First Look: All Souls Lost by Dan Moren – Cover + Excerpt

Massive thanks to Lisa over at JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc. and Dan for allowing me the opportunity to share the first look at Dan’s upcoming release, All Souls Lost!

Below, you will find the cover, links to pre-order/add to your GR shelf, info on the author, and a 5k word excerpt from All Souls Lost!

Blurb

Say hello to Mike Lucifer, Spiritual Consultant. He’s back in town to take care of business. Unfortunately, when business is good, things must be very, very bad.

After two years trying to run away from his past, Mike Lucifer’s back in his office less than ten minutes when a persistent young woman shows up asking for help: her boyfriend’s been possessed by a demon.

That’s exactly the kind of mess that drove him from his hometown of Boston to a sunny beach—and the bottom of a bottle—in the first place. But there are some problems that even booze can’t drown, and while Lucifer may be no hero, his dwindling bank account provides a thousand reasons to take the case.

No sooner is he back in the game then the complications and corpses start to add up. The boyfriend’s not possessed—he’s dead. The tech company where he worked is looking shadier by the second. And Lucifer’s client definitely knows more than she should…about everything. The deeper Lucifer digs, the more he wonders if whatever sinister entity lurks behind this case wants him to be the last to die…

Book Links (Pre-order + More) – Releases October 17th, 2023

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About the Author

Dan Moren is the author of the Galactic Cold War series of sci-fi espionage capers, including The Nova Incident, The Aleph Extraction, and The Bayern Agenda from Angry Robot Books, as well as The Caledonian Gambit from Talos Press. He’s represented by Joshua Bilmes of JABberwocky Literary Agency.

A former senior editor at Macworld, Dan’s writing has also appeared in the Boston Globe, Fast Company, Popular Science, Yahoo Tech, Tom’s Guide, Six Colors, The Magazine, and TidBITS, among other places.

Additionally, Dan is a prolific podcaster: he serves as the co-host of tech shows Clockwise and The Rebound, writes and hosts nerdy quiz show Inconceivable!, and is a frequent panelist on the Parsec-award-winning podcast The Incomparable.

Dan lives with his family in Somerville, Massachusetts, where he’s never far from a twenty-sided die.

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Excerpt

Chapter One

This fucking town.

I made it all the way to the door of my office on the unswept and mostly vacant third floor of the Barristers Hall before I remembered that my keys had been at the bottom of Boston Harbor for two years.

Not by accident: I’d hurled them there with great force and the loud and somewhat drunken—okay, hammered beyond belief—proclamation that I was never coming back.

Keeping promises clearly wasn’t my strong suit.

Two years of sunning myself on a beach later, I had, to my surprise, drank myself out of—and to my mild disappointment, outlived—my meager retirement fund. So I’d taken the cheapest flight I could find back to Boston, even though it had meant three layovers. My luggage had decided to stay in Omaha, and I couldn’t blame it.

The frosted-glass window of the door was cool against my forehead, though the arc of peeling gold letters had taken on an accusatory tone.

Lucifer & Grimes, Spiritual Consultants.

Don’t get all nostalgic, Lucifer. Just here to replenish the old coffers. In and out. No time to dredge up old memories.

The deep bone ache in my shoulder throbbed. Perched on tiptoes, I ran my fingers over the top of the lintel and came up with a small warren of dust bunnies and a tarnished key that had that greasy feeling of metal left too long. You remember to leave a spare after the fifth or sixth time you lock yourself out.

The lock was stubborn as ever, but I hadn’t forgotten the trick; I jiggled the key, and a moment later, the door swung open with a creak that would have brought a tear to the eye of even the most seasoned Foley artist.

Light filtered through the blinds, falling in bars across the desk, the large cabinet against one wall, and the threadbare velour sofa that had long ago faded from midnight blue to twilight. Nothing had moved.

Which was a little weird when, last you checked, your office was inhabited by a ghost. Ghosts delight in throwing things. Even the well-mannered ones.

“Irma?”

Nothing. Not so much as a breath of air across the back of my neck. The hairs on my arms lay stubbornly flat. My spine remained thoroughly unchilled. Not a sign that there’d ever been a ghost here, much less right now.

I’d like to tell you that I’m a hard-boiled sort, but well, you can already tell that’s bullshit. So I can admit, just between us, that there was a little hollow in my stomach at the thought that Irma had flown the coop, and not just because she was the best damn assistant I’d ever had.

