Jaxon had his I.D. out and he held it out to the woman. “Morning ma’am, I’m Detective Jennings and this is Detective Winston. We’re with the Fairfax County PD and we’d like to have a word with you regarding your son.”
“My son?” She said, the smile slipping from her face as she glanced at the badge.
“Yes. May we come in?”
She hesitated, and then opened the door wide. “Yes, please do.”
He let Sally go first and followed, entering a foyer with a staircase to his left leading to the upper floor, and a small half bath on his right, painted in a dark red color that reminded him of blood. The entrance to the kitchen was directly in front of him. She led them to the living room, which fell to the right of the kitchen just past the half bath. She gestured to the couch and said, “Let me get my husband.” They nodded and sat.
She disappeared up the stairs and silence permeated the room as they waited. Jaxon glanced around, noting the loveseat to his right, large flat screen TV on a dark stand of wood in front of them, and various tables and cabinets spaced throughout the rest of the room. A small dining room joined the living room and what must be the kitchen through an entrance to the right of the TV.
They heard footsteps on the stairs and then the woman returned, followed by a short, stocky man of about the same age. He had light, sandy, blond hair, blue eyes set wide, and a goatee, neatly trimmed.
“Morning officers,” he said. “What’s this about my son?”
Jaxon cleared his throat. “This is never easy so I’ll get right to it. Your son was found dead early last night.”
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth as a gasp escaped her and the husband, though clearly shocked, turned and supported his wife as her legs gave out and she held on to him trying to remain standing.
“No!” The woman wailed. “It can’t be. He was just with me last night.”
The husband appeared angry, and said, “Where?”
“He was pulled from your neighborhood pool about 8:30 p.m. last night,” Sally said in a soft voice. “We are truly sorry.”
The woman looked at her husband and then began to laugh hysterically. Jaxon had seen a lot of different reactions from people, including screaming, fainting, vomiting, crying, wailing and shocked giggling, but he had never seen the kind of laughter he was watching. He questioned his tactic now, and wondered if he had caused the woman to lose her mind completely.
The woman stopped laughing and turned to him, “You’re wrong officers. My son is not dead.”
As if on cue, a boy of about fourteen entered the room, sleep still in his eyes, a rumpled Washington Redskins t-shirt twisted around his torso. He looked at Jaxon and shock registered for a brief second on the boy’s face and then he seemed to recover.
“What’s going on, Mom?” the boy asked.
Jaxon looked at Sally and had a sinking feeling in his gut as he watched her face. She had come to the same conclusion he had. He turned back to the boy.
“Are you Lucas Neal Harrison?” Jaxon asked.
The boy looked at his parents and then back at Jaxon and said, simply, “That’s me.”
Jaxon cursed quietly under his breath.
Ellie lay in her bed, her head resting on her hands, looking out the window at the bright sunshine streaming in. The vision of the boy being pulled from the pool dressed in the clothes they had used for ‘George’ the dummy had haunted her all night. She hadn’t slept well and had only just dozed off an hour ago when her noisy brother had startled her awake by slamming the toilet seat in the bathroom next to her room.
Jimmy’s idea of putting the dummy in the pool had seemed innocent enough at the time, but even before the revelation of the real body, she had questioned their act when she saw all the activity it had attracted. With the shocking discovery of the real boy in the pool, she had this terrible feeling of sinking in quicksand with no way out and nobody to help her.
She sat up and brushed her short hair, the simple act reminding her of Luke’s finger’s doing the same thing last night before all the weird stuff started happening. She smiled to herself as she remembered how good he felt. Why couldn’t these good feelings stay? Every time something went right, it was followed by something going bad. It made her feel cursed.
She had called Luke in the middle of the night again and found he was wide awake. They had talked for a while, but the comfort she found with him the previous night escaped her last night. She could tell he was tense and worried about what might happen. He wasn’t his usual happy go lucky self and she had been a little disappointed he hadn’t been able to alleviate her fears. She had finally said goodnight to him at about four in the morning.
Two nights in a row with little sleep left her feeling anxious and sluggish all at the same time. She went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face and then brushed her teeth. The dark circles under her eyes stood out against her pale face like small bruises.
She went back to her room and logged onto the computer wanting to see if there was anything about the incident from last night in the news. She saw she had an e-mail notifying her of a message on Facebook. She logged onto her Facebook account and froze.
The message was from William Smith.
She was afraid to look, but she was also curious. Clicking on the link showed one word: “Surprise!”
“Yeah-it sure was, you sicko!” she said aloud to herself.
There was nothing else. She was relieved there were no pictures. She wondered if Luke got the same message. She didn’t want to call this early since he might be asleep, but then again he had said call anytime. She reached for the phone and held it in her hand not sure if she should call him. It vibrated in her palm and she jumped. It was Luke.
“Hey, I was just thinking about calling you,” she said.
“The police just left my house,” he said.
“Why? What did they want?”
“They thought the body was me. They told my parents I was dead and then I walked into the room. The one cop seemed pissed.”
“Why did they think it was you?”
“That’s the weird part. The cop said they found a school paper with my name on it in the back pants pocket of the kid. I made sure those pockets were empty when we made the dummy. Where did our friend get a school paper of mine?”
“Could he have put your name on a piece of paper and stuck it in the pocket? Did you see the paper?”
“Yeah, the cop showed it to us. It was our homework from last week in Mrs. Litchfield’s class. The crap on nouns and stuff. Remember?”
“That is weird,” she said. “I wonder how he got it.”
“Beats me. My dad went berserk. Really laid into them about scaring the crap out of him and Mom without being sure whose body it was and stuff like that. The two cops kept apologizing, but my dad wouldn’t let it go. I thought he was going to hit the guy cop. I think his name was Jaxon.”
“That’s the one who came to my house about Bentley.”
“Uh huh. The woman who was at the pool was the other one.”
“It must have scared the crap out of you when you saw them in your house.”
“It was a shock,” he said.
“I just got a message on Facebook. Have you checked yours yet?”
“No. What was the message?”
“It was from him,” she said. “No pictures, just the word ‘Surprise!’”
He was silent for a moment and she thought he hung up.
“Still there?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry. I was just thinking what a bastard this guy is. I’m logging on to my computer now. Let’s see if he sent me something.”
A few minutes passed as she listened to computer keys clicking and then Luke said, “Same message. No pictures. Wait…oh crap!”
“What? What happened?”
