Free Bulls Rush In by Elliott James Page A

do the opposite, and there was definitely a bad vibe lingering in the house. It didn’t prove that Samuel had killed anyone, but it was something to think about.
    There was less dust in the TV room than anywhere else. Just for the hell of it, I turned on the TV. There was a golf game on. Samuel Blanco was a big guy, a solid six-foot-six slab of hard fat and muscle, and the cushions of the couch were sagging in the middle. It wasn’t the couch’s fault; if somebody that big was sitting on me all the time, I’d be permanently depressed too.
    I walked through the doorless opening into the kitchen and stepped into an orchard of empty brown beer bottles that had sprouted up from the table and counters. Samuel hadn’t bothered to put a lining in the grimy white plastic trash can next to the back door either, and it was filled with empty plain white paper bags and torn snack cake wrappers. The sink was full of bowls and glasses left tilted at haphazard angles, holding gulp sized sips of milky gray water.
    I had to ask myself: If Samuel was such a slob, why were the floors so clean? Why had the living room carpet been shampooed?
    *  *  *
    Deputy Reedy was still hung up on my name. “Charmin’,” he said. I don’t tell many people my real last name, but when I do, they always repeat it like that, and always the same way. You’d think I’d have a standard comeback for them by now, even if it was just Thank you or Yeah, what do you want?
    But instead I said: “There used to be a lot of us. You know all of those guys in the stories? The Prince Charmings who are always going around breaking enchantments and slaying dragons and killing ogres and such? That’s my family tree.”
    Oddly enough, my words seemed to relax Deputy Reedy rather than aggravate him. At least now he knew what he was dealing with: a fruit loop. “Of course it is. So, you’re a prince, huh, John?”
    “Give me a break, Jim,” I said. He glared at my use of his first name, but he’d started it. “Did you ever hear of a Charming dynasty anywhere, in any country? They just called my ancestors princes because it was ye olde days and storytellers had to suck up to nobles.”
    “Yeah, what was I thinkin’?” the deputy wondered. I’m not sure, but there might have been a hint of sarcasm there. Then something else seemed to register. “Wait a minute. Are you sayin’ that Sam Blanco was a monster?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    *  *  *
    I decided it was the bathroom sink I wanted, so I headed for the single restroom. Nothing at the edge of the drain, nothing on the floor, so I removed a dental mirror from my front pocket, the kind with a round dime-sized reflective surface angled at the end of a plastic handle. I took the dental mirror and angled it in that hard-to-get-to space between the back of the sink’s hot water faucet and the wall. There it was: a sticky-looking spot of dried blood, red and rust-colored, beneath the back of the grooved plastic hot water handle. Of course, Samuel could have cut himself shaving, so I kept looking. When I angled the small mirror beneath the metal groove in the top of the washing machine’s lid, I saw more recently dried blood on the inside of the handle.
    The bathroom connected to a bedroom, and I got hit by a gush of stale air when I opened the door, as if the room had been holding its breath. There was dust everywhere, but the place was neat, and all of the clothes in the closet were way too small for Samuel. One of the drawers in the dresser was full of unopened envelopes, but when I dug under the pile, I found neatly folded financial forms, bills, bank statements, and a rental lease agreement going back fifteen years. Someone named Luis Blanco had arranged it so that Samuel’s salary at the factory was electronically deposited into a checking account, and his bills were automatically deducted from that same account: electric, water, cable, a landline phone, and a cleaning service that implied that the house