They say everybody leaves eventually, but when they’d already been dead for sixty years it came as a bit more of a shock.

Two years’ worth of mail had amassed beneath the letter slot behind the door, including a series of increasingly serious-looking envelopes from the local power company. Six had FINAL WARNING stamped in big red letters, which kind of belied the point.

I shoved them out of the way with my foot and clicked the push-button light switch, but it looked like they’d followed through on their threat eventually. What was the world coming to when even the electric company wasn’t willing to give somebody a seventh chance?

With a sigh, I closed the door behind me, and found myself staring right at it.

A wretched old tan trench coat, streaked with dirt and other substances that were better not reflected upon. Above it hung a fedora, equally grimy, with sweat stains around the crown—dog-eared, moth-bitten, and something-chewed around the brim. I reached out and let my fingers brush the felt, the pile standing under my fingertips.

“You can’t be a real investigator without one,” said Richie, tweaking the brim; his grin shone from beneath its shadow, a waxing crescent moon. “Geez, you been doing this ten years—I thought you’d have known that.”

Stupid kid. The lump in my throat was probably just from the dust.

In and out, Lucifer.

I walked behind the big mahogany desk that’d been left by a previous owner, topped by the green-shaded lamp, the leather blotter I’d owned since college, and the ancient Bakelite rotary phone that didn’t work but looked classy as hell.

Middle drawer, left. I grabbed the brass pull and yanked.

Locked.

God. Damn. It.

What the hell? I didn’t even remember there being a key for this drawer. But, to be fair, I had been pretty drunk those last few days. I rifled through the rest of the desk with no luck, then turned my attention to the elephant in the room.

When its life had begun, probably back at the inception of the universe, it had been a library card catalog. If you, like me, are the type of person who still hasn’t quite mastered Google, then you might remember card catalogs: big wooden bastards with drawers full of cards listing books by title, author, subject, so on. Quaint, right?

Only this one’s a little different. Somewhere along the way, one of its owners had magicked up the thing: it’s warded, enchanted, dimensionally transcendental drawers, the whole nine yards. Nigh indestructible. Couldn’t get rid of it even if we’d tried.

So, of course, we’d used it as a filing cabinet: Bills. Receipts. A few special items that we’d collected along the way.

Keys.

If there was a key to my desk drawer, chances were I’d find it in the catalog. Once upon a time, I would have known exactly where. But the last two years had involved a lot of time on a beach, drinking margaritas and not thinking about filing.

Frankly, the beach was where I’d still be right now if I had my choice. But I wasn’t here to stay. I pointedly avoided making eye contact with the trench coat. I just needed enough cash to move on to the next place. I’d heard good things about Mexico. If nothing else, my money would probably go further there.

The good news was I had just the thing to raise some capital. Worth a pretty penny and—my lip twitched—pretty goddamned useless, despite its provenance. Part of me felt bad about selling a priceless antiquity, especially one that I’d been asked to look after, but on the other very convincing hand, it would buy a lot of margaritas.

Plus, it was long past time for this particular antiquity to be somebody else’s problem.

All I needed was to find the key for the drawer.

Problem is, magic can be a bit…unpredictable. The combination of enchantments and residual ethereal energy on the card catalog seemed to have given it a mind of its own, so finding exactly what you needed required a deft touch.

I pulled open one of the drawers at random, but all it held was a stack of invoices. The second drawer I tried contained a silver lighter, its case ornately tooled with a series of arcane patterns. Tempting as the oblivion it would provide might be, that wasn’t what I was looking for right now. My third try yielded a fifth of whiskey, mostly full.

I was about to slam the drawer shut when I thought better of it. No point wasting perfectly good booze—now there was an oblivion that I could get behind. I wiped the dust out of a mug, splashed in a dram, and looked around the office.

We’d done some good work here, Richie and me. Not that we were a household name or anything, but that was kind of a mark in our favor. You hear about the case of the werewolf serial killer? (The serial killer who targeted werewolves, I mean. Not the werewolf who was a serial killer.) No, you did not. And that’s because when the going gets weird, the weird gets us.

