Free The Boy Must Die by Jon Redfern Page B

news of this kid’s death will be all over the junior high school. They still have this extended semester system here? The kids go to school till mid-July or thereabouts?”
    “There’s summer school, too.”
    “We need to find out who phoned Randy and Sheree this morning. And we need to move fast. Somebody knew Darren was going into this.”
    The basement stairwell was darker than Billy expected. The stairs were steep and narrow, covered with chipped paint and dusty footprints. Billy examined the height of the overhang. Stairs leading to the second floor of the house were directly above. He regretted not having brought along his aluminum-cased flashlight. He would have to work in available light. The concrete at the foot of the steps was spotted with grime and what looked like burnt cork. Kneeling down in the dim glare of a forty-watt bulb, Billy touched the rotting rubber from carpet underlay.
    The first room was empty. It felt lower because of a new drywall ceiling. Through a smaller passage, the second room was cordoned off by yellow-and-black police tape. Billy could already see the chalk line around the outer edge of the blood spill. He stood at attention, placed his hands behind his back. A legacy from police-training days:
Touch nothing. Observe all. Make no assumptions.
Entering the gloom of the murder scene, he felt the familiar uneasiness of being in a place where a terrible action had unfolded. There before him was the spattered pattern of Darren’s dried blood. The conduit pipe overhead was at least seven feet above the floor. Out came the notebook. Had he measured the length of the body back in the morgue?
Damn!
He searched again, flipping back and forth. He’d have to guess. Maybe five feet, five-two? He’d have to wait and see Johnson’s site photos before he could judge how the boy had been found, how far the noose had hung from the bottom curve of the pipe, and whether the rope had been looped once or twice.
    Did he expect to find much? He wasn’t sure. Billy walked slowly around the site. He looked closely at the walls. A black cross and two lopsided pentacles spread across the whitewashed concrete surface. A paint can with a closed lid had been left below the wall. There was black around the lid, the same colour as the scrawl on the wall above. Johnson had dusted. Billy could see the traces of white powder on the metal rim and sides. The floor was crunchy with dried mouse droppings. Billy lifted his left foot. Fresh faeces stuck to his heel like small black grapeshot. He wiped his shoe on the concrete and let his eyes roam over the room in case any of the creatures might be cowering in the corners. The smell of urine and tobacco soured the air. Along another wall, underneath a small square window, were a washer, a dryer, and a utility sink. Billy looked behind them. Dust and hoses and electrical connections to a metal plug box. Billy swivelled around and knelt. He swept his eyes across the floor.
    “There,” he whispered.
    He moved back towards the wall with the painted pentacles. A small arrow-shaped piece of black broken plastic lay on its side. He shovedhis hands into the rubber gloves. How had Johnson missed this? Understandable: there was a dead body in front of her and a medic working around the site. He dropped the piece of plastic into a Ziploc. He clicked the tweezers together and stood up.
    Billy looked at the one major pipe — the conduit — crossing the ceiling. “The
Roshi
offers the riddle — the
koan
,” he said to himself. He let his mind float free for a moment. Gazing down at the floor, he studied the faint pattern of blood spatters inside the chalk line. Odd, as Butch had pointed out. There was nothing directly under the pipe, where the noose had hung. If the body was bleeding — cut up before it was hanged — the blood would have splattered onto the floor. There were some spots on the boots, Billy remembered. What was missing? Four burnt candles made a rough circle