Death in a hotel room
It’s All Hallow’s Eve. Out in the streets, flashes pop and megapixels capture masked villains, wigged witches and caped crusader hopefuls rambling about drunk on cheap booze and costumed revelry. Painted ghoulish grins sidle up next to plastic fangs, stockinged limbs lock with leather boot-encased legs, all for the perfect social network site photo. Laughter and inebriated howls noisy up bars and dimly-lit streets. The spirit of Halloween, it seems, is as alive as ever.
It’s All Hallow’s Eve. Inside a dark and dank hotel room, a woman lies lifeless, her legs sprawled out, her arms dangling. She is dressed in designer finery, and looks as if she had just gotten back from a luxurious event, one of those Halloween balls that try to snooty up the pagan occasion.
A man comes in soon as the call is made, well ahead of his colleagues. An investigator, judging by the tailored suit he is wearing, one that is as grim and as stiff as the expression he has on his face. (He is not one to succumb to the dress-up warrants of the occasion.) He takes in the sinister scene, the almost-theatrical disarray, and the woman who only looks like she is sleeping, with eyes wide open. She is young (possibly in her mid-20s), petite and beautiful. His quick eye notices that there is no mark on her, not on her neck, nor her arms or her legs.
He has nothing on him, only the digital camera he always pockets for social documentation: a Canon Ixus 90IS, its silver casing as smooth and as unlined as the body before him. And as cold. He snaps a few, careful not to touch anything as he works his way around the corpse and tries not to notice that, even lifeless, she still manages to attract him. The light in the room is so weak, a lone lamp — its shade askew — that casts eerie shadows across the victim’s face. He makes the most of it and dourly acknowledges that his gadget is powerful enough to work even in the lowest light.
He notices that she has something palmed in her hand. (He wonders how he could have missed it.) Another digital camera. An Ixus as well but newer and more powerful than his own 960IS. Its titanium finish gleams in the dark and reflects off the metallic gown the woman has on. He picks it up gingerly, carefully — he doesn’t want to mess up fingerprint finds — and realizes this is evidence, the most important piece of evidence, in fact. By looking at the camera alone and sizing up what it can do, he knows immediately that this small little camera could very well reveal her killer.
He feels something close to a shiver run up his spine. He thinks for the briefest of moments and realizes what he has to do.
