Collateral Damage by Austin Camacho Page A

for God’s sake. In Hannibal’s mind, this guy was turning out to be a combined cliché. Everything he saw was what he would expect to find in the home of a young gay computer geek.
    Upstairs was almost as infuriating. It was Hannibal’s experience that you learned about a person from the nature of the mess they left. Nothing is as individual as the type of disorder we each leave behind. But Oscar Peters left none. Empty garbage cans. A totally orderly bathroom which did, at least, reveal enough in the products he kept to confirm his lifestyle. Quite a variety, in fact, of scents, oils and lubricants. Hannibal could only imagine how they came into play duringcontact between two male bodies. Closing the medicine cabinet he found himself staring into his own shaded eyes.
    â€œBut that’s no reason to let a man die,” he told himself aloud.
    The other source of information Hannibal usually counted on was the clutter of paper most of us accumulate. A careful search yielded little there. Photo albums, address books, store receipts all told a person’s story. But Oscar lived a nearly paperless existence. Hannibal assumed all such records were in his personal computer in digital form, and he would not have nearly enough time to find them.
    The only papers in Oscar’s bedroom lay neatly in a folder in his side table. Most of its contents consisted of a series of airline ticket stubs. Canada, Australia, Japan, and Russia all in the last year. The man got around.
    The rest were personal letters, each folded and stored in the envelope it arrived in. The envelopes bore a return address in Heidelberg, Germany. Hannibal recognized the street because he grew up not far from it. He opened and read the most recent letter, which turned out to be from Oscar’s mother. Oscar’s parents, Foster and Emma Peters, had decided to remain in Germany when Foster retired from the Army. In her letter, Emma was trying to convince her son to visit them and patch up his differences with his father. Their disagreement apparently stemmed from Oscar’s disapproval of his father’s job as a Military Policeman.
    The guilt twisted Hannibal’s stomach harder. His own father had been an MP. When he was killed in Vietnam, Hannibal’s mother raised him there in her native Berlin. Sergeant Jones may even have served with Foster Peters.
    Then Hannibal’s brow knit and he returned quickly to the airline ticket stubs. Not one to Germany. London was the closest he got. All over the world, but not one visit to his parents. Kept away by a feud that, according to his mother, started when he was in high school, almost fifteen years ago. And now, she would have to be told her Oscar died without reconciling with his father. Just as Hannibal’s father died, a continent away, with no warning, no final hug, no good-bye.
    The stairs seemed so much longer on the way down. Cool fresh air washed his face when he opened the door, and Joan turned to him expectantly. He had nothing to offer her except an address he had written on his note pad.
    â€œOscar’s parents. You’ll want to notify them.”
    â€œYes, of course,” Joan said, accepting the slip of paper as if it was much heavier than it appeared. Then they both turned to face the street and stood side by side in the gathering silence. After a few moments the silence became as heavy as that slip of paper. Joan wrapped her arms around her designer jacket.
    â€œIt’s getting cold.”
    â€œYes, probably two hours old,” Hannibal said before he realized his mind was not on the same track as Joan’s. “Sorry, I guess that sounded pretty callous.”
    â€œNo,” Joan said with half a laugh. “I can’t think of anything else either.”
    Actually Hannibal couldn’t get the cupric smell of Oscar’s blood out of his mind, but he didn’t feel the need to share that with this woman who knew the deceased in