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The first thing I smelled was garlic.
It wafted out through the now open door and I found that to be odd. It made me think that someone was having dinner or just ordered takeout. It was just out of place.
I stepped carefully through the doorway. It had, indeed, been turned into an apartment and had actually been refurbished better than I'd been able to see from outside. The interior walls were drywalled and painted, and carpeting installed over the concrete floor. The living room and kitchen were essentially one room, but a sink and an oven stood next to a fridge in the corner. The source of the garlic was a pan full of pre-packaged noodles on the stovetop that never finished cooking.
I looked in the other direction and saw the entrance to a very small bathroom and a hallway that led out to where the front of the garage would've been. A red hooded sweatshirt was splayed out on the small couch, as if someone had casually discarded it. I took a few more steps, until I was standing close to the desk. Sheaves of notebook paper covered its surface, the papers filled with phrases and sentences written in both pencil and pen, the writing going in all directions. The Twinkies box was open and there were two left.
And I could hear the music clearly now.
R.E.M.
I couldn't remember the song title, but I recognized Michael Stipe's voice.
I took a couple of steps past the bathroom into the hallway, following the music, and stopped at the entrance to the bedroom.
Patrick Bullock was lying on his back on his bed. His hair was a little longer than in the picture his mother had given me, the color a little less blond. He wore faded jeans that looked a size too big and a green T-shirt with a logo I didn’t recognize. His eyes were open.
And a needle was sticking straight up from the middle of his right arm.
“Patrick?” I said.
As I suspected, he didn't answer.
Because he was dead.
I could see that his chest wasn't moving and his eyes were staring straight up into something that wasn't there.
The room was a mess. The bed he was in was unmade and small mounds of clothing littered the floor like landmines. An acoustic guitar lay across the foot of the bed at his feet and a black electric model stood next to an old brown dresser. The walls were bare and the paint on them was cracking high up in the corners.
I walked carefully into the room. I could see that most of the color was gone from his face and saliva had crusted in the corners of his mouth. The tiniest drop of blood had coagulated where the needle entered the middle of his arm and had dried almost black.
I swallowed hard.
On the nightstand next to his bed, an ashtray held several butts and a small piece of wax paper sat next to it, along with a needle cap and some rubber tubing. A neon orange lighter balanced precipitously on the edge of the nightstand.
I took another deep breath and looked at Patrick.
There was a notebook on the other side of his body and a blue pen. The notebook was closed and the pen was peeking out from the inside of it. The metal spiral binding was untwisted at the bottom of the notebook and I remembered doing the same thing when I'd been in high school and getting chastised for doing it because the wire could poke someone or something.
And then I noticed the piece of paper near his hand.
It was a single sheet, torn in half, and there were two things written on it.
“Sorry. Patrick.”
Both were printed in pencil, diagonal across the lines of the page.
I turned and walked back out of the garage apartment and stood in the middle of the backyard. A bird chirped from a tree nearby. A dog barked. A UPS truck lumbered by.
I took out my phone and called Mike.
“Hey, it's me,” I said when he answered. I turned back toward the garage. “Yeah. I found him.”