As it turns out, rain isn't all that useful when it comes to stain and smell removal.

The back of the cab smelled like a wet dog that had been dead for a day and a half. I felt a pang of sympathy for the cabbie that had the distinct misfortune of giving me a ride back to my bike.

I didn't feel so bad for making Amelia pay. In a roundabout way, she was responsible. If she hadn't showed up, I wouldn't have left my money in my office, and I wouldn't have needed a cab to begin with.

I could feel the driver's eyes shift back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror, no doubt wondering who the lunatic covered in blood and crap was. Every once and awhile, he puffed a cloud of cotton candy flavored nicotine into the air. The resulting scent reminded me of a kid getting sick after a carnival ride, but I didn't say a thing. In my book, that made us Even Steven.

Eons passed. I wondered if crawling back to my office on my hands and knees would've been faster.

When the cabbie finally pulled into the alleyway, I almost didn't wait for him to come to a complete stop before I threw myself out of the vehicle. He sped off without a tip, as happy to be rid of me as I was of him.

I felt a brief moment of panic. I'd never left my office door unattended before, and I couldn't find it. The expanse of brick wall on either side was seamless, no sign of a door anywhere.

I tried running my hands over the approximate area where I thought it was. My touch must have triggered something, because a section of wall swung outward, almost knocking me flat.

The office was just as I'd left it. I found the note with Victoria's address, the six hundred dollars, the lock of Miss White's hair, and various other sundries I'd been saving for a rainy day, no change of clothes though.

My bike was just where I left it, but it had acquired a marinade of what looked like chicken grease from the neighboring Chinese restaurant. Compared to Jeff's bodily fluids, chicken grease was nothing, except slippery.

My detour had wasted valuable time, and Miss White's ultimatum still loomed over my head like glimmering guillotine. Despite the cavernous emptiness that was my stomach and the lethargy settling on my mind, I decided to head out to South Park to see if I could find anything valuable in Victoria's home before nightfall. Even if I didn't find her, her bedroom would likely tell me everything I needed to know. Girls are like that.

When I got onto my bike, I felt the bulge of Jeff's wallet and phone against my waistband, I'd forgotten to give them to Amelia, so I put them in my backpack and started pedaling. My feet slipped off the pedals a few times, but my ability for nearly avoiding mishaps saved the day.

Victoria's address was that of an apartment complex, and I knew I would need a reason to get buzzed in. I headed to the closest pizza joint I could find. Northlake Tavern and Pizza. I ordered one with artichoke hearts and pepperoni, because why the heck not? I asked for a tote that the delivery boys use to keep the pizza warm and safe from Seattle's buckets of rain.

I pinky promised I'd bring it back, but the guy with Lucinda written on his name tag wanted twenty more dollars for insurance. Just for that, I'm keeping the tote, so he I get my money's worth.

With the pizza snug between my handlebars, I made my way to South Park as fast as my bike could take me.

I used that time to sort the information that Amelia had given me about Jeff, and tried to puzzle out why anyone would want to kill the guy. Besides his sandals.

Amelia gave me her version of Jeff Bracken, and I did my best to sift through the information with an unbiased view. Amelia made that difficult. The way she described him he may as well have been 3D printed from a men's catalogue.

He was the only son of a prominent family, the type of guy born with a silver spoon, but still tells everyone that we are all born with equal opportunity. His father, Walt Bracken specialized in international trade. His firm handled some of the biggest corporations in Seattle and their overseas relations. While Jeff's mother, Lydia Bracken, became something of an entrepreneur. Everything she touched turned to gold. To date, she's started and sold three separate independent companies, each bigger than the last.

The corpse with the hopelessly churning legs in CVS had been the sole living heir of a multimillion dollar fortune.

That left greed. Motive Number One. I'd need to look into any potential money hungry vultures lurking in the branches of the extended family tree.

The way Amelia told it, Jeff had been one of those one in a billion type of guys. Instead of resting on the laurels of his family, he'd decided from a young age he wanted to be a doctor. That decision came with its price. Jeff proved a natural in all fields medical and held a top spot throughout his medical school days and residency, which didn't make him popular in the cutthroat environment lovingly referred to as modern medicine.

