room was dim - just as it had been when everything happened - only enough light to make out the objects, as the subject himself would have seen them. He fixed his gaze on the corner to his left, right where the two walls met the ceiling: a diffuse, pyramidal shadow where it was hard to tell which surface belonged to which wall.

He pictured his mind as a vast blank canvas, limitless wherever he looked, and relaxed the muscles around his eyes. He imagined them filling with a warm white light, spreading down his optic nerves, widening them - turning them into channels eager to carry in every detail. Then he let the light, soft and cottony, flow through his skull in a sort of luminous neural massage.

And then it began. His eyes became sponges for the faint light, luminous ink reaching his blank canvas through those now-wide channels. Without analyzing anything he saw, he let his gaze sweep every inch of the four walls: the one in front of him, a nondescript dirty white, with its nondescript blue sofa - now stained with dark, half-dried blood, especially on the left side, probably the father's spot, slightly more sunken than the others. Mom next to Dad, and beside her, the ten-year-old girl. The whole family, watching TV. He let all these thoughts, intuitions honed by long experience, drift like a bluish cloud - the same shade as the sofa - above his half-painted mental canvas.

Above the sofa, an abstract painting in blue and gray - surely Mom's touch, trying to balance out the absurd sofa - an original, tasteful enough even if by an unknown artist, now slashed diagonally by a faint spray of arterial blood. It would be easy to clean the frame, but the painting itself would probably be forever haunted by that line of droplets, following the inescapable laws of physics. That touch of red, and its sordid origin, might even raise its value if someone tried to sell it. He turned the painting into a small gray cloud and let it float above the canvas.

Turning his head further right, a battered side table - chipped but dustless - sat in the corner; on it, the family's landline, a standard model from the phone company. Its utter blandness, and the fact that it sat on the part of the sofa - the boring, boring, boring sofa - where the boy - or was it a girl? He couldn't recall, just the half-sleeping, tousled hair as someone from child services led them away - probably meant it was rarely used. It was just there, waiting for the occasional call.

Ironically, the phone was still there, spotless, not a drop of blood on it, indifferent to what had happened just hours before. The table, too, looked untouched. Maybe the sofa arm had acted as a makeshift shield. The white phone earned its own little white cloud on his mental map.

He turned his body ninety degrees to the right, studying the next wall: left corner, empty, dull, nondescript, nothing new. In the very center, almost perfectly so, a large mirror drew his attention, its frame so discreet it was nearly invisible, and just behind his own reflection - hooded, white as a ghost, stiff as a scarecrow - he could see the window, curtain now drawn. A clever trick, really, to maximize sunlight in the room” surely another of Mom's touches; Dad was content just to collapse in his corner of the sluggish blue sofa.

At least there was no alcohol in sight. He inhaled deeply, savoring each molecule, letting the most primitive part of his brain do its work. Dampness, but not the sickly, sticky damp of mold and rot: this was the clean damp of the woods surrounding the house, with that sweetish autumn note, the mushroom scent mycologists call "fresh flour" though no one really knows what they mean. The sharp tang of blood soaked into parts of the room, with a faint acidic, metallic edge. But no sweet, intoxicating fumes of spirits, nor the earthier, rougher notes of fermented drinks.

A new cloud, silver-bright like the mirror, joined the others on his mental map.

The right corner was a mirror image of the left. Not a single decoration, none of those plates people insist on hanging in ugly, cluttered arrangements without a hint of taste, harmony, or proportion. Just the empty wall - though, looking at it as a whole, with the big mirror in the center, it had its own charm: the natural world reflected in the human-made one, like a painting in perpetual motion amid the blank white.

Another ninety degrees, and he was facing the wall opposite the stupid - boring, boring, boring - sofa. Left corner: an old wall clock, apparently working and showing the right time. Dark, sober lines, not ornate, but with the elegance and patina of another era. He stared at the golden pendulum for a few minutes, as if trying to hypnotize himself, until all he saw was a golden blur swinging in the air.

Now he listened: tick, tick, tick. None of that silly "tick-tock" from books. The sound was identical in both directions: the sound of well-kept, oiled gears. He liked this - everything in its proper place, done the proper way, nothing jarring. Beneath the gentle rhythm, he could just make out the wind in the trees, and the brief chirp of a bird marking its territory. A little cloud with clock hands, like the others, floated above his ever-painting mind.

Just to his right, in the center of the wall, the fireplace: an old one, rebuilt not just for looks but to actually work. Mom again. Dad would've settled for a cheap gas heater with a scorched screen, wouldn't he? And surely the house, tucked by the woods, got cold in winter.

In the center of the hearth, the few remains of Mom's burned clothes. Pants, sweater, underwear, nearly reduced to ash, laid out methodically, just as methodical as the single cut that had opened Dad's throat - probably while he slept, judging by the signs noted on the body, now at the morgue while he'd suited up in the immaculate white suit that was surely gray and speckled with red by now.

Even from where he sat, he could see the clothes had been carefully folded and stacked before burning, some extravagant ritual repeated in other cases. The thick sweater was now a grotesque, barely smoking pyre. Just like the four previous cases. What was the perpetrator trying to say before carrying them off, drugged and naked? Burn the old? Transform the imperfect? A search for the Phoenix? Or simply a show of hatred and contempt, a way to dehumanize, humiliate, disempower. Probably a mix, he decided. A burning torch-shaped cloud joined the others, floating above the nearly finished canvas.

To the right of the fireplace, just a door - nothing special, neither extravagant nor discreet: a simple door leading to the hallway, around which were the bathroom, kitchen, and stairs to the upper floor with three standard bedrooms. Maybe later he'd repeat the process for the rest of the house, but now impatience gnawed at his gut - the impatience of a predator stalking another predator.

Drawing on his self-control - honed over a lifetime, a life surrounded by people who never understood him and never would - he turned his body another ninety degrees, toward the wall with the large window. The wall had been remodeled for a delicate balance between insulation (thick panes sealed to a modern frame clad in old, well-kept wood) and maximum light. Mom had a degree in Fine Arts and did small craft projects. She must have loved the light pouring in through the glass. Even with the curtain drawn and little light left, you could tell the view would move anyone who cared about such things.

With a sudden, deep breath, he slowly emerged from his trance, carefully folding the canvas: in half, then quarters, eighths, sixteenths, then tucking it into a drawer in his mind, perfectly labeled with the case details that had brought him to this crime scene. After stretching his stiff muscles, he rose, a glint in his eye.

It was time for action, and everyone knew - the best weapon to catch a sociopath was another sociopath...