But then Nick looked up in revelation. “His ring finger… Dance’s ring finger on his right hand, it’s missing below the second knuckle.”
Marcus remained silent.
“You know there’s no way I could see that from your window,” Nick said, alluding to Marcus’s doubt. “And ask him about the fun he had at the Jersey Shore.”
MARCUS WALKED OUT the side door of his house into the late summer sun of the day. His heart was broken for his friends. Julia had been as close to him as anyone in his life. She knew his heart and had helped him heal time and time again; she knew his mind and how prone it was to jump to conclusions; she knew his mistakes and misgivings, his weaknesses and suffering, and had never once turned away.
Julia and Nick shared a bond, a love that he could only dream of. They were the touchstone which he judged each of his marriages, making him realize even before he said “I do” that the promise of love till death do us part would never come close to what they shared. They were like one, it was always Julia and Nick, Nick and Julia; rarely were they referred to in the singular. They spent their free time together and each always put the other first.
Seeing her dead on the floor, so heinously robbed of life, so violated, was an assault on all reason. Who could commit such an act, who could rob an innocent of life, who could rob a husband of his reason for living?
And while Julia was dead, it was as if the bullet had also struck Nick. His mind had collapsed, falling into denial, fantasizing about changing the past, about saving Julia. It was the fantasy of a wounded heart, of an insane mind.
Marcus had been in his garage looking through a file box in the trunk of his car when he’d heard the gunshot. It sent a chill down his spine, as it came from the Quinns’ house. He ran as fast as he could, cutting through their open garage door, through the open mudroom door, to see Julia lying askew around the rear stairs. Half her face was gone, and it took every ounce of his energy to hold his stomach together as he became overwhelmed with grief and shock. And when he finally stepped over her body, he saw Nick sitting on the floor beside her, stroking her leg like a child uncomprehending of the reality of death.
Marcus crossed his expansive side lawn, approaching Nick’s house, but this time there was no reason to run; nothing was going to bring Julia back.
The coroner’s truck and two unmarked cop cars, a Taurus and a Mustang, sat in the driveway. Normally a murder in a town that hadn’t seen a murder in twenty- five years would result in an overwhelming response by half the force, but the rest of the department, every policeman, desk clerk, secretary, and receptionist, was at the crash site. Every fireman, EMT, councilman, and doctor from the town had responded. There had never been a plane crash in Byram Hills, or the county, for that matter, but the well-off community responded as if it specialized in disasters. Every able body was out at the field working with the NTSB in whatever capacity they could. Whether it was helping the families of the deceased, searching for wreckage and body parts, or handling administrative details, the entire town of Byram Hills was out in force at the scene of the tragedy just three miles away. As a result, there were only two cops available to deal with Julia’s death.
NICK AND JULIA’S house sat on three acres, one of the few properties that hadn’t been subdivided. Their house dated back to the 1890s, with additions in 1927, 1997, and 2007. The former main house of what was once expansive farmland was five thousand square feet and could truly be called a home. Every room was filled with pictures and mementos speaking to the character of their owners. Far from a museum showcase, as so many large houses had become, it was a home designed for family, a house that Marcus knew one day would be filled with children. But now, as he slipped under the yellow crime tape that wrapped the walk, as he opened the side kitchen door and stepped into the large white kitchen, Marcus knew not only would children’s voices never be echoing the walls but Nick would probably never come home again.
As Marcus cut through the dining room, he could hear the detectives’ voices in the front hall and stopped. He took a moment to backtrack, feeling himself pulled by some unseen force. And though he couldn’t bear to look at Julia’s body again, he craned his neck toward the mudroom where her body lay.
The white-haired coroner leaned over the black body bag, zip-ping it up, pulling out a dark marker and writing on the bag’s label, an action as devoid of emotion as if he was filling out a grocery list. The man’s black eyebrows stood in sharp contrast to his white hair, his hunched frame and weathered skin putting him no younger than seventy-five. Marcus imagined more than a few doctors, medical examiners, and coroners had been pulled from retirement today to deal with all of the death in Byram Hills.
Marcus could make out Julia’s form under the black vinyl and morbidly wondered if there was any chance of a mortician’s reconstruction to honor her, to allow her husband to look upon her one last time, to say his final good-byes.
The floor was still pooled with blood, the rear wall covered in fragments of flesh and bone, several tufts of hair drifting on an unseen breeze. With everything going on down at the crash site, no one would arrive up here to clean this tragic reminder of violence against the innocent for days to come. That wouldn’t do. He would get on the phone and get someone up from the city, and while he was at it, he would begin the daunting task of arranging the funeral that Nick’s fragile mind was incapable of planning.
“Hey!” The voice startled Marcus, shocking him back to the moment.
“What the hell are you doing?” Shannon said. “We told you to stay next door with her husband until we’re done.”
