Page 13 of The Proving Ground

“Told you,” Cisco said.

Our voices were muffled. I stepped into the house.

“Wait,” Cisco said. “What are we doing?”

“We’re going in,” I said. “We’re going to find out who’s dead.”

“You sure? Maybe we should just call the cops?”

“Don’t worry, we will.”

I stepped farther in and he followed. There was a dining room to the left with a table holding a desktop computer and a small printer. Documents in unkempt stacks surrounded it.

On the right was a small living room with a fireplace. A darkened hallway led to the back of the house, and Cisco went first, using his elbow to hit a wall switch that turned on the ceiling lights. He passedan archway on the left that led into the kitchen, and an open door on the right that led to a small bedroom. At the end of the hall was a doorway to a bathroom and an open door to a large bedroom. The primary. We entered, and it was dark because blackout curtains had been pulled across the windows. I could see the shape of someone sitting up in the bed, silhouetted against a blond-wood headboard.

“Hello?” I said.

No reply.

Cisco used his elbow again to turn on a ceiling light, this one above the bed. We then saw the body clearly. A man of about thirty with dark hair sitting up, lower body under the covers. He was obviously dead, eyes slitted. A dark liquid, now dried, had flowed from his nose and mouth onto a green T-shirt. The hands were above the covers and on his lap. His left hand held a cell phone.

I had never met Rikki Patel. He’d called me following the filing of the Tidalwaiv suit, and I sent Cisco to do the preliminary interview and judge whether he could be a credible witness. Once that was confirmed, I’d had one or two calls with him but kept my distance because of discovery concerns. I didn’t want to give Tidalwaiv a heads-up that I was recruiting him to testify until I had to submit my first list of witnesses.

“Is that Rikki Patel?” I asked.

“It’s him,” Cisco said.

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

Cisco stepped up to the bed table next to the body. He pulled out his phone, turned on the light, and focused it on the table, where there was an open amber-colored prescription bottle. He bent down close to it to try to read the label without touching it.

“OxyContin,” he said. “Prescribed by a Dr. Patel, DDS. A dentist. It’s empty.”

“His father?” I asked.

“Who knows? Patel is like the Indian version of Smith.”

Cisco turned off his light and pocketed his phone. He turned away from the body to me.

“I guess we call the cops now,” he said.

“Not yet,” I said. “You see any note?”

My mind was racing with thoughts about what Patel’s death meant to my case. I knew that his death was a tragedy for him and his loved ones, but I couldn’t help considering the impact on the upcoming trial.

“Uh, no note,” Cisco said. “Other than the one at the door. But he might’ve been texting somebody.”

I looked at the phone in the dead man’s hand. The screen was up in a position that suggested he’d been looking down at the device at the end.

“We have to look at that phone,” I said.

“Mick, you don’t want to fuck around with a possible crime scene,” Cisco said. “It’s pretty obvious what happened here, but you don’t want this to come back at you. We need to call the cops.”

“I told you, we will.”

“Don’t do this, Mick. Let’s just back the fuck out of here and call the cops.”