The weird’s always been here: Ghosts. Demons. The occasional vampire. (Not as common as you might think, but man, do they have great publicity.) Most people don’t see the weird, because, well, they’ve got enough going on as it is. They don’t have time for weird. And the more that modern life—technology, psychology, mixology—invades every single crevice of our existence, the less room there is for weird. The weird gets squeezed out. It can’t afford the neighborhood anymore.

Still, that’s the thing about the weird. The weird persists. It adapts. To paraphrase that guy in that movie, “Weird, uh, finds a way.” And as long as there’s weird, there’ll be a place for people like me—folks who have stared the weird right in the face and winked.

I know what you’re thinking: surefire route to popularity. And yet, strangely enough, I don’t get invited to a lot of parties.

So there I was, ten o’clock in the morning, with nothing but a mug of whiskey to my name. I raised the cup in salute.

“Here’s mud in your eye.” Mug to my lips, and I was already feeling it in my sinuses.

There was a knock at the door.

I wouldn’t say that I was a man with a lot of friends, but I knew a few people here and there. I’m not sure any of them would have helped me move a body, but some of them probably would have dumped a bucket of water on me if I’d been on fire. If it wasn’t too much trouble.

But I hadn’t told any of them that I was coming back. I hadn’t told anyone. Not my landlord, not the eccentric old fellow in the park who kept trouncing me in chess, not even my favorite bartender. My return was on a strictly need-to-know basis, and nobody did.

Well, whoever it was would probably just go away.

There was a second knock.

Sooner or later, anyway. No way they could know I was in here.

“Open up; I know you’re in there.”

It was a woman’s voice; young, by the sound of it, and with an insistent tone that suggested my whole “wait it out” strategy was ill-conceived.

I straightened the rumpled orange-and-yellow aloha shirt that was the only one I had been left with while my luggage took its little sojourn, and answered the door.

The woman had her hand up, as if about to knock again. I took her in: gangly-limbed and coltish, gold hoops glinting in her ears, fair-skinned, with a short blonde ’do that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 1930s.

“So, which one are you?” she said, nodding to the sign on the door.

Right. Probably should get that taken down.

“That one,” I said, rapping on it with a knuckle. “Mike Lucifer.” I caught myself too late—geez, I was outof practice, giving out my name at the drop of a hat. “Who wants to know? Are you a bill collector?”

“Do I look like a bill collector?”

“I don’t know. What’s a bill collector look like? Not like they’re walking around with name tags.”

“No, I’m not a bill collector.”

“Okey dokey, then.”

The door made it almost all the way closed before it rebounded off a black leather boot.

“You forgot something,” I said.

“Look, I’m not selling anything or giving out pamphlets about saving abandoned kittens. I’m here because I’m in trouble and I need your help.”

As pitches go, it was pretty flattering. But the ship had sailed on that line of work. And then hit an iceberg and sunk, all souls aboard lost.

“Sorry you came all the way here, then. We’re closed. Permanently. Best of luck!” I moved to close the door again, but her foot was getting an antsy look, like it was itching to play doorstop again.

Her lips had pressed into a hard line, her gray eyes flint chips. “In that case, can I talk to the other guy?”

Ah, Richie. The big softie. He’d have welcomed her in with a smile, gotten her a cup of coffee, and had her spilling her guts, not to mention opening her checkbook. A real people person, Richie Grimes.

And see where that got him?

“He’s not in.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“Lady, you don’t have that kind of time.”

“Didn’t anybody ever tell you you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar?”

“I’m not interested in flies. I told you: we’re out of business.” I made to close the door again, and sure, I felt a little bit guilty, but there was already a laundry list of things keeping me up at night, and this wouldn’t even make the top ten.

“I can pay.”

I was almost there. Another inch and that door would have been closed. Shut for good. The world on one side, me on the other—with the bottle of whiskey, to boot.

And, weighed against all of that, a beach in Mexico.

The breeze blew back in my face as I pulled the door open. “What kind of trouble, exactly?”

“I think my boyfriend is possessed.”

I could feel the spike in my blood pressure like I’d just downed a packet of instant ramen seasoning. A client? Here? Now? I’d been back for all of ten minutes. Business had never been this, well, convenient, even when we were still in it.

“This some sort of joke?” I stuck my head out. Maybe my landlord had seen me come in after all and decided to have some fun at my expense. “Cappetta put you up to this?” I could see it now: the second she’d handed me a check, he’d pop out and demand his back rent.

