A brief sketch I wrote to practice suspense.

The first thing John noticed was the smell—the sharp, too-sweet scent of disinfectant flaring his nostrils as he pushed the door open. He fumbled with his flashlight and flicked the switch, a yellow cone cutting through the darkness to illuminate the dusty surroundings. Samuel Rosco, leading suspect in the “Kitchen Killer” serial murders, had last been seen entering this apartment the evening before. The room seemed deserted now, an unnerving silence hanging in the air, but the detective wasn’t taking any chances; his free hand hovered over his side holster. He passed the light around the room. Half-open boxes climbed the walls in haphazard stacks. Old clothes and food wrappers littered the floor. And, to John’s disquiet, on a wooden table pushed against the wall was a long kitchen knife, its blade stained a dark, discolored crimson.

John hunched over the knife, careful not to touch anything. The blood had long since dried, fused to the metal in hard clumps. His eye caught a series of spatters leading from the knife to the edge of the table; shining his flashlight at the floor beside his feet revealed additional red stains soaked into the carpet. The blood trailed deeper into the darkness of the apartment. John followed them, making his way delicately across the mess on the ground. The smell of disinfectant grew even stronger, but there was something else there too. A heavier, more primitive smell, so rancid that the vapors of disinfectant could just barely hold it back. It only grew worse as John approached the back of the room, where the corner of a large wooden box poked out from beneath a plastic tarp. Barely suppressing an urge to vomit, he reached for the tarp and threw it to the side. His eyes widened.