Envy for that coveted number one spot. Motive Number Two. I'll probably need to go check the hospital where he works.

Jeff had an ex-girlfriend that Amelia delicately referred to as "straight-jacket crazy." There were numerous documented incidents of her showing up at the hospital where Jeff worked claiming she was pregnant and it was his fault. Amelia took particular offense because Rachel, Jeff's ex, made these wild claims while Jeff and Amelia were together.

Love or love's ugly cousin obsession. Motive Number Three. It didn't matter whether Jeff was faithful or not. Rachel could pose a problem.

The last and most likely motive came through Jeff's activist efforts. Around the time he and Amelia started dating, Jeff became active in local organizations dedicated to purifying the ocean and helping regulate against dumping into the aforementioned ocean. Jeff had enough money and clout to become a serious thorn in the side for even a big corporation. Hypothetically, if a power hungry Alchemist sold out and decided to work for a purely greed driven organization, the consequences would go far beyond a sandal wearing medical student.

Corruption. Motive Number Four. That would require some Elttaes footwork, so I decided that option was the least likely.

The rest I mentally filed away as Useless Jeff Trivia. This included tidbits about Jeff's pet peeves, inexplicable skill at all things athletic, eating habits, and how it was weird they decided to shop at CVS and instead of their normal grocery store, Whole Foods.

I listened to the deluge of information politely. While I would have liked to strangle Jeff myself, the guy was just so damn perfect. I don't think that's the type of support Amelia was looking for. Besides, I was enjoying being around her even if I felt like some weird voyeur living in his mom's basement and using their free time to sit outside her window in the rain watch Jeff and she's relationship through binoculars.

There was a Miles in the not too distant past that would have told Amelia to shove off, but I wasn't sure the new Miles was doing this out of the goodness of his heart either.. I stopped that train of thought before it could get going. I made it a habit to not question my own motives. That way lies madness.

I had enough madness on my plate. Exhibit A, cycling into the heart of South Park an hour before dark.

Run down homes being strangled out by dead and dying grass surrounded me. Along the sidewalk, trees had been planted and succinctly died. Their corpses stood like sentinels there to remind anyone entering to abandon all hope. The only signs of life were two kids playing on a lawn, and you could barely refer to that as life. They watched me with the glazed eyes of a fish long dead.

The address Miss White gave me was to a semi-respectable apartment complex which meant the rooms had four walls, a roof, and a door, and no one had set a fire to them in the last couple of years. A dingy purple sign the color of a bruise was staked into the ground with two purple rods. It read "South Park Manor." The name stemmed from a failed attempt by the city to make the area seem more friendly in the same way prisons are now called correctional facilities and loony bins are psychiatric hospitals.

The only entrance was a smudged glass door in a shady alcove flanked on either side by walls the color of watered down piss. On the left wall, there's dull metal box with three distinct columns of buttons. Each column represented a floor of the building. I pressed 314, one number away from Victoria's room.

"I've got a large artichoke and pepperoni for a Victoria," I said making it sound like I was reading the order off a slip of paper.

"Wrong room." A gravelly, masculine voice grumbled back.

"You sure? My slip reads Victoria. You don't sound like a Victoria, but I didn't want to assume."

A long pause. "Yeah, I'm sure," he said sidestepping my joke like an Olympic athlete.
Another long pause, "Try 313."

Victoria's actual address. I waited thirty seconds.

"Mister? They didn't answer."

"Listen buddy. I don't know what to tell ya. I didn't order any pizza, and I sure as hell ain't payin' for any pizza."
Buddy? Screw you buddy.

"Please just buzz me in and I'll knock on their door. If they don't answer, I'll give you the pizza. No charge. My boss is gonna wring my neck if I don't get these pizzas delivered," My boss being Miss White, but he didn't need to know that. TMI

No response. I had wasted my last ounce of good will with a gender assumption joke, but to be fair, Gravelly Voice hadn't given me much of a shot.

