He had decided to come to the cabin only that morning, not telling anyone at the station. It had been an impulse, partly to get Zoe out of his head, but mainly because he was hoping to find something to back up his suspicions before he went to Steele. But as his eyes traveled over the cabin he knew he had no idea what he was looking for.
The front door opened and a man stood behind the storm door, staring at the Mustang. Louis got out and started up the shoveled walk. The man didn’t seem to relax any seeing Louis’s uniform.
“Mr. Eden?” Louis asked.
He cracked open the door. “Yes?”
Louis held out a hand. “Officer Kincaid, Loon Lake police.”
The man shook his hand tepidly. He was about fifty, balding, beefy, and swathed in a red sweater with reindeers prancing across his chest. He had the buffed-pink look of a successful middle-aged man, buttressed by his wealth and unaccustomed to such sordid things as visits from cops. Louis remembered reading the Edens were from Dearborn, the man a management type with Ford. He wondered why he hadn’t sold the cabin after the raid.
“I’m sorry to bother you this morning, Mr. Eden,” Louis said. “I didn’t know anyone would be here.”
“We don’t come much anymore,” Eden said, “just over the holidays.”
A woman’s face appeared behind him. “What is it, David?” she asked.
“Nothing, Glenda. Go back inside.”
She gave Louis a blank look and retreated. “What do you want, officer?” Eden asked.
Louis took off his sunglasses, remembering something his lieutenant back in Ann Arbor had told him, that nobody liked talking to a cop in sunglasses. He realized he disliked it when Jesse wore his.
“I would like to look around,” Louis said.
“What is this about?”
“Just a routine follow-up, sir.”
“It was five years ago,” Eden said.
“I know, sir. We’re closing the case officially. I just need to take some notes.”
“Is this really necessary? I don’t want my family upset.”
“I don’t need to come inside, Mr. Eden, or talk to anyone. This will only take a minute, I promise.”
David Eden hesitated then gave a curt nod.
“Thank you, sir.”
Louis could feel the man’s eyes on him as he went back to the Mustang. Finally he heard the door close.
Louis gathered up the raid file and stood back to look at “Little Eden.” The property was large, enough so that no other cabins were visible. The woods in front had been cleared to provide an impressive view of Loon Lake below. The cabin itself was a new prefab structure, the kind built from blueprints bought from the back of a home-decorating magazine, and it had the contrived rustic charm of a Disney World exhibit. It was secluded and private, a perfect place for a gang to hole up, even if it didn’t look like the kind of place where two kids would die.
Louis dug through the file, finding the diagram that detailed the positions of the bodies and the officers. It gave no sense of what the place really looked like. But it was always like this. The dry starkness of reports and diagrams never prepared you for the physical reality of a crime scene. That’s why he had always liked to see the places where things happened, like Pryce’s house. Maybe it was just vibrations, intuition, like Jesse had said. Whatever it was, it always helped clear his thinking.
He reached back into the car and picked up a second folder, which held the extra crime scene and autopsy photographs. Tucking both under his arm, he set off around the side of the cabin and into the backyard.
The back was cleared about sixty feet from the cabin to where the heavy woods began. There was an aluminum Sears shed off in a far corner and a large woodpile, but nothing else on the lot. Louis turned to face the cabin. He was facing due east and had to bring up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun.
The back of the cabin was plain compared to the front, with two windows on the first floor and a sliding glass door that opened onto a snow-heaped deck. There were three windows on the second floor and a large satellite dish on the roof.
Louis fished Gibralter’s report from the file. He needed to refresh his memory on the sequence of events.
Pryce had been the first on the scene, calling for backup after the kids refused his order to come out. Gibralter, Jesse, Ollie and Lovejoy had arrived soon after. Even after tear gas was fired into the cabin, the kids refused to come out. At this point Gibralter was in front with Pryce, Jesse in the back, with Lovejoy and Ollie positioned on either side of the cabin.
According to the report, Johnny Lacey ran out the back door, took off toward the woods and was tackled by Jesse about twenty yards from the cabin. “Officer Harrison’s shotgun discharged, hitting suspect in the left front facial area. Suspect died at the scene.”
Louis turned and looked at the woods. He could almost picture the way it went down. He could see Johnny Lacey bolting out the back. He could see Jesse chasing him, the way he had chased Duane Lacey in the snowy field outside Jo-Jo’s. He could see Jesse losing it, the way he had with the hippie. He could see Jesse going into a rage and bludgeoning Johnny’s head.
What had happened after that? Was it Ollie or Lovejoy who had pulled Jesse off Johnny Lacey? And who had been the one to pick up the shotgun and blast off Johnny’s face to cover up the beating?
Louis let out a deep breath. Jesse, Gibralter, Lovejoy, Ollie…he tried to picture them standing over the body. He tried to imagine one of them pulling the trigger of the shotgun. He could almost hear the echo of the shot in the trees and smell the powder burn in the clean air. But he couldn’t see who had done it.
He lowered his head. He didn’t want to see any of this.
When he looked up, his eyes picked up a flash in an upstairs window. He brought his hand up to shield his eyes. Someone was standing there. He pulled out his sunglasses and slipped them on.
It was a teenage girl, about fourteen. She was wearing a red sweatshirt and a bunch of silver bangle bracelets that she twisted nervously as she watched him. He guessed she was the Edens’s kid and wondered briefly if she knew about the deaths at her vacation home.
Louis stared at her. Angela and Cole. Had they seen what happened in the backyard?
He went back to Gibralter’s report. Cole had been found hiding in an upstairs closet, armed with a shotgun. He could have seen something and then hid. But Angela had appeared at the back door after Johnny was killed.
At this time, suspect #3 exited the premises through the rear door, armed with a small-caliber handgun. She positioned herself on the deck and announced she intended to shoot the officers unless they allowed her to leave the scene. Officers Wickshaw and Lovejoy ordered the suspect to drop her weapon. Suspect refused. Suspect then raised her weapon and fired at officers. Officer Wickshaw discharged his weapon, fatally wounding suspect in chest.
Louis shook his head. It didn’t make sense. Angela Lacey had no prior record involving guns; none of the kids was on drugs, according to toxicology reports. Why did she overreact? Why didn’t she just surrender?
He knew there was no point in reading the other reports, they were duplicates of Gibralter’s. But maybe there was something different in Pryce’s. He fished it out, scanning it:
I heard Officer Harrison request assistance in a foot pursuit. I heard a female screaming and a shotgun discharged. I offered assistance, but was directed to remain in my position. At exactly 16:35, I heard a handgun discharged. Exactly five seconds later, I heard a second shot.
Because Pryce had been ordered to stay out front, his perspective was limited, but he had heard Angela scream. Louis looked back at the Eden girl in the window upstairs. He couldn’t prove it but he was certain now that Gibralter had lied about Angela in his report. She had been standing at the door when her brother was killed and she had fired that gun because she was afraid they would kill her too.