She could only see his left foot poking out from behind the desk. The acrid scent of blood hung in the air. She inched around to the other side of the room, where she couldn’t see the foot; it made her heart pound and her stomach lurch, being unable to look away from it in her line of sight.
Inspecting the room more closely this time, she wished she had just left. Sheaves of paper had been thrown across the room, all of the drawers hung open from a frenzied search of the desk and cabinets. The door to his wardrobe was ripped completely off, laying on the floor and splintered on the sides as if someone had trampled it in a rage.
What had not been searched had been destroyed. All of his precious souvenirs from a lifetime of travel sat broken into thousands of pieces on the floor. His degrees, hanging so meticulously straight on the walls just the day before, curled or had fallen out of their smashed frames. Wherever she turned, there was no room to step for some broken trinket.
Her eyes narrowed, caught by the tiny glass fragment that glinted in a bare section of floor. She took a large step to the clear area and knelt to examine it.
Her breath caught in her throat. It was the trunk of a tiny elephant she had given to him when he had taken her to India with him on a business trip. She looked around, a tight sorrow swelling under her heart. The rest of the elephant was lost in the wreck. Her head spun; it was suddenly harder to breathe. She got up, feeling as though she moved through honey rather than air.
Very slowly, she made her way to the back of the room, towards the left foot. She halted at the edge of the desk, she could hear her heart hammering vaguely somewhere in the distance. She took first one step sideways, then another, moving to the side of the desk as slowly as she could, knowing what she would find, but oddly needing to see it. The tightness in her chest grew more painful.
One more step.
She halted. Her breathing stopped.
Then she screamed.