found inside the garage.’
‘I’ll get to work on it,’ Banville said, picking up his camera equipment. ‘I’ve already photographed the foyer and kitchen. Before you two head in, you’re going to need to change into one of these fabulous bunny suits.’
‘Awesome,’ Coop said. ‘It’s not like I’m sweating my balls off already.’
‘One other thing,’ Banville said. ‘The front windows facing the street? The shades and blinds were drawn when I got here. The windows facing the backyard, and the sliding glass door in the living room – none of those shades were drawn. That’s what we call a clue, Coop.’
‘Good to know.’
Darby grabbed the suits from the hatchback. They slipped into them while flashbulbs popped over her shoulder. She put on a pair of clear glasses, walked back up the lawn and eased open the front door.
The foyer looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake. All the pictures had been removed from the walls and smashed. An old wooden secretarial desk lay on its side, its drawers pulled out. Papers, family pictures and shards of glass covered nearly every inch of the tiled floor. Bloody footprints stretched across the foyer and back into the kitchen. Broken plates and glasses covered the brown-granite worktops. The cupboards – at least the ones she could see – had been opened, each shelf emptied.
Darby looked at Coop. ‘Did Pine tell you about this?’
Coop shook his head. ‘If he had, I would’ve called the Wonder Twins and asked them to meet us here. We can’t process this by ourselves – not unless we want to be working around the clock for the next week.’
Darby unzipped her suit, took out her phone and dialled the Operations Department in order to request the services of Mark Alves and Randy Scott. The dining room, she saw, was right off the foyer. What looked like a china cabinet and sideboard had been overturned. All the drawers had been pulled out, the contents dumped on an oriental rug covered with shattered glass.
‘Let’s go through the dining room,’ she said after hanging up. ‘Looks like the easiest route.’
Carefully navigating her way through the dining room, she smelled cordite and, lurking underneath it, blood – a strong, coppery odour that always made her eyes water.
An archway led into the kitchen; to her left was the living room, where she went first. A flat-screen TV and console had been thrown against the floor. Muddy footprints on the beige carpet led away from a sliding glass door of shattered glass. She spotted a few of the same muddy prints on a redwood-stained deck and wondered if one of the responding officers had left them.
When she reached the archway, she turned the corner.
Darby saw the woman’s fingers first. The ones still attached had been broken backwards and were now splayed at odd angles. Thick duct tape bound the woman’s wrists and forearms to the armrests of a kitchen chair. More tape, strips and strips of it, had pinned her ankles against the chair legs. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear, the cut so deep it had nearly decapitated her. Her eyes were taped shut and her severed fingers – three of them – had been stuffed inside her mouth.
‘Jesus,’ Coop said behind her.
Darby broke out in a cold sweat despite the A/C. Pools of blood had collected underneath the chair and stretched like fingers across the white tiles. A second chair covered with cut strips of duct tape lay sideways. One of the cut strips fluttered from the cold air rushing through a vent.
Bloody footprints covered the floor. Two bright red trails of blood stretched across the floor and down the hall leading to the door for the garage. A black handbag lay on its side, its contents scattered across the tiles.
Every inch of the long, wide kitchen had been ransacked. Every drawer had been pulled out. The refrigerator door hung open; the shelves had been wiped clean. The oven and dishwasher doors were open; the grills had been pulled out. The kitchen island had been unbolted and overturned. The bloody footwear impressions in the hall led back and forth. Someone had made several trips between the garage and kitchen.
Coop swiped the back of his arm across his forehead, his face as white as a sheet.
‘Go outside and get some air,’ Darby said, making her way to the living room. ‘I’ll go talk to Pine.’
Darby’s gaze swept across the bare white walls covered with an arterial spray of blood. She forced her attention back to the chairs and wondered if they had been arranged so that the woman faced her son.
5
The living room had a high cathedral ceiling and two spinning fans. Someone had taken a knife to the black leather sectional sofa and two matching armchairs. The cut fabric had been pulled aside, exposing springs and wood. Each cushion had been gutted. White cotton filling and foam covered the overturned furniture and smashed pictures in a fine blanket, like snow.
Drops of blood on the beige carpet. Drip lines and smears on the shards of glass shaped like shark’s teeth sticking out from the bottom and sides of the door that led to the redwood-stained deck.
Darby found the switch for the backyard lights.
She looked again at the muddy footprints that lined the redwood-stained deck and stairs. The handrail to her right had a bloody smear running down it as though someone had gripped it.
Darby pulled the handle of the sliding door. Locked. She found a security bar placed along the bottom railing to prevent intrusion. The only way to get through the door was to break the glass.
There was plenty of glass on the carpet but very little on the deck. She looked at the other side of the living room. On the bare white walls, two holes in the plaster – the kind left by bullets.
Someone had stood on the deck and fired at the door; that explained the glass blowback on the carpet. Then the shooter had moved inside the house and… what? Tied up the victims? No. Someone had reported hearing gunshots. A single shooter couldn’t have fired, moved inside, subdued two victims and tortured the woman. Too much time.
For the next twenty minutes Darby searched the living room for a spent shell casing. She didn’t find one. She checked the kitchen floor. No luck. Had the shooter taken the time to pick up the brass?
She removed the security bar, unlocked the sliding glass door and stepped on to the deck. The shades on the back windows hadn’t been drawn. No reason to, as there were no homes back here, just a big backyard with an in- ground pool and shed and, beyond the fence, the woods leading to Salmon Brook Pond.
Pine stood with two patrolmen near the fence separating the backyard from the driveway. He seemed taller than she remembered, but his body still carried that odd mixture of fat and muscle, like a football player who’d gone to seed. Bald on top now, the remaining black hair on the sides shaved close to the scalp.
They all had phones pressed up against their ears. Pine didn’t see her. The tall, pale patrolman with the crew cut did. He stared at her while she searched the deck.
Darby made her way down the steps, sticking close to the clean railing on her left, away from the blood and muddy footwear impressions, pausing to drop evidence markers. When she reached the backyard, she turned the corner and ran the beam of her flashlight on the crushed rock underneath the deck.
A wink of metal in the light. She ducked underneath the deck and saw an evidence cone next to an expended round; Banville had already photographed it. Using a pen, she picked up the shell casing. The words ‘44 REM MAG’ were stamped on the round metal ‘spark plug’.
.44 Remington Magnum ammo. A single shot could put down a bear.
Darby eased the casing back on the crushed rocks and searched the area around the deck. She didn’t find any other casings.
She moved back to the steps and ran the beam of her flashlight across grass yellowed by the sun, bald patches full of muddy rainwater.
There, fifteen feet away from the stairs – blood on blades of grass.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Pine and the two patrolmen heading her way.
‘Boyos,’ Pine said. ‘Let me introduce you to –’
‘Stay where you are,’ Darby said. She dropped an evidence marker and continued her search, thinking back to the drag marks in the kitchen hallway. Two straight parallel lines, the kind made by dragging a body. A bloody smear leading down the garage steps and across the garage floor and then no more blood. Had a body been hauled
