They keep bum­bling about the white tile. They think it’s a lead.

You tell them it’s ob­vi­ous. The killer had a sense of aes­thet­ics.

They don’t be­lieve you. Typ­i­cal. No-one be­lieves the boss.

If you were the killer, you’d cer­tainly have a sense of aes­thet­ics. Plac­ing a tile just so–not quite at a forty-five de­gree an­gle from the head it­self, not quite aligned with the wooden planks of the floor–that’s a ge­nius move.

Quite frankly, you’re jeal­ous.

Per­haps that’s why you took the case.

You say it’s bor­ing, but this case is an enigma. You like that word.

Enigma.

You can vaguely re­mem­ber learn­ing it for the first time. If you think about it too much, it starts to sound funny, and you’ve been think­ing about it for a few mo­ments now, so you gig­gle.

E. Ni. Gma.

You hope you’re wrong. You hope it is­n’t just an art­fully-minded killer.

But you know you are not wrong.

Though, it still is a good ques­tion: What kind of killer cares so much about aes­thet­ics?

Maybe you’re mak­ing an in­valid as­sump­tion.

Did the killer ac­tu­ally care?

If he did, would he have left the ugly blood smear on the cheek? Or the scuff marks on the floor where the tile scraped across it? Or po­si­tioned the lamp so ter­ri­bly?

No.

You fixed the lamp as soon as you en­tered the crime scene. You could­n’t help it.

It was point­ing in the ex­act op­po­site di­rec­tion as it ought to have. How can one get it so wrong?

Un­less they them­selves were not ar­tis­ti­cally minded. Un­less they were just fol­low­ing or­ders. Un­less they sim­ply made a mis­take, mis­un­der­stood their or­ders, mis­took the lam­p’s front for its back…

An as­sas­sin, then. Hired to kill, but or­dered to do so art­fully.

Enigma, in­deed.

You’re still not wrong. That just means there are more killers. One who did the killing. One who or­dered it.

One of them cares.

But at least this way it’s not bor­ing. It’s still an enigma.

You’re still star­ing at the drop of blood sit­ting on the tile. It’s not dry­ing. You don’t want it to. It’s beau­ti­ful.

You think you’ll have the tile framed. Hope­fully the drop of blood that ig­nores dry­ing will also ig­nore grav­ity, and you can hang the tile on the wall.

Of course it will. You want it to.

Lately, you al­ways get what you want.