“Man, what a way to go,” Bryce said. “Stabbed to death by a giant fish!”
He leaned over the couch and looked at the floor through the small hole the fish’s bill had made.
If Thomas had heard him, he didn’t answer. Instead, he was pushing a chair over from across the room, hoping to get high enough to examine the chains that had held up the swordfish.
“So, how do you suppose the killer managed to get the fish to fall?” Bryce asked, still looking at the couch.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Thomas said.
Of all the people, Thomas wondered why the only other one to pick the crime scene had to be this moronic slacker. Although Thomas was starting to think they all might be underestimating him. Bryce had yet to be Scared, after all.
Thomas was surprised at the lack of sadness he felt about Frank’s murder. He had bonded with the old grouch, in a way, during the past few days. And Thomas never had been very good at making friends.
But that was neither here nor there. The old guy was dead. And now Thomas’s only concern was figuring out how Frank had been killed so he didn’t end up a human skewer himself.
Thomas climbed on top of the chair and examined the ends of the two broken chains dangling from the ceiling. The chain that had held the fish’s head appeared to have been melted somehow. He wondered if it might have been done with a welding torch. The other chain, the one that had held the tail, was merely bent and broken, as if it had snapped from excess weight. The killer had clearly melted the front chain and then just waited for the weight of the entire fish to snap the back chain.
“Find anything useful?” Bryce asked from below him.
“No, not really,” Thomas lied. “It looks like the chains just snapped from the weight. Which is weird, of course. Or maybe they were cut with bolt cutters.”
Underestimating him or not, Thomas knew that Bryce would take his word for it and not climb up here to check himself. He was a pretty naive kid. Too trusting in that way only kids were. Thomas had been that way himself once.
“Huh, weird,” Bryce said, considering what that might mean.
Then he got down on his hands and knees and started looking at the floor underneath the couch while Thomas climbed down from the chair and moved it back across the room. The swordfish itself had been removed. Thomas wondered if it would be in the morgue for Jacqueline, Darrel, and Guadalupe to investigate.
“Dude, come check this out,” Bryce said excitedly from the floor.
Thomas got on his hands and knees and looked under the couch. There was a small indentation where the tip of the fish’s bill had hit the hardwood. There were also a few drops of dried blood around it.
“What am I looking at?” Thomas asked.
“Where’s all the blood?” Bryce said. “I mean, this guy got stabbed in the chest by that thing, right? So shouldn’t there be a ton of blood? It’s not like I’ve ever stabbed anyone, but I watch Dateline when I get stoned sometimes, and I’m telling you, when people get stabbed, there’s a ton of blood.”
Perhaps they had been underestimating the little punk after all, Thomas realized. Because he was right. Thomas wasn’t sure if he even would have noticed that himself. But either way, there definitely should have been way more blood. On the floor, on the couch, everywhere. But there were just a few drops on the floor and a little bit around the hole in the couch, and nothing more.
The real question, then, was what exactly did that mean?