4
Yellow and black and striped – angry wasp colors – from one hedge to the other, blocking off the driveway, only a glimpse of the house beyond.
CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER.
A cop was posted in front of the tape, screwing his eyes to stare at the approaching cars.
The chief and Jack Finney pulled up ahead, lowering a window to speak to the cop. He nodded, unhooking one side of the tape, letting it fly free, slithering against the road before he rolled it up.
Jack stuck his arm out the open window, beckoned them to follow.
Luke did, releasing the handbrake and rolling forward. Silent. Silent the whole way. Jet had ridden with him from the hospital, couldn’t face the way Mom wept and the way Dad stared, carrying a guilt that wasn’t his. Luke had never been the better option, but today he was, and Jet met his silence with her own. He could learn to breathe quieter, though.
Their parents were following behind, too close, pulling up and parking beside them. A driveway this big and there was hardly any space, white vans and dark vans and police squad cars all boxed around Jet’s blue truck, trapping it there.
The red-and-white front door was wide open, a rectangular mouth mid- scream, burping human shapes in white plastic suits, blue gloves and blue masks and blue shoe coverings, only a band of flesh around their eyes to prove they were people at all. In and out. Paper and plastic bags marked up with thick pen that Jet couldn’t read from here, passing them over to disembodied gloved hands waiting inside the vans.
Jack Finney stepped out of the squad car, so Jet did the same, avoiding her parents’ eyes as they emerged too, the twin slams of the car doors burrowing into her chest. She looked ahead. The house Dad had built with love and hard work and a fuck load of money, and now another daughter
40
had died here too. Could it ever be a home again, now that it had been a murder scene?
Jack sidestepped the narrow pathways between vehicles, walking back over to Jet. She pulled the toggle tighter on her gray sweatpants, the cuffs rolled up but still dragging on the ground. Luke’s. The spare gym stuff he kept in his car: sweatpants and a hoodie that swamped Jet. Smelled a little stale too. ‘The crime scene techs will be finished soon,’ Jack said, looking down the line of Masons all the way to Luke, back to Jet. ‘About an hour or so.
Then we can get the cleaners in. They’ve already been called, waiting down the street until we’re ready. Get your house back.’ Mom sniffed, her eyes red raw.
Jack looked at her, opened his mouth, but nothing came out, just a glimpse of his bottom teeth. He turned back to Jet. ‘You said you wanted to see it? You sure?’ Jet nodded, jaw tight and creaking. ‘It’s …’ Jack hesitated. ‘There’s a lot of blood. Even some of the officers can’t –’ ‘– I want to see it,’ Jet said, rolling up her sleeves to uncover her hands. ‘Please.’ Someone was walking over to them. A person with a face not made of white-and-blue plastic. Detective Ecker, already here, pulling off his shoe coverings. ‘Jet. They said you wanted to see the scene before it’s cleared. I really would advise against that, but if you want, I can take you around now.’ ‘I want Billy’s da– Sergeant Finney to,’ Jet said, standing taller, still the shortest person here. Jack knew her and she knew him, so maybe he’d tell her more than this stranger would, protocol forgotten because he’d known her since she was in diapers. He couldn’t even escape the crime scene when he went home, his front windows facing it. Maybe that’s why he looked so tired.
The detective studied Jack for a moment. ‘OK, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘No need for full PPE, everything’s bagged. They’re just taking the last photos now. Shoe coverings only. And don’t touch anything until the scene is released.’ ‘Detective.’ Jack bowed his head once. ‘Come on, Jet.’
41
‘Luke.’ Detective Ecker turned to her brother. ‘I know you must be tired, but I didn’t get a chance to take your statement at the hospital. Can I talk to you now?’ Luke coughed but didn’t catch it, something Mom hated. ‘Sure,’ he said, burying his hands in his pockets.
Jet followed Jack, winding around the vans and cars, up to the front door.
The tallest trees in the backyard swayed over the house, leaves jeweled in amber and ruby, the colors that brought the tourists and leaf-peepers to Vermont every year. Forests of fire. And Jet’s final time seeing them. ‘Here.’ Jack pulled out two fresh shoe coverings and Jet slipped them on over Luke’s gym socks, staring back at the pumpkin on the front step – a mean grin. Jet lost the staring contest, eyes trailing to the front door, to the splintered wood around the lock, catching on the plastic box mounted above. ‘The doorbell cam,’ she said suddenly, grabbing Jack’s arm. ‘Did they check? Does it show who –’ Jack shook his head, cutting her off. ‘We’ve checked. It doesn’t show.
Just you coming home, then later Billy finding you, kicking the door in.
Whoever attacked you, they got in the house another way. Come on.’ Jack stepped over the threshold and Jet followed. It didn’t smell any different, still smelled like home. She thought it wouldn’t. That it would smell like decay and dead things somehow. But there wasn’t a body rotting inside. Nope, she was rotting right here, on the Welcome mat.
A white-and-blue man passed them in the hall, out of place against the Moroccan runner rug. Jack veered left, through the door into the living room. Jet followed, her covered feet shushing against the pale polished oak.
