The Sin Collector by Jessica Fortunato Page A

words too late. My eyes were locked on Jimmy. A rope, the kind hikers used to scale hills and the sides of mountains was wrapped around his neck. He swung softly from the exposed rafter in his living room. On the floor beside him was a scrawled note, something about how he couldn’t take the stress at work. It would have looked simple; it would have never raised suspicions. There was a stool near where Jimmy was hanging and the note on the floor, no police jurisdiction in the country would have asked questions. That would have been the case if anyone but us had found him, but we had found him . The pressure in the room weighed on my chest, to the point of discomfort. The word on the tip of my tongue oozed from every fiber in the room. Murder. It was the darkest sin there was. Even unintentional murder left a heavy black feeling in its wake. It was as if the room was seeping the blackness of the sin itself.
     
    “Billy?”
     
    “I know Li, I can feel it. It’s like the walls are dripping with it.” His voice was barely a whisper and he looked at me with dark eyes.
     
    “ We should get out of here.” I was whispering too, as if there was anyone left to disturb. “No one would believe it wasn’t suicide. Billy we have to go.”
     
    I pulled his arm and he followed me back to the porch. He looked a bit dazed, and I realized his face was probably the same mask of horror that I was wearing. I shut the door and rubbed the knob off with my sweatshirt. Don’t leave prints, you watch enough TV to know that. I was on the last step when I stopped. The traffic light across the street had turned red. Billy looked up at me with confusion and anxiety.
     
    “The day Jimmy left the library. I was with the kids, so he left the message with George.” My thoughts were racing a mile a minute. “George said all Jimmy took with him was a big red folder. Did you see a red folder in there?”
     
    Billy’s eyes seemed to be pleading to leave the house as soon as possible.
     
    “I didn’t see a folder, but I wasn’t looking for one. Why does it matter?”
     
    Because , I was sure I was right now. “The only focus Jimmy had since you emailed him was a focus on Sin-Eaters. The folder could have had information in it. What if Jimmy found out something he wasn’t supposed to know?” I was already back in the living room before Billy processed my words and I felt him behind me. His eyes were hard now. They were alert, he knew I was right and he moved into the bedroom to search. We went through Jimmy’s entire house but there was no red folder. In fact, there wasn’t a notebook, or even a pad by the phone. I checked every room again and realized his laptop was gone too.
     
    “I’m going to check the garage.” Billy was out the back door quickly and I looked at Jimmy’s face one more time. He hadn’t deserved this.
     
    “LiLi I found it. Let’s go.”
     
    I was flying out the door now and was in the passenger seat of Billy’s SUV in two seconds. He was a millisecond behind me and we drove fast, back to my apartment.
     
    Billy had been staring at the piece of paper for three hours. Occasionally he would type words into a search engine he had designed and it would return no results. When that happened he would shift angrily in his chair and go back to staring at the piece of paper. He had found the small folded piece of paper on the floor of Jimmy’s car. Whoever had killed Jimmy had clearly missed it, or maybe they knew it didn’t matter and left it. Either way the dirty piece of paper was our only lead. All it contained was a name.
     
    Robert M. Doyle.
     
    I finished packing as the sun was rising. Billy was sitting in the same chair he’d been in all night. I showered and got dressed, comfortable clothes for a long flight and finally went to sit beside him. I touched his arm gently.
     
    “Billy, we’re going to be leaving in under twenty-four hours. You should get ready.” I felt like I was instructing a child.