Snapshot

It felt somehow wrong to think of a cop dying in the Snapshot. This place wasn’t truly real. It shouldn’t, therefore, have such real consequences. As Chaz always said, things you did in the Snapshot didn’t really matter. . . .

“Locked tight,” Chaz said, testing the chains on the front doors. Perhaps the killer had a key, but Davis suspected not. The front entrance was far too prominent; you couldn’t sneak in bodies this way, even at night, without risking someone seeing you. So where?

He led the way across dead grass that hadn’t been watered in years, sliding around the school to some kind of shipping entrance at the back, up a short ramp. Yeah, this was better. You could pull a car in here silently and unload.

He tried the door at the top of the ramp, and found it unlocked. He nodded to Chaz and both stepped inside, handguns pointed into the shadows.

“That’s a nice gun,” Chaz noted softly. “Taurus PT-92, right? Flashy. Pearl grip, even. Not what I’d have expected for you.”

Davis didn’t reply. Heart beating quickly, finger deliberately not on the trigger, he led the way through the echoing halls of the school. The debris here was somehow more personal than that back at the apartment building. Old discarded notebooks. Pencils with the tips broken off. A ball cap, a deflated soccer ball. This had been a lively place up until a few years ago.

That only made it feel creepier now. Haunted. Unlike the apartment building, which had been gutted, this place had been abandoned in haste. Nobody had wanted to be here—not students, administrators, or teachers.

They passed an old trophy case, the glass shattered, dust covering the plaques. Graffiti tags covered the walls. By now it was almost 16:00, and the sunlight sneaked into the place through boarded windows, reflecting off old tile floors and casting shadows. But it was enough for Davis to make out a sign on the wall without needing his flashlight. He waved his gun toward it, then pointed. Looked like the school had its own pool. An indoor one, near the gym.

Davis found himself sweating as they crept along the corridor. He jumped as a feral cat scurried out of one hall and down another one, into darkness. He was so startled, he nearly unloaded his gun at the thing.

You’re going to have to confront this, he thought, heart racing as they moved inevitably forward. It had been years since he’d been in a position like this, but the memories came back, sharp like broken glass. A dark building. Calls for backup, and . . .

And Davis, useless.

Is this why you insisted on watching for cases like this? So you could prove to yourself you could do it? That you could pull the trigger?

He still let Chaz go first when they reached the pool. He stood outside the door—breathing hard, wiping his brow with a trembling hand—before finally forcing himself in through the door behind his partner. He’d waited too long, he knew. If there had been danger inside, Chaz would have been in trouble, alone.

There was no danger. There wasn’t anything. They needed the flashlights again, but the pool was empty—not even any water. Air feels humid, Davis thought, forcing his breathing back under control.

“Huh,” Chaz said, hands on hips. “Were we wrong?”

Davis waited until his trembling subsided, though he couldn’t completely banish his tension—the pressure on his chest that made him feel like running away as fast as he could go. He pointed his light toward the locker rooms, then started that way. He peeked inside and found a table had been pulled in there, set with some cups and fast-food wrappers. Seemed newer than the rest of the school’s debris.

“Careful,” Davis said. “Someone has been here.” He stopped in the doorway into the locker rooms until Chaz nudged him from behind; then he forced himself farther in, gun in one hand, flashlight in the other.

There was a place for demeaning group showers, and here someone had worked with a board and some caulk to turn it into a kind of tub. Yeah, this was the killer’s hideout. He was preparing to soak some more bodies. The improvised tub was full of water, maybe four feet high, but there weren’t any bodies in it yet. Perhaps the Photographer was seeing if his handiwork would hold.

We might be in time, then! Davis thought. He might not have killed the next group.

He immediately felt stupid. This was a Snapshot of life from ten days ago. Still, surely they could do some good, help catch the one doing this.

“Hey,” Chaz said. “Check this.”

Davis turned away from the showers, to where Chaz was shining his phone’s light on a door that was shut tight, with a chair wedged under it and some rope tying the knob to a post beside the wall.

Davis hastened over, his tension rising again. That looked like an improvised lock to keep someone in. He nodded, and Chaz unwedged the door, then untied the rope. No sounds came from within. They shared a look, and then Davis let Chaz ease open the door, gun pointed downward so as to not accidently shoot any captives. It smelled foul inside, and Davis gagged.

“Bodies,” Chaz said with a grunt, using his phone for light. “Damn, it smells terrible in here.” He stepped forward.

His shoe crunched.

Chaz jumped backward, then the two leaned down. The floor in here was littered with insect carcasses.

Bees, Davis thought as Chaz opened the door farther. His flashlight highlighted the slumped corpses of people on the floor, surrounded by dead insects. The stench was overwhelming, and Davis had to breathe through his mouth.

Why bees? Davis thought as he inched into the room, brushing the insect carcasses from in front of him. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of dead bees in here.

It started to make sense. His tension melted away before the academic facts, and he stood up in the dark room. It had been a storage room for old sports equipment. There were six people inside, all dead now.