Can It!

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The following was written for a friendly short story challenge posed in a writing discord server wherein participants were asked to write a story using the following image as inspiration.

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SJ Shoemaker
Word Count: 729
1/25/2023

“What do we got?” Callum ducked his head to fit through the doorway to the small office. The floors were carpeted. Green walls. Bookshelves took up the entire eastern wall.

“You, of all people, should recognize a corpse,” the dark-haired man jested from the corner of the room. He lined up his shot, and the camera clicked. His target: the victim. In the center of the room sat a red cushioned chair facing a heavy wooden desk. A woman sat motionless in the chair, back to Callum. From where he stood, she looked perfectly fine—still among the living, apart from the lack of motion.

His partner pressed into the room, digital tablet in hand. She removed a scanner from the tablet’s port and placed it into her pouch without ever looking away from her screen. Instinct was enough to tell her where she was going and who she was addressing. She’d make a fine detective yet. “Female victim. Age 34. Name of Ingrid Tamm.”

“Tamm? Shit.”

“Yep.”

“She’s the daughter?”

“Right again. Wanna guess who owns the building?”

“Papa kingpin.”

“3 for 3.”

Callum stepped further in and around the chair. He needed an assessment. Crimson enveloped her pupils, bloodshot stains as red as a withered rose. Even now, she stared into the middle distance. Her unblinking eyes trying to tell him something, but what? Steams of blood encrusted her lips. Their destination, random pockets and folds in her golden dress. Unlike her lips, these pools hadn’t dried. The murder was recent, an hour ago, maybe.

“What happened to you, honey?” He whispered.

“Death,” another barb from the comedian in the corner.

“Can it, Jasper! I’ve no time today.” Callum turned to Zara. But she didn’t give him the dignity to form the question on his lips.

“Tox scans were clean, Cal. She wasn’t poisoned.”

“So something external,” he twisted on his narrow heels to evaluate the desk. There was a pipe beside an ashtray. He reached a fingertip inside the chamber, but it was cold to the touch. “This is the father’s pipe, I presume.”

“Scan shows his prints on it and everything else.”

“Top suspect.”

“Like they’d ever let you question him.”

Photographs clicked away from the room’s edge “Hey, guys. If you–” 

“Jasper!”

“Can it, I know, but–”

“Can it! Nothing but baked beans and creamed corn from you.” The desktop held little else. A leather topper, used exclusively by the wealthy elite too cowardly to contemplate a scratched surface, consumed the massive desk. Nothing to go off of… except. He leaned closer. At nearly the dead center of the desk, the leather cover bore a strange indentation. Six radial lines from an invisible circle the size of a drinking glass. Whatever was there, no longer was. And whatever it was, was heavy to leave a lasting impression like that. He traced his finger around the circle, ash from the pipe smudging the black surface as he went.

“Something was placed here,” Callum called over his shoulder.

Zara glanced up from her tablet, scanning the room’s corners as she went, “I could take a guess.”

“What?” A thud sounded next to him, and he felt the pain before he spied the culprit. He yanked his finger out from under the marble stand now placed on the circle. Heavy indeed. Jasper adjusted it by millimeters until it aligned perfectly with the indentation.

“Warn me next time,” Callum cursed, still shaking away the pain. 

“You said, can it,” Jasper smiled, causing Zara to laugh.

The marble stand was flat across the top, it bore grooves and scratched deep into its ancient surface. Callum hunched his back until his eyes nearly touched the marble. He wasn’t willing to reach out and risk another hand injury. From across the desk, Jasper mimicked the stance.

“What do you see?”

“See… hmm.” With two lanky steps, Callum circled the desk and pushed Jasper aside. Again, he hunched over but looked past the marble surface this time.

“Zara, you seeing this?”

“Yeah. And apparently, so did she.”

Beyond him sat Ingrid, her eyes perfectly level with the stand. With Callum’s.

“She was staring at something when she died. Something set right here, on this stand. Think that’s what did her in?”

“Cal, you can’t die just from looking at something.”

Callum stretched back to his normal height and shrugged. “She wasn’t poisoned.”