At first glance, seen through the window, Hazard had assumed that Kleinheider and his killer had struggled in the office. Now, though, Hazard realized that couldn’t have been the case. Kleinheider had been wounded here, fatally, but there hadn’t been a struggle. At least, not the one Hazard had imagined. A long, dried streak of blood on the desk told part of the story: for some reason, Kleinheider had tried to pull himself upright. Maybe, in his confusion, he had thought there was a phone on the desk and he had planned on calling for help. He must have been partially successful, Hazard guessed, because at some point he adjusted his grip, reached across the desktop, and grabbed the back of the piece of furniture. Unfortunately, it was cheap and light, and his weight overbalanced it. Kleinheider fell, and the desk fell on top of him. He might have lived a little longer—more blood on the Bakelite suggested he had grabbed the trash can—but he must have died quickly. With the desk in the way, Hazard couldn’t judge the nature of the wound or wounds that had ended Kleinheider’s life, and he wasn’t about to move the furniture to find out. He dropped into a squat, considered everything from this new angle, and still saw nothing. Better to get out of here, call the Golden City police, and let them process the scene.

A part of Hazard was buzzing now, though. This was the first real break in the case. The first slip up. The first possible mistake. Kleinheider was dead, murdered in his own home, and while there may have been a number of reasons for someone to want to kill the Golden City man, Hazard thought the odds of a coincidence were astronomical. Someone had sold bees to the Keeper. Someone off the radar. And now a beekeeper, who had only recently listed his information publicly, had been murdered. The Keeper must have realized that Kleinheider was a loose end, and he had come back to take care of him.

Hazard was about to stand when he noticed a ball of paper in the far corner of the room. It looked like it had come from the Bakelite trash can, but that seemed impossible. It was off at an angle behind Kleinheider’s body; with Kleinheider in the way, it couldn’t have rolled there just by falling out of the trash can. The dead man would have had to knock it aside, bat it away with his hand. But that didn’t make any sense. Why bat it away? Why worry about a crumpled piece of paper when you were dying?

Because you were doing something important; Hazard’s brain was lighting up with cold luminescence. Because there was something important that you had to do—no, he corrected himself. Something important you had to find.

Drawing a pen from his pocket, Hazard used the tip to sift through the avalanche. It didn’t take him long; he found what he was looking for near Kleinheider’s hand, a bloody fingerprint marring the cardstock.