“Who? No. I just said, I want to hire you.”

“Because your boyfriend’s possessed.”

“Right.”

“And you decided to come here because…”

“Oh,” said the woman, stopping short. A puzzled look came into her eyes. “I overheard somebody…at work?” She didn’t sound too sure of it. “I can’t remember who it was. Something about you finding a missing inheritance, I think.” She gave the door a look up and down. “Whoever it was, they really described this place to a T. Looks just like it did in my head.”

Missing inheritance? Sure, the ghosts of rich assholes who tied up their estates with onerous conditions and tricks were always eager to relate how clever they’d been. We’d worked more than a few back in the day; could have been any of ’em. My memory isn’t what it used to be. Anyway, she looked, well, if not freaked out, then at least sincere in her concern.

I sucked in a deep breath. “Just so we’re clear, being an asshole isn’t necessarily a sign of possession, okay? You got anything concrete to go with that accusation? Is he coming home at weird hours, smelling like sulfur? Glowing red eyes? Leaving half-eaten squirrels all over the lawn? Murmuring in the Old Tongue?”

Her eyes flicked to one side. “Nothing like that. I just…I have a feeling.”

I rubbed my forehead. A feeling. “Look, I’m sorry if your boyfriend’s a dick. And…well…if it’s more than the usual brand of assholery, I’ve got a friend over at the police—I can give you her number. But ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about him’ doesn’t translate directly to ‘demonic possession.’”

She bit her bottom lip, and for a second, I worried that she was going to start sobbing on me, but she just seemed to be chewing it thoughtfully. She didn’t really seem like the crying type. “So, how would I know? Were you serious about the red eyes?”

Oh, good. An enthusiast. “Look, demonic possessions are pretty rare. Despite what horror movies might have you think, there aren’t that many demons just wandering around, hitching rides on people at random. You generally have to do something to invite one in. A ritual or something.” I tried to ignore the bottom falling out of my stomach. I’d had enough of goddamn rituals and demons. “Anyway. Your boyfriend—what’s his name?”

“Peter. Peter Wu.”

“And how did you two meet?” Everybody underestimates how much a part of the job is just making conversation, putting people at ease. Or so I’d heard.

“We work together, over at Paradigm—the tech company.”

“Right. Okay, Peter’s probably not possessed. And I wouldn’t want to take your money for nothing.” A voice in the back of my head had donned some steel-toed boots and was kicking me in the metaphorical shins for that, but there are a lot of charlatans in my line of work. You gotta draw the line somewhere, even when you’re in the red.

“Well, it would really ease my mind to know for sure.” She rummaged around in her bag, which looked like she might be able to produce a copy of the OED—abridged, to be fair—and pulled out a checkbook. “How’s a thousand to get started?”

I didn’t even have time to scrape my jaw up from the floor before she started writing. That was a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a spiritual consultant you’ve only just met.

Too much, if you ask me. I hadn’t come back to town to get my groove back, but she didn’t seem like she’d take no for an answer. And I could think of, oh, an even thousand reasons to take the gig. Not to mention that otherwise she’d just end up with some two-bit exorcist who would say a few words of mumbo jumbo and give her the all clear.

Plus, it was a thousand dollars. Not enough to live out the rest of my days in warmth and booze, but you had to start somewhere. “You got an ID to go with that?”

She produced a Massachusetts driver’s license and handed it over for me to peruse. Her, sure enough. Jenna Sparks. Address in a nice part of the North End. If this was check fraud, it was elaborate. I handed it back and swallowed any last objections.

“What’s Peter’s address?”

Now a small notebook and pen came out of the bag. She scribbled something on a page, tore it out, and handed it to me along with the check.

“Give me a call tomorrow,” I said. I ripped off a piece of the sheet and scrawled my cellphone number on it. “I’ll let you know what I’ve found. My fee’s five hundred dollars a day, plus expenses.”

She didn’t blink. “Seems fair.”

Damn it. Knew I should have asked for more.

She extended a hand and I reached out and shook it, the pale white of her skin a sharp contrast against my own dark brown, and felt the zip of a static shock arc between them. We both winced, and I wrung my hand out.

“Thanks for your time,” she said. She headed back down the hall.

I’d turned to go back in the office when her voice called out to me from the top of the stairs. “Sorry about Richie, by the way.”

