Misgivings: Day 4

Word Count: 24,033

Summary of Events:

Going to the mobile home, Greyson figured out which key worked on the door he'd been shown in through by guessing — especially upon realising that both doors exited out the same side of the building, making their 'front' and 'back' designations perplexing — and went around testing light switches not so much to ensure the power was on as to determine which switch controlled which light fixture, and whether he would need to add lightbulbs to the shopping list he was making. He found, as he went around, quite a few left-behind possessions of the previous occupant, including toothpaste, pills, clothes, and garbage that included a newspaper from March four years prior which included an article on a house fire Greyson remembered having responded to…

Excerpt of the Day;

The fire had been in a new home that had only just been completed, but not been moved into, and had been caused by a failure in the electrical panel box owing to improper connection of something by the electrician, who, if Greyson recalled, might’ve been forced out of business by the error.

Nevertheless, the most important thing about the newspaper was the fact that it was dated to just four years ago. Mr. Fransbergen had said the last person to live in the place had been his own son — whom Greyson wasn’t sure he would’ve met, as neither Ayers nor the stocky man bore a resemblance to Mr. Fransbergen, especially when it came to their eyes, as neither man had blue eyes like Mr. Fransbergen — and his ex-wife over ten years ago.

If this place had been empty for that long, then how was the newspaper explained? It would be odd of someone to walk into an unused house just to throw a newspaper and its related flyers into the garbage.

Additionally, Mr. Fransbergen had said that his son had moved back into the house with him, and moving, to Greyson, involved taking all of one’s possessions along. Even if he’d just moved across the yard, why wouldn’t Mr. Fransbergen’s son have taken all of his clothes with him? Greyson doubted he would’ve come out of the divorce with a windfall, nor did he see why a chicken farmer would randomly go out and buy a new wardrobe of clothes after a divorce, but wouldn’t leave his food behind.

Uneasily, Greyson wondered if there hadn’t been someone else whom Mr. Fransbergen had simply neglected to mention — as even if Mr. Fransbergen was visibly old with his grey hair and wrinkles, Greyson had seen in his eyes that the mind within the aged body was as sharp as a freshly-sharpened knife. He wouldn’t have forgotten about a more recent resident. He would simply have withheld that information.

But why? That was the part that made Greyson feel uneasy. Mr. Fransbergen was a shifty enough character that Greyson wouldn’t necessarily be inclined to put the idea of murder past him.

In all of his inspecting of the place, however, there had been no signs of bloodstains or even the wiping up of bloodstains, nor were there any odours, nor were there really any places he hadn’t looked in, around, or under that a human body in whole or in part would fit in.

Of course, that didn’t mean that the man hadn’t been murdered elsewhere, which would fit with why his clothes were left behind, but the food had been claimed by Mr. Fransbergen and the men of his household, while any documents that revealed the name of the man who’d last lived in the place were also missing, undoubtedly having been destroyed to protect themselves.

Thus, Greyson wasn’t really walking around a crime scene, but there was the possibility that he was destroying evidence, and there was also the possibility that he was simply being suspicious and paranoid.