“I thought-” Marcus looked around. “I thought you were done.”
“This is a crime scene, and it’s just the two of us. We’ve got to do all the printing and investigation on our own. We’re done when I say were done.”
“I’m sorry.” Marcus headed back to the kitchen door. “I’ll be next door.”
“Where’s Quinn? I thought you were going to stay with him. Shit.” Shannon paused, suddenly nervous. “Is he the type to run?”
“Run? Run from what? His wife is dead. He can barely stand.”
“You know what?” the cop said, holding up his finger. “You’re here. Let’s have a conversation.”
The cop turned and walked toward the living room as if he owned the place, indicating for Marcus to follow. “This won’t take long.”
Marcus nodded. “Whatever it takes to catch whoever did this.” Marcus could feel the other cop come in behind him but chose not to turn around.
“You said previously that you were very close to both the deceased and her husband. How close would that be?”
“Best friends. Equally close to them both,” Marcus said.
“Were either of them having an affair?”
“You’re crossing the line.” Marcus wanted to choke the cop for bringing up such a stupid question.
“We just need to ask,” Dance said from behind him. “Where were you when Mrs. Quinn was shot?”
“I told you before, next door in my garage, about to head out to dinner. I heard the shot and came running.”
“Anyone with you?”
“No, but I was on the phone with my girlfriend, who’s in California for the weekend, which you can verify.”
“What kind of relationship did Nicholas Quinn have with the deceased?” Shannon asked.
“Her name is Julia,” Marcus said, abruptly, trying to keep his anger in check. “They were as close as could be, more in love now than the day they married.”
“Were either of them emotional?”
“Not really. In fact, they’re both pretty even-tempered.” Marcus couldn’t refer to her in the past, he couldn’t get used to the fact he’d never hear her voice again.
“If that’s the case, why would he kill her?”
Marcus didn’t answer, as he thought he had misheard the question.
“Why would he do it?” Shannon continued to pressure Marcus. “Can you think of any reason, money, jealousy?”
“There is absolutely no way Nick killed her,” Marcus said. “He would never raise a hand to her, let alone shoot her.”
“Well, some things suggest otherwise,” Dance said as he held up a large clear plastic bag. Inside was a large, impossibly elegant pistol, something that looked to be owned by a king or a sheik. There was a hammered-gold plate on other side of the stock. The handle was made of ivory, inlaid with jewels. “Any idea why he would be keeping such an expensive weapon in the trunk of his car?”
Marcus stared dumbfounded at the sight. He’d never known Nick to own such a gun. “That can’t be his.”
Without a word, Dance put the plastic-encased pistol in a box and turned back to Marcus.
“Despite your doubts,” Shannon said, “I think he did it. If he has an attorney, I would suggest that you call him, because I’m going to interrogate this guy until he admits what he has done. And believe me, after a day like today, I have no time for lies.”
Marcus stared at the cop and suddenly remembered why he had come over. He looked at the detective in his too-tight shirt and jeans and thought him an asshole. He looked at his right hand but saw five fingers, five complete fingers.
“It’s Detective Dance, right?” Marcus said.
“No, I’m Robert Shannon, he’s Dance,” Shannon pointed to his partner as they all headed into the kitchen.
“Sorry.” Marcus turned to Dance. “Did I see you at the Jersey Shore?”
“No.” Dance glared at him and shook his head, suspiciously. “Why?”
“I thought maybe-”
“I hate the Jersey Shore,” Dance snapped as he walked into the mud room.
Marcus watched as Dance walked to Julia’s encased body. He pulled off his latex gloves, bent down, and helped Shannon and the white-haired coroner lift the black bag up onto the gurney.
Marcus looked once again at Shannon and Dance’s clothes. They were exactly as Nick had described them, but Nick had probably seen them through the window, maybe forgetting that he had looked. In his fragile mental state who was to say that his mind wasn’t retreating into its own reality?
Marcus felt an overwhelming confusion rush through him as he stared at the black bag containing Julia’s body, still coming to grips with the fact she was dead. But what took Marcus’s breath away, what compounded the effect of everything that had happened, was the moment when his eye was drawn back to Dance, now pushing the gurney out through the door, his eyes drawn to the detective’s right hand…
… to his right ring finger
… where it was missing below the second knuckle.
NICK HAD NOT moved from the couch in Marcus’s library. He had read the letter three times over, his thoughts bathed in a crippling confusion. All logic seemed absent from the European man’s written words, but equally absent from Nick’s own mind-how had he gotten here and how was it remotely possible? Nick wasn’t a superstitious man; he wasn’t prone to believe in the supernatural, myths, legends, UFOs. He didn’t believe in lucky pennies, rabbit’s feet, bad luck, or broken mirrors.
