An odd musical note trilled, and then a distant pounding sound came.
Kristeva opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling for a moment. He furrowed his brow a little, then turned his head to the side. He was lying on his back on the bed; off to the side he saw that the closet was open, and when he looked down at himself, he noticed that he was wearing clothes different from the ones he'd had on...earlier? How much earlier?
He lifted his left wrist to look at his watch, and blinked when he saw that it was gone. Then thought to lift his right wrist instead, and there it was. Perhaps an hour had passed since he'd been down in the bathroom. Confused, he unlatched it and placed it back on his left wrist, then carefully pushed himself up and put his feet on the floor. He was almost afraid to stand, in case he'd hit his head on something on the way upstairs.
He stepped into the master bathroom long enough to notice his still-wet clothing in the hamper, along with a wet towel, which he could only assume he'd retrieved from downstairs...not that he recalled how any of these had ended up in here. Like the watch, he decided not to wonder about it too much, and headed downstairs. On the way down the musical trill sounded again--his doorbell, which he was so unused to hearing that it seemed foreign to him--and a second round of pounding, louder and more insistent than the first. He picked up his pace and made his way through the living room and to the entry vestibule. It was getting dark by now, so when he peered out the sidelight, he couldn't be positive who he was looking at, even though he had a good idea; it was just that he had no clue why he'd be there. Growing more perplexed by the minute, he unlocked and opened the door.
He had to step aside quickly to avoid being pushed as Devetko stepped in, shaking water off his umbrella as he shut it. "Don't you ever answer your phone?" he demanded, wiping his shoes and heading straight into the house without awaiting an answer.
Kristeva furrowed his brow again. "Must've shut it off." He shut the door and followed Devetko into the living room. "What are you doing here?" he asked, more mystified than offended.
Devetko set his umbrella on the coffeetable and looked left and right. "Judging by how you are at work, I assume you have some sort of station set up here, too?"
Kristeva gestured to the right. "Dining room."
Devetko turned to head that way, but paused and glanced around the room once again, at the hallways and landing and doors up above. "You live here by yourself?" he asked, frowning.
Kristeva almost grimaced now. "Why do people always ask me that--?"
Again he got no answer, and fumed to himself as he went in the direction Devetko had. The dining room could only be directly accessed through the kitchen, which one entered from a short hall at the back corner of the living room, and the few times he had visitors, they always got confused by this. He wasn't certain what made it so confusing, but apparently it was. He entered the kitchen, found it empty, and then went into the dining room, and found Devetko standing near the table, staring at the wall beside the computer. He stepped beside him and saw the odd look on his face.
"No wonder you have a reputation," Devetko said.
Kristeva shrugged. "Somebody had to look into all of it."
"Did they really?"
"You're really going to ask that now...?"
Devetko's own expression turned a bit sour when he must have found no retort for that, and he turned to the table instead and set a folder down. Kristeva recognized the case folder they'd been carrying around for what felt like forever by now but wasn't actually that long at all, and frowned. His frown grew when Devetko pulled out an unfamiliar photo and pushed it toward him. He bent down over it, but couldn't even tell what it was; it looked mostly like a dark background of lines.
"Maybe if you put it in a nice frame it could pass for a decent Modernist piece," he said.
Devetko rolled his eyes. "It's blown up," he said; then, when Kristeva just looked at him blankly, he sighed and pulled out something else. He set the childhood photo beside it, and Kristeva immediately noticed that the first image was merely a blown-up section of the second, what looked to be wooden slats. His frown started to turn into a scowl.
"Any reason you're still messing around with this photo when I told you it has nothing to do with anything--?"
"You say you don't remember when or where this photo was taken. You're sure this isn't your house?"
"Our house was considerably nicer than what looks like the inside of a barn, thank you very much."
"So it isn't a barn, either?"
"I can't imagine what I would've been doing inside a barn."
"I spent half the evening searching the Web for different types of wooden buildings and got nowhere. Which I pretty much expected. But I did notice something when I enhanced the photo and blew it up..."