The door swung closed behind me. Plopping down behind the desk again, I put the paper she’d given me and, more importantly, the check on the desk. Back to my unfinished business with the drawer. I could probably jimmy it open, if I still had a pry bar around here somewhere. Hell, maybe a letter opener would do. A letter opener? Who the hell used letter openers anymore? Had I ever had a letter ope—

I never told her his first name.

Huh. My brain rewound through the last ten minutes like it was an old VHS tape. Nope. It wasn’t on the door or on the directory in the lobby. I slouched in the old swivel chair and stared at the frosted glass of the door, the reversed sign staring back at me. The backward Grimes was making my palms itch; I looked elsewhere.

Well, she’d said someone had recommended us. Maybe they’d known Richie.

Maybe. Still, I couldn’t get rid of this unsettled feeling in my stomach that I’d missed something. Could be the whiskey fumes talking. Or could be there was more to this Jenna Sparks than met the eye. I glanced down at the thousand-dollar check, then at the address she’d given me: Peter Wu, 20 Howard St., Apt. 302, Somerville.

I rattled the middle desk drawer, more fidgeting than anything else, and found my finger tracing a scratch in the metal plate that held the drawer pull. Reaching back, I yanked on the blinds cord, letting some light into the office, then peered closer at the drawer plate.

Not just scratched. Warded.

Aw, come on. I was beginning to get right and truly cheesed off at me-from-two-years-back by this point. No amount of applied physics was going to get this drawer open—it’d take some serious magical mojo.

If I wanted to go back to my life of leisure, it looked like I was going to need to work for it.

Great. Just great. So much for in and out, with the ass end of this place in my rearview. I picked up the mug of whiskey, but I’d lost my appetite.

My eyes went back to the trench coat and fedora on the coatrack. If it were possible for a hat and a piece of outerwear to look accusing, they were doing a bang-up job.

I glanced at the slip of paper Jenna Sparks had given me. Nothing to say I couldn’t look into it. Just to make sure all the bases were covered.

“That’s why we make such a good team, Lucifer,” Richie said, slapping me on the shoulder. “I’ve got the people skills; you’ve got the conscience.”

Yeah, Richie. I had the conscience. That’s how I got you killed, remember?

I sure did.

Chapter Two

I still wasn’t sure what had brought Jenna Sparks to my door with such fortuitous timing, but at least her check cleared. I’m not sure who was happier about that: me or the teller at my bank, who pointed out all the overdraft fees this would cover.

Feeling newly flush, I hopped the Red Line to Davis, the folded paper from Jenna Sparks punching above its weight in my pocket. It wasn’t that I thought she was right about her boyfriend being possessed so much as the fact I’d told her I would look into it. Sure, there was something appealing about the idea of making a little money the good old-fashioned way, but, more importantly, I didn’t have any other way to make money.

Plus, I could still feel that zip of static electricity when we’d shaken hands, and it gave me goosebumps for some reason I didn’t entirely understand.

So, time to take a gander at this Peter Wu. Demonic possession wasn’t always as obvious as I’d made it out to be, but there were a few telltale signs that were pretty hard to hide if you knew what you were looking for. Free tip: don’t ever get to the point where you know what you’re looking for—clear indication your life has taken a wrong turn somewhere along the way.

Peter Wu’s apartment building, a new-looking four-story condo affair, was tucked off the bike path not far from Davis Square. The glass-lined front lobby was unlocked, and there was a panel of white chiclet buzzers next to name tags. Wu, 302. I did the old press-all-the-buttons-and-see-if-someone-is-lazy-enough-to-just-buzz-you-in gag, and a minute later, I was riding the elevator up to the third floor.

They were nice digs. One of those places with the electric wall sconces shaped like candles. Like a really nice dungeon.

Apartment 302 was a heavy wood door indistinguishable from all of the other doors. I lifted the chintzy knocker and rapped twice. I was going to need a decent cover here…

“What do you think?” said Richie, giving me a sidelong glance. “Reporter? Household maintenance specialists?”

“You know the rule: Let them do the heavy lifting. We just smile.”

Clearing my throat didn’t get rid of the lump there. I was starting to resent how much this felt like old times. Fine. I’d be out of here soon enough. Assuming I could figure out how to reassure Jenna Sparks that her boyfriend wasn’t possessed, un-ward the drawer, find a buyer for that piece of merchandise, and, man, this Peter Wu character was taking a long time to open his door.

