She Smelled of Lilacs

She smelled of lilacs. Nick wasn’t sure if the scent had come from Brooke’s shampoo, perfume, her soap, or if it was just her natural scent. It was one of the last things he continued to love about his wife even after he had managed to get rid of her body without arousing any suspicion. When he arrived home the morning he had committed the deed, soon after he had rid the house of all evidence of any wrongdoing on his part, Nick scrubbed the walls and the carpets to rid the house of that fragrance. Every possible avenue that would lead investigators to Nick had been thoroughly eliminated.

One day later, patrol officers knocked on Nick’s front door responding to a noisy neighbor complaint. What they found was a mystery that they believed solved itself with the exception of one clue; a clue that they nor anyone but you, the reader, could have even called a clue. The officers in question are veteran Officer Jacobs and the rookie Officer Shepard.

“I don’t think anybody’s home,” Shepard said.

“That’s unlikely,” Jacobs responded, “The call came in less than 20 minutes ago.”

“Maybe they think we’ll go away if they keep quiet.”

“Ha, if only that were the case; the ironic thing being that that’s probably what we would have told them to do anyway.”

“I don’t want to come off sounding bored or anything,” Shepard continued as he pounded on the door again, “but is the job usually this quiet?”

“Why? Don’t tell me you’ve got an itchy trigger finger already.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s just feels like my first week has been more about wagging my finger at noisy neighbors than protecting people.”

“You’ll be fine kid. This neighborhood isn’t exactly known for its crime rate.”

Officer Shepard knocked one more time on the door and yelled out that it was the police.

“Looks like we just missed them somehow,” Jacobs commented, “Let’s go get some coffee.”

Shepard walked towards the car when he noticed a splatter of red on the wall through the window. Upon closer inspection he could just make out a hand on the floor just beyond the door that led to the study.

“Jacobs! Come here! I think there’s a body in there!”

“What are you talking about?” Jacobs ran up to the window and peeked where Shepard was pointing. “Oh, my God! Get your gun ready and let’s get this door opened.” The two officers kicked down the door, guns drawn and found that the house, other than Nick’s corpse, was empty.

“Hey, Jacobs, check this out,” Shepard said as he approached the body.

“What is it?”

“His fingers look like they’ve stiffened around the weapon. It looks like one of those letter openers.”

“I guess you can’t say your first week was totally uneventful. Hey, look at this on the desk.”

“Looks like a note.”

“Suicide note. And what looks like some sort of confession,” Jacobs added. Shepard looked over his partner’s shoulder and read the note to himself.

“Jesus… Killed his wife in cold blood and ended up killing himself out of guilt.”

“That’s what it looks like. Gruesome way to go though. I’ve never even heard of stabbing yourself to death except maybe in samurai movies. I’ll go call it in.”

“No, let me. Please. I need the fresh air anyway.”

Shepard rushed outside and nearly threw up into the hedges but instead took a few deep breaths before alerting dispatch of the corpse they had found.

“You okay, rookie?”

“Yeah, I’m okay. But I don’t think I’ll be transferring to homicide anytime soon.”

“I worked homicide a few years back. You never get used to it. There are a couple of things that were a little off though.”

“Like what?”

“The neighbors complained about the noise. I could have sworn it was just a domestic abuse call. And did you see the state of that office?”

“He was pretty messy.”

“Looked more like there was a struggle.”

“Maybe he stuck that letter opener in his chest and realized too late that he didn’t have to. I mean he did have a note and everything. Unless we don’t find the body, all the pieces seem to fit.”

“Maybe. Then there was the smell.”

“Yeah, I thought that too. I mean, I knew corpses would wreak but this one seemed different.”

“’Different’ is definitely the right word.”

The detectives from the homicide division arrived a few minutes later followed shortly by the ambulance to take away Nick’s lifeless corpse. While rookie Officer Shepard patted himself on the back for spotting the corpse on what would be a memorable first week at work, veteran Officer Jacobs finally got himself that cup of coffee. Jacobs sat in the passenger seat of the patrol car spending the rest of the day thinking about the peculiarities of that crime scene. He wondered why a man committing suicide would have to put up such a physical struggle to keep from killing himself and where such a strong scent of lilacs had come from.