She looked down to take a breath, before entering the room, before seeing … everything. But she saw something worse instead.
A trail of blood. Shaped into little paw prints.
Jet gasped, leaned back against the door to catch herself. ‘Reggie?’ she said, her heart crawling into her throat. ‘No. Is he OK? Is he –’ ‘He’s fine.’ Jack steadied her, arm under her elbow. ‘The dog is fine.’ Jet still couldn’t swallow, not past her roving heart. ‘Billy brought him in the ambulance, refused to leave him behind,’ Jack said. ‘The dog is with your sister-in-law now, at their house. He’s fine.’ Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure you want to see this?’
42
She had to. How could she work out who had killed her if she couldn’t even stomach seeing the place where they’d done it?
Jet nodded.
Blinked and held on to it, then stepped out and opened her eyes.
Not her living room. Not the place where she cuddled Reggie and watched Netflix too late. Not where she once dropped spaghetti and stained the rug and begged Dad not to tell Mom. Not the extra-long couch, one corner that belonged to teenage Luke, the other to Jet. It used to be Emily’s, until Emily didn’t need it anymore. Jet had left it a few years, just to be safe. The TV was now just an empty black mirror, trapping Jet inside it.
This was a different room, no longer living. It wasn’t even the red she saw first; it was the yellow.
Little crime scene markers, black numbers printed on them, placed
around the room, counting up and up.
The red was next.
More paw prints in panicked circles.
Jet’s eyes followed Reggie’s ghost feet to a pool of blood, drying but not yet dry, winking the afternoon light back at them. Thick and spread out, half on the wood, half soaked into the corner of the rug. Well, forget spaghetti sauce – that stain was never coming out.
It was more blood than Jet thought a person could lose.
Hers.
Instinct moved her hand to the bandage at the back of her head. She stopped it before her fingers touched the dressing. So much blood it needed four markers of its own: 6, 8, 9, and 11. ‘You OK?’ Jack asked. ‘We can stop anytime.’ Jet took a breath, looked up at the ceiling for air that wasn’t tainted by blood. That was a mistake too. Two more yellow markers, stuck there on the white ceiling. Numbers 31 and 32. Droplets of red dashed in a strange pattern up there, across one of the LED lights, caking the glass. ‘What’s that?’ she sniffed.
Jack joined her, looked up. ‘It’s a cast-off pattern,’ he said quietly. ‘From the weapon … between hits.’ ‘And they don’t know what the weapon was?’
‘It has not been recovered.’ Cop speak for no.
43
Two voices moved through the hallway then, a snatched view of her mom and Chief Lou as they passed, bumping shoulders, Lou’s hand hovering behind Dianne’s back as they headed for the stairs. Shoes covered in blue. ‘We already did a walk-through with Scott yesterday,’ Lou was saying to her, voice butter-soft again, ‘but it would be really helpful if you can check for us too. Might have a better eye. See if you think anything is missing or
out of place. Anything at all.’ Their footsteps disappeared upstairs.
Jet moved closer to the bloodstain, seeking permission in Jack’s eyes. She passed behind the couch, cushions fluffed, their top corners pointy, so neat and out of place in this room of horror.
Jet stopped. Right where her feet must have lain while her head was making all that blood. ‘The doctor said I was hit three times,’ she said, bending it up into a question. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what the evidence shows.’ ‘What else does it show?’ Jack chewed his tongue, checked over his shoulder. ‘Please, Mr Finney. I need to know.’ Jack sighed, lowering his voice. ‘The blood-spatter evidence, there.’ He pointed to the fireplace in front of the pool of blood, markers 13, 14, 15. ‘Suggests that you were hit twice while you were still standing, in the back of the head.’ Jet could have told them that. She heard it again: the crunch of her skull, an echo that reverberated inside her head. She should take more painkillers soon. ‘And the third hit? This one?’ She gestured to the dressing on the side of her head, above her ear. The blow that had stolen her words.
Jack pointed to another set of markers – 7 and 10 – almost subsumed by the hungry pool of blood. Jet squinted, could make out small dashes of red just beyond its boundaries. ‘The blood spatter there suggests you were on the floor when you received the final blow, the one to the left side of your head. The attacker leaning over you.’ Jet swallowed, picturing it, because she’d already been gone by then, couldn’t remember the third crack. ‘Definitely wanted me dead, then.’