A buzzing sound barked out of the speaker, and a little click announced the disengaging of a lock.

I pressed the button to Room 314, "Thanks Buddy," I said putting a little oomph into the "B."

I ignored the state of disrepair of the lobby. It was the type of place a person could get diphtheria by breathing in too much of the air. I've had my vaccines, but better safe than sorry.

I bound up the brown carpeted stairs two at a time. I had a sneaking suspicion they hadn't always been brown.

The third floor hallway smelled like a clogged sink. Room 313 was easy enough to find. I jiggled the doorknob. Locked. I had something in my backpack for just such an occasion, but I couldn't have Gravelly Voice interrupting.

I rapped my knuckles against a door with a 3, a 1, and a 4 hanging upside down. Gravelly Voice looked about what I expected, by that I mean big, dumb, and stoned out of his mind. It wasn't a good look on anyone, but he wore it especially poorly.

He glared down at me with dilated pupils that gave him the look of Cro-Magnon subhuman. If the intercom had a camera, I would have offered him pizza sooner. I had a gut feeling Gravelly Voice hadn't seen his feet in quite some time. His pale, white belly could've given Pluto a run for its money as the new ninth planet of the solar system. In fact, I may have even felt a slight gravitational pull tugging on the pizza box.

"Who are you?" he grumbled. I clearly hadn't left a lasting impression.

"I'm the pizza guy. I brought your missing half," I said holding the pizza box underneath his nose.

His brows raised in confusion, "But I didn't order any pizza?"

"Sure you did. Literally a few seconds ago."

He gave me another long look and smiled, his mouth an unpleasant menagerie of browns and yellows.

"One sec, got my wallet round here somewhere," he said patting down his plaid boxers like they were a pair of jeans.

"Nah, don't worry about it buddy you already paid," I said placing the pizza box on top of his belly, "Keep the tip. Buy yourself something nice."

"Hey, hey. You're good people. You wanna bum a smoke?"

"I think you have me mistaken for someone else," I said starting to walk back the way I came, "Besides, I already had smoke for breakfast."

A burning sensation stung the back of my throat. Sarcasm was skirting the edge of a lie, but my Curse let it slide.

I waited to for the click of the door before I went back to 313. If anyone stumbled onto the floor while I did my business it might look problematic, but I would deal with that eventuality if it arose. For now, I had a door to break down.

I rummaged through my pack for a good minute before I found what I was looking for. It was so small that it had sunk to the back corner of the backpack. It looked like a typical three dollar tube of Krazy Glue, largely because, that's what it used to be. I'm using it as a handy dandy plastic explosive dispenser.

When business is slow, which is more often the case, I get to experimenting, and that's how I came across this little gem. Most of my concoctions all stem from one simple question. I wonder what I can do with (insert crazy magical component here).

This time it was the ashes of a fire elemental. All I did was whip her up something to make Seattle's constant drizzle a little more bearable for a being made of pure fire. She didn't have anything to pay me with, so she gave me a tablespoon of her ashes. Next best thing.

I used half to make a salve for extreme cases of frostbite, and used the rest in noblest pursuit of all, Curiosity. Thus my Exploxy was born with a dash of gunpowder and a generous helping of Krazy Glue.

I twisted off the cap and gave it a good whiff. It smelled like a campfire might smell in the middle of Home Depot. The pen-size tip fit inside the lock mechanism easily enough. I applied a slight amount of pressure trying to squeeze out a tiny globule, anything larger would blow the door off its hinges. You've only got one shot to make a first impression.

I could hear the sizzling of the Eploxy drying and remembered something, how loud this stuff is when it goes off. I scrabbled through my backpack looking for my earplugs.

A miniature explosion went off in my ears, and I felt a piece of scorched metal cut my forearm. I guess I could scratch blowing up a doorknob off my bucket list.

I ducked into the room and shut the door behind me. Hopefully, no one would be too bent out of shape by the gaping hole where a doorknob should have been.

I had about fifteen minutes before the Seattle P.D. arrested me for breaking and entering, emphasis on the breaking.