Free Dead Boogie by Victoria Houston

airy room, which seemed smaller than it was due to its occupant: a large brass bed. The bed was covered with a cheery yellow, white, red, and spring green patterned quilt that, along with a tumble of colorful pillows, lit up the space. The quilt matched the curtains, which were pulled to let in the western light.
    Alongside the bed was a lamp table laden with magazines and a paperback novel. Nearby was an antique dressing table and matching mirror. Bottles of perfume and makeup were set in a row across the top of the dressing table. A handsome cherry dresser stood against one wall.
    “Compulsively neat,” said Lew.
    “Wait ‘til you see the kitchen,” said Osborne. He took a long, slow look around the room. “Lew, I can’t put my finger on it—but I feel like something is missing. I felt it in the living room, I feel it here …”
    “Really?” Lew gave him a thoughtful look.
    The door to the second bedroom opened to darkness. The room smelled of mothballs with a hint of what Osborne imagined to be stale sex. Lew flicked the light switch. Brown and tan striped curtains were pulled closed. The curtains matched the bedspread on the queen-sized bed, which had a simple oak headboard. Cabinet-style tables on each side of the bed held lamps with light brown shades. Otherwise, the tables were empty. No books, no magazines, no ashtrays, no coasters.
    A tall wooden wardrobe stood against one wall, one door ajar. Except for half a dozen suit hangers, it was empty. Directly across from the bed, resting on a wooden trestle table, was a flat-screen TV with a built-in VCR and DVD player. A chest of drawers was angled into the remaining corner of the room.
    “I wonder if she gets to write this off as her home office,” said Lew in a wry tone. She reached for the cell phone that hung from her belt and checked it.
    “Do you have service here?” said Osborne.
    “Yes, funny they haven’t called yet.” She looked around the room, “I’m hesitant to open drawers until I have that search warrant …”
    Osborne walked around the queen-size bed and out of instinct bent to close a half-open door to the cabinet under one of the lamps, only to have a stack of magazines slide onto the floor. The kind of magazines that were masked on the highest racks and sold bagged at the convenience store.
    “Doc, wait—let me pick those up,” said Lew, holding out her gloved hands, “In case I need them checked for prints.”
    “Wait,” said Osborne as she came around the bed. He put a hand on her arm to stop her as he pointed to the floor. Where the magazines had slid near the bed was a long white box, its length visible just below the bedspread. “Does that qualify as being ‘in plain sight'?”
    Lew didn’t answer. She knelt to pull the box forward. It was an unusual size. Osborne guessed it to be about sixteen inches by twelve inches and three inches deep—and made of a heavy-weight cardboard. Across the top of the box, scrawled in black marker and printed in capital letters was the phrase: pictures of people who hurt people.

eleven
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
—Henry David Thoreau
    “Pictures.” Osborne snapped his fingers. Lew looked up from where she was leaning over the unopened box.
    “That’s it,” he said. “I knew something was bothering me as I walked through these rooms. The woman has nothing on her walls. No pictures, no photos, no paintings—nothing.”
    “Are you sure?” said Lew, her eyes questioning. She moved past him into the living room. He followed, watching as she scanned the walls in that room, the front bedroom, and the kitchen. “That is odd, Doc. You and I have family photos sitting out all over the place. Too many in my case, that’s for sure.
    “Even here,” said Lew, pointing in amazement from where she stood in the middle of the kitchen. “Now when was the last time you saw a refrigerator door that didn’t have something stuck on it with a magnet? Reminders, postcards, the