The absence of evidence cannot always be taken as evidence of absence.

One of his trainers at the Academy taught him that. Just because a suspect’s prints aren’t on the murder weapon doesn’t mean he didn’t touch it. Just because a witness lacks a credible alibi doesn’t mean she was doing anything other than what she claimed. Proof needs something more positive: a suspect’s alibi for the time of the murder, someone who saw the witness at the scene instead of wherever she said she was. Absence of evidence may be thought provoking, but it is not evidence of absence.

Except in this case. However he looked at it, the absence of evidence was damning. Even when they tried to be discrete, Samantha had always left inadvertent traces of herself in his life. A half-eaten danish in his car. Marks on his back, his arms, his shoulders.  Messages on his cell-phone. Scraps of evidence that soothed his investigator’s heart and proved that she was really there. Really his.

Now her unconscious traces were left for someone else, with someone else. He’d stopped at Martin’s apartment yesterday with a manufactured excuse and seen it for himself. His own apartment was empty of her and her things, but Martin’s home was full of her.

Two mugs, two plates, two bowls, sitting side by side on the draining rack.

A woman’s running shoes, kicked carelessly under the sofa.

The faint smell of orange peel in the air. Samantha loved oranges.

He made his excuses and bolted to his own home. His empty home. He had a picture of her, taken years ago, but that was all. Nothing else. She’d never even set foot here, though he could imagine her around every corner. His coffee mug sat alone in the sink. There were shoes under the sofa, but they were his shoes. The only thing he could smell was the lingering scent of charcoal from last night’s burned potatoes.

He wanted to believe that she still wanted him, but there was no real evidence to support it. A few sympathetic looks, a little tension, a little strain around the eyes when he was in the room.  That was all. At the end of the day, she still went home with Martin, while he came here.

Alone.

Empty.

Absence of evidence. Evidence of absence.

Jack sat alone in the darkness and stared blankly into space.

End.