Hush, My Sweet Darling

Chapter 31: Of a Cesspool and a Septic Tank

Morning arrived with a grumbling sky and rippling dark clouds. Thick drops of water began to fall down in sheets, as the clouds above had failed to contain them any longer. The clock had just struck seven, and Kai was already at his office after visiting Desmond Lo's death scene.

He stood by his office's window with his hands inside his pockets. An unlit cigarette rested at the corner of his lips. His gaze deep and heavy as he watched the torrential rain pour down without mercy upon the heart of the city.

"There doesn't seem to be any signs of a struggle, Boss," Henry, who had also come in early that morning, remarked after studying the pictures of the scene on Kimmy's phone. She had managed to photograph the scene before they'd left.

They had just finished their ordered breakfast from a nearby cha chaan teng[1] and were now lounging on the couch inside Kai's office.

"Look closer... What do you see?" Kimmy asked, shoving the cell phone closer to Henry's face. Henry took the cell phone from her and furrowed his brows in scrutiny.

"Hmm... nothing much. It's a nice hotel bathroom. I mean, I've never seen a bathroom as nice as that, it's probably as big as my living room hehe..." Henry chuckled, showing Kimmy his white teeth and half-moon smiling eyes.

"Focus!" Kimmy slapped his back.

"I am focusing! Geez," Henry protested as he shifted his gaze back to the picture.

"It's clean and tidy. Desmond Lo's body's sitting upright in the bathtub. An empty glass of wine next to him. It looks like he was just trying to chill before he met his end," Henry answered seriously.

"This is why you flunked the detective exam. You lack an eye for detail," Kimmy jeered. She slouched more into the couch and closed her eyes to get some rest.

Kai took out his wood Zippo lighter from his pocket and lit his cigarette. White smoke rose from the corner of his lips, blurring his well-refined face. "Isn't the scene too clean for someone who's supposed to have had a heart attack?" he asked, tossing the lighter on his desk.

Leaning against his desk, he set his dark and deep-set eyes on Henry. "When someone has a heart attack, wouldn't they experience either mild discomfort or severe pain in their chest?" he asked but wasn't really expecting a response.  He placed one hand on his sternum. "Most people would clutch here," he continued, "and as they try to endure the pain, they would grab onto anything they could find, and in the process, they would likely trash or knock stuff over." 

He breathed in another lungful of smoke before flicking the tobacco ash in the ashtray. "If Desmond Lo had a heart attack, wouldn't he likely have..."

"—knocked over the wine glass beside him!" Henry exclaimed.

"Bingo." Kimmy clapped her hands lazily with her eyes still closed.

"Also, his hands were positioned neatly by his sides instead of his chest," Henry added, looking back at the picture.

"You can gather a lot of info from the disarray of a scene, or the lack of it. Just because a scene is clean doesn't mean it holds no clues," Kai explained. "There's another thing that's suspicious from the positioning of Desmond Lo's body. Can you tell me what it is?"

Henry pored over the picture once again. "He's... sitting straight," he evaluated out loud. 

After a while, he looked up at Kai with widened eyes. "His head is out of the water! There's no accidental water immersion! If he had a heart attack inside the tub, he would likely have slumped over! He wouldn't have sat straight like that!" he exclaimed, demonstrating the supposed position.