44
Jack rubbed his eyebrow, nodding to a forensic tech who’d just strolled into the room, a camera in his hand. Jet waited for him to leave, out toward the kitchen. ‘Does the blood spatter tell you anything else?’ she asked. ‘I’ve watched
some Dexter, you know. Shit ending.’ Jack’s eyes shifted. ‘No one’s listening,’ she pressed. ‘Please.’ He spoke low and fast. ‘Trajectory of the spatter and the cast-off suggests that the attacker was using downward strokes. Which tells us that they are taller than you.’ Jet sighed. ‘I’m five foot three – it’s not hard. Anything else?’ ‘Right-handed,’ he said. ‘The blow was only to the left side of your head because that’s the way you were facing when you fell. The attacker is right- handed.’ ‘So, right-handed and taller than me?’ Jet said. ‘Doesn’t really narrow it
down. Like, at all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Anything else I should know?’ Jack looked around the room. ‘We don’t have all the findings from the search yet. Hairs have been collected. Fibers. Fingerprints. But, as this is a room with a lot of visitors, and there was a lot of activity after – from the first responders, the paramedics, Billy finding the scene – it’s hard to know
if any of it will be relevant.’ ‘Do you know what time it happened?’ Jack pulled a small notebook from the chest pocket of his uniform, flicked through the pages. ‘We don’t know the exact time of the attack. But we have a range, from canvassing the neighbors, asking witnesses.’ ‘Witnesses,’ Jet said. ‘They saw something?’ ‘No. They heard something. The dog. Screaming.’ Jet’s heart inched a little higher, reaching for her mouth. She’d heard the scream too, right before she’d heard nothing at all. She never knew dogs could scream. ‘Did you hear?’ she asked Jack. He was their closest neighbor. ‘I wasn’t home,’ he said. ‘Was still out after escorting Andrew Smith back to his apartment. I was in the car when the call came through the radio.
I can’t tell you what that felt like, when I heard it was this address.’ He paused to clear his throat, to rub his nose. ‘Anyway. The doorbell cam
45
shows Billy approaching the door at 11:05 p.m., drawn by the sound of the dog, so we know it was before then. The Thomases in number 6 think they heard the dog from about 10:40. But Mrs Elliott in number 12 believes it was later than that, more like 10:55 p.m. So, the attack happened sometime roughly between 10:40 and 11:00 p.m.’ Jet nodded, raking over his words again, committing those times to memory. She’d write them down later. ‘So, the killer probably didn’t hang around much after, knowing that the sound was going to draw at-t-at …’ Fuck. What was that word? The word for when people noticed something.
Fuck it, she’d go around it. ‘That people were going to notice the sound. So, the killer would have panicked, right? They left Reggie alone, but must have taken my phone and the weapon and ran?’ Jet’s eyes left the living room, darting into the hallway beyond. But she stopped herself, corrected herself. ‘But not through the front door, because they would have shown up on the doorbell camera, and they didn’t. Which means they must have known we had one. So how did they get out? And in?’ ‘This way,’ Jack said, turning his back to the bloody scene. Jet followed him, taking their morbid tour through the open archway into the kitchen.
Sophia’s Halloween cookies were still out on the counter, untouched, unmoved. Probably still good – it had only been a couple of days, right?
No, shouldn’t eat the crime scene. But she should probably eat something soon; her legs felt weak, and she was a little lightheaded, but maybe that was because someone had spilled all the blood out of it. ‘Here,’ Jack said, walking into the laundry room off the far side of the kitchen.
The back door was open, the crime scene tech standing outside, taking photos of the muddy grass right outside the door. More markers: 49, 50, 51, 52. ‘You seen the size of their pool?’ the tech said, not looking up, thinking they were somebody else.
The whine and hiss of the camera, a blinding flash. Another. Imprinted in the back of Jet’s eyelids. She cupped one hand over her eyes. ‘Sorry.’ The tech looked up now, a slow blink when he realized. ‘Sorry.
I’m done.’ He dipped his plastic head awkwardly, disappearing around the side of the house. ‘This door was shut, but it was unlocked,’ Jack said. ‘We think this is how they got in. A lot of shoe impressions. We’ve taken casts. But it looks
46
like this door gets used a lot.’ Jet nodded. ‘I come in this way when I take Reggie for a walk. Mom makes the cleaners use it too. Dad when he’s gardening.’ ‘Your parents seem to think it was possible the door was left unlocked on Friday night?’ More than possible. Jet never remembered to lock it. But neither did Mom or Dad. That doorbell camera at the front was all the security they’d thought they needed. A show. A deterrent, Dad once said. But it had deterred nothing, and the killer had known to avoid it, to come around to the side door instead. ‘It’s possible, yes,’ Jet said. ‘Likely. Seventy-five percent chance it was left unlocked.’ Because she spoke in percentages now. ‘Got it,’ Jack said, making a note in his little book.
A phone buzzed. Jet patted her pockets, forgetting that the killer had taken hers. She felt naked, incomplete, without one.
Jack glanced at her apologetically and pulled the phone from his pocket, checking the screen. ‘That’s Billy again. He’ll be asking after you.’ ‘Does he know?’ Jet asked, but Jack didn’t have a chance to answer.
Detective Ecker’s voice sailed through the open-plan house. ‘OK, that’s it. The scene is released. Let’s get those cleaners in here ASAP. Move this poor family back in. Oh, sorry, Jet. Didn’t see you were still in here.’ Didn’t see her. Because she was small? Or because she was dead in a week and didn’t matter as much as the other people here, the ones who didn’t have a countdown hanging over them. Halfway between the living and the not, her edges less defined somehow. No … probably just the small thing.
OceanofPDF.com
47
