An officer handed him a plastic bag and he slipped the paper into it.
“So, let’s go into the house, but don’t touch anything else.” He pulled out a pair of flesh-colored latex gloves. “If you’ll give me your key, I’ll go first.”
Aud did as he requested. Once the door was open, Aud walked in and disarmed the alarm as Benet and Leo followed. There was glass all over the living room. Several rocks lay on the plush carpet and one on the sofa where Leo and Aud had made out a few nights before.
“We’ve got some rocks in here,” Benet shouted out the open door. “Need more evidence bags.”
A sad look darkened Aud’s handsome face as glass crunched beneath his feet. “Why would they do something like this?”
“Most likely trying to get your attention,” Benet replied.
“Maybe they’re hoping you’ll figure out who it is,” Leo said, wishing he was being at least a little bit helpful.
“Then why not walk into the gallery and announce their intentions?” Aud muttered as he walked beyond the field of glass and headed for the kitchen.
Leo continued to follow. “If it is Randal, he may feel he’s already done that and you rejected him.”
“And breaking into my house is going to help me have good feelings toward him?” Aud looked over the undisturbed kitchen, and his face relaxed. He glanced at Benet trailing along behind them. “Everything looks fine in here.”
“Mr. Sorenson, you need to realize that most stalkers don’t think the same way normal people think. This man’s a predator.”
Aud shook his head. “That’s not what I needed to hear.” He turned and walked out of the kitchen.
The bathroom was also clean, but the bedroom had been tossed. The drawers were pulled out. Some of them had clothes hanging out of them. Two drawers lay on the floor. The lamp on the nightstand had been knocked over, and the drawer hung most of the way out. Aud frowned and hugged himself.
Leo couldn’t resist any longer. He put his hand on Aud’s shoulder. Aud briefly squeezed Leo’s fingers. Then he squared his shoulders and looked at Benet, who stood quietly in the doorway.
“It might take a while to figure out if anything’s missing here,” Aud said, his voice tight and angry.
“If you want to go through it now, we can wait.” The detective looked back over his shoulder as the sounds of other people walking through the glass in the living room reached them. “I’ll have my guys bag up the rocks and see about collecting the glass. If we’re lucky, the guy cut himself coming through the window and left some DNA behind.”
“That would be nice,” Aud muttered. “It’d be even nicer if he cut himself really badly and is bleeding out in the alley, but I think we would’ve noticed that much blood.”
Leo squeezed Aud’s shoulder. “Can I help in here?”
Aud glanced around at the mess and sighed. “I don’t know. I never realized I had so much until seeing it scattered like this. I feel so violated. Right now it’s tempting to just toss it all in garbage bags and put it out on the curb. I can buy more.”
A thought of what he would do if it were him passed through Leo’s brain. I can’t afford to just throw out all my clothes and start fresh. Even with buying Walmart brand stuff, that would be too much. Things like this make me realize that Aud lives in a world I have no real experience with.
“If you think there might be any evidence on anything, don’t throw it away,” Benet said. “Right now we need all the evidence we can get.”
Aud sighed. “Then should I wait to go through things until you have a forensics team in here? Isn’t that what they do on TV?”
Benet shook his head. “Right now this is nothing more than a breaking and entering slash stalking case. We don’t call in forensics unless there’s a murder or kidnapping.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t escalate to that,” Aud muttered as he stepped away from Leo toward the closest upset drawer. He sighed again. “If nothing else, I want all this stuff washed. Leo, can you run into the kitchen? Under the sink next to the garbage can, there’s a box of garbage bags. That would be the easiest way to do this. I just hope I can spot something missing.”
“Okay.” Leo walked out of the room. He tried not to stare at the police gathering up pieces of glass from the carpet and putting them into a plastic box.
When he got back to the bedroom, Aud was frowning harder. “Well, I figured out one thing that’s missing. My black jockstrap.”
Leo pulled out a garbage bag. “You’ve got a black jock?”
“Yep. And every time Randal saw me in it at the gym, he had to make a comment about how great it looked on me.”
“So that clinches it. Randal is the one who broke in.” Leo glanced at Detective Benet.