I thanked Mallinger for her help and arranged to get a copy of the accident report for my insurance company. Man, were they going to love this. Afterward, I accompanied the tow truck driver to the garage. They put the Audi on a hoist and determined that there had been no damage to the undercarriage. After reattaching the bumper and engineering a temporary fix of the rear lights and filters—there was a lot of duct tape involved—they pronounced the car drivable as long as I didn’t drive it too hard. They told me they’d be happy to fix the Audi “as good as new,” but I would have to wait a good long time for parts. That didn’t seem like an option to me. I paid with a credit card, thanked everyone, and drove off.

I still held to my plan, although it had been pushed back over four hours. Using my map and the address I had gleaned from the Internet, I found Josiah Bloom’s place across from the Nicholas County Fairgrounds. There were no other houses in the vicinity and I wondered why it had been built there. Nor was there a garage, only a strip of asphalt next to the house. The strip was empty.

I knocked on the door and waited. After a few moments I knocked again. I tried the latch. The door was unlocked. I gave it a gentle shove and it swung open. I called Bloom’s name several times. No answer. I stepped inside and was immediately seized by a sense of dread so deep inside me that it felt I had been born with it.

“Mr. Bloom?”

All the shades were drawn, turning the bright winter sunlight into gray shadows. I moved through a tiny living room filled with furniture that didn’t match. There was a TV and a VCR. A long screwdriver had been jammed into the mouth of the tape machine—the sight made me consider returning to the Audi for my gun. Instead, I crossed into the dining room beyond. Through an open door on my right I saw a bathroom. To my left was a small arch and what looked like a kitchen.

“Mr. Bloom?”

I smelled something I couldn’t place. It reminded me of cat urine, but what was that sweet smell mixed with it? It seemed to come from the kitchen, and smelling it did something to my body. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rising, felt my lungs fight for air. Perspiration welled up under my arms and on my forehead and I swore I could hear—actually hear—the beating of my heart as I drifted toward the kitchen. I found a switch and flicked the light on.

Half of Josiah Bloom’s body was in a chair, the rest slumped over a small wooden table. A puddle of rich, red blood nearly covered the table and dripped into another, much larger puddle on the pale yellow linoleum floor. I gagged when I first saw the small entry hole surrounded by burned and unburned gunpowder in his right temple. I gagged again when I discovered that the bottom left side of Bloom’s head was gone, that his blood, bone, teeth, and brain were splattered on the kitchen wall, cabinets, and floor.

My gag reflex kicked in and I ran to the bathroom. I found the toilet, hovered above it, my body shuddering, until the gagging finally subsided. I took pride in not vomiting—the first time I came across a dead body I had. I rinsed my mouth and splashed cold water on my face. Contaminating a crime scene, oh this is so smart, my inner voice told me. Wouldn’t they be proud of you back at the St. Paul Police Department? Oh, wouldn’t they, though?

“Suicide,” I told my reflection in the mirror. “I drove him to suicide.”

Get over yourself, my private voice replied.

“Why then?”

The smell of cat urine was far greater in the bathroom and I began to look for the source. Did Josie keep cats? I found two large plastic buckets, one filled with empty cough medicine bottles and the other with batteries. The bathtub was hideously stained.

“Well, that might be a reason,” I said aloud.

I forced myself back into the kitchen and examined Bloom’s wound. Next I searched for the gun. I found it in an unlikely location—Bloom’s hand. I looked at it for a long time. Then back at the entry wound.

“Danny isn’t going to like this,” I said aloud before I called 911.

11

I gave my statement twice, first to Mallinger, then to the medical examiner, a local doctor who moonlighted for the county. Mallinger had made sure that no one entered the kitchen before the ME arrived, including herself.

“An apparent suicide,” the ME announced. “However, there are some inconsistencies. For one, we have a footprint and some smearing in the blood on the floor.” He held up his camera for us to see. “I have several shots of it.”

“That was me,” said I. To prove it, I showed them the tip of my boot, now stained red. “Sorry.”

The ME took a photograph of my boot. Apparently he was a oneman forensics department.

“What else did you do?” he asked.

“I used the bathroom.”

The ME had a disgusted look on his face. Mallinger nodded her head in understanding. She looked like she wanted to vomit herself.

We were outside, standing next to Mallinger’s cruiser. She was pale and I noticed her breath was coming hard. Other officers hung about waiting for instructions, but Mallinger waved them back. I suspected that she had never seen as messy a crime scene before. Unfortunately, I was about to make it worse.

“It wasn’t suicide,” I told the ME.

“Yeah, it was,” the ME said.

“It wasn’t.”

“Since CSI everyone’s a criminologist,” the ME told Mallinger.