I knocked again. Still no answer. So, Peter Wu was out—fine, sure. It was a weekday. People went to work on weekdays. What they didn’t do was loiter in the hallways of other people’s apartment buildings. So, when some formidable old biddy with permed, bluing hair in the apartment across the hall cracked open her door and peered out with a hairy eyeball, I put on the charm: gave her a smile and a wave—even tipped the brim of my cap. I got out the first syllable of Morning, ma’am before the door was slammed unceremoniously shut.

So much for civility.

Getting in the door wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t proud of the fact that I’d dug out my lockpicks before leaving the office—that was what I’d have done if I were, you know, still in the game. But there was no way that the lady across the hall wasn’t going to call the cops on a six-foot-tall Black man breaking into an apartment.

That really left only one option: I knocked on her door.

This time, it opened on the chain, giving me only the faintest sliver of a wrinkled face and one dark eye.

“Yes?” she said, her voice sharp.

“Morning, ma’am. I’m looking for your neighbor in 302, Peter Wu. Any chance you’ve seen him around recently?”

The eye narrowed. “Who are you?”

I had a pack of lies that I could have trotted out, but I was a little rusty, so I went with the one closest to the truth. “I’m a private investigator. His girlfriend’s been concerned about him.” Now would have been the right time to produce a business card from the box of five hundred I probably had stashed somewhere at the office.

She looked me up and down again, and I gave her my most honest smile, the one I practiced in the mirror.

“Haven’t seen him,” she said.

“Got it.” I looked at Wu’s door, then back at the old lady. “So. I’m going to break into that apartment now. And I expect you’ll be calling the police.”

The eye blinked, wavering between suspicion and confusion. “What?”

“I’m going to break in,” I said again, injecting an apologetic note into my voice. “It’s the job. But if you wouldn’t mind giving me, oh, a ten-minute head start?”

“I… What?”

“Just ten minutes to poke around. I promise I’m not there to rob the place or anything. Just trying to track him down.”

“But you can’t do that!”

“Legally? No. Physically? You’d be surprised how cheap most of these locks are. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know.” I tipped the brim of my cap at her again. “Have a good morning, ma’am.”

I left her staring as I turned back to Peter Wu’s door and pulled out my lockpicks. The good news was, as I’d thought, the building hadn’t sprung for high security, and I had it open in a matter of moments. I waved at the woman, whose jaw was still agape.

The door swung slowly closed behind me and I held my breath, listening. There wasn’t a sound from the rest of the apartment, which seemed to confirm the whole Peter-Wu-was-out theory, but the hairs on the back of my neck were up and at ’em. There’s a feeling when you know a place is empty, that eighth sense or whatever that tells you you’re alone, and I was very much not getting it.

My feet sunk into the thick pile of the carpet as I crept slowly down the hall. An open doorway to the right led to the living room with a big TV and a mess of boxes and cables, a cavalcade of lights happily blinking away.

To the left, there was a short hallway with more doors. The first opened on to a small bathroom in chrome and glass—a real bachelor aesthetic. I frowned, glancing over the accoutrements: towel, washcloth, toothbrush, electric razor. There was something…wrong about it, something bubbling just off the edge of my consciousness, like when you suddenly realize you left the oven on.

What was behind door number two? An empty bedroom that had been decked out as an office, with an impressive-looking desktop computer and a futon.

The last door was closed. The bedroom, I presumed, which struck me with an uncomfortable thought: what if Peter Wu were here but asleep? Not everybody was an ambitious before-noon riser like yours truly. I was going to end up in town a lot longer than I’d hoped if I was caught creeping around some guy’s apartment.

But in the frying pan for a penny, as my Aunt Helen used to say. Odd duck, Aunt Helen.

I hadn’t learned jack about Peter Wu yet, aside from the fact that he was a pretty tidy fellow and either liked sleeping in or getting out of the house. Not what you might call a comprehensive portrait of the man.

I turned the doorknob and slowly cracked the door open.

In front of me was a young man—Asian, dark hair, mid-twenties, dressed in a polo shirt and khakis—that my careful deduction concluded was Peter Wu. Also, he was dangling from a rope attached to a ceiling fan. And he was quite dead.

“Aw, crap.”