"You took this thing to a fucking lab--?"
"I took this thing to some photo-editing software. It's really not rocket science to increase brightness and contrast and blow something up." He looked at Kristeva for a moment, then back down at the photos. "All right, so maybe for you it's rocket science, but nowadays anybody with a computer, a scanner, and a photo program can do it."
"You have a scanner?"
"It's hooked up to the printer." Devetko put the original photo back in the folder so abruptly that it looked like he wished to hurl the entire thing across the room. "If anyone is ever patient enough to get that dinosaur to work."
Kristeva's mouth twitched. "Careful, I might start liking you." He ignored the frown he got in return and nudged the photo back toward the folder. "That doesn't explain why you're still messing with this thing, after I told you not to."
"I spotted something in the background and decided to try enhancing it and blowing it up. It looks like some sort of tag or label, but I can read only part of it, and I'm not sure what it's for." He pulled something out of his coat pocket and set it atop the photo. Kristeva made a clucking noise.
"Is that a bar magnifier, or are you just happy..."
"Finish that sentence, and I'll shove it down your throat. You look at it and see what it says."
Kristeva bent down again and squinted through the acrylic. "You know your eyes are better than mine, right--?"
"It looks like the letters T-H-U."
"I'll take your word for it, I guess."
Devetko sighed through his nose. "What I'm getting at is, do those letters hold any significance?"
"How would I know? 'Thu' is really supposed to mean anything--?"
"Not Thu, idiot. Obviously part of the word is cut off."
"So you're asking me to brainstorm words that start with 'Thu.' Seriously?"
"Thursday," Devetko said. Kristeva just stared at him. "Thud," he said; then, "Thump, thumb, thug, thunk, thus, thunder--"
"Thunderhead," Kristeva said, then blinked.
Devetko stared at him now. "Thunderhead...? That holds some kind of significance--?"
"This is your experiment, not mine."
"So what's 'Thunderhead'--?"
"I want to say it's a horse name." Kristeva made a face. "I don't know why I want to say that, though."
"Horse name." He expected Devetko to give him a very strange look, but instead the other detective peered at the letters through the magnifier, then scrolled it over the rest of the image. "I guess that could make sense...if this building is a horse stable. You'd have some reason to be standing in a horse stable...?"
Kristeva put his hands down on the edge of the table, as the room seemed to shift just slightly and he thought he might fall over. He blinked the fogginess away from the edges of his vision. "We had horse stables on our property when I was growing up," he said.
Devetko looked up at him, brow furrowing. "Horse stables--? You had horses, then--?"
"They got rid of them when I was little. The stables were empty after that."
"Was one of them named Thunderhead?"
"I wouldn't know. I don't remember being a kid that well, so it must've been pretty uneventful."
"Do you at least remember why they got rid of them?"
"There were coyotes in the area, and they killed one of them off. Probably didn't want to deal with the hassle of taking care of the rest."
Devetko turned away and looked toward the newspaper clippings beside the computer again, and Kristeva knew exactly what he was thinking. When he turned back, Kristeva was ready to snap at him to let it drop, but all that he said was, "Interesting," and put the blown-up photo back in the folder and shut it.
"And what's that supposed to mean...?"
"Just that it seems like there's a reason you're the guy who investigates dead animals, is all."
"So you think a coyote killing is big news around here, then...?"
Devetko picked up the folder and tamped its contents into place. "I think even you don't believe it was a coyote killing. Oh, and to answer your earlier question..." He gestured at the ceiling and walls--"The fact that this is a family house"--then at Kristeva's left side--"and that you're wearing that...that's why people keep asking if you live here by yourself."
He exited the dining room. Kristeva stared after him as he disappeared into the kitchen, then thought to look at his left arm again. The watch hadn't mysteriously switched sides a second time, but he noticed something else he hadn't seen before. He lifted his left hand and stared mutely at the gold band on his left ring finger.
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