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 inside a vehicle?
The teenager had been transported to the hospital and the mother was inside the house. Was there a third victim?
The blood drops on the grass stopped at a gate. It was unlocked. She eased it open, found a bloody handprint on the wood.
Inside the woods, footwear impressions moving up a steep incline blanketed with dead leaves and pine needles.
‘Put on a pair of furry ears and you’d look like the Easter Bunny,’ Pine said.
She turned and saw him standing just a few feet away, the underarms of his white shirt dark with sweat. He reeked of cigar smoke.
‘It’s been, what, three years since I last saw you?’
‘My mother’s funeral,’ Darby said. ‘What’s going on with the teenager? I heard he’s at a hospital.’
‘Physically he’s fine. He’s in some sort of shock. One of the ER docs tried to give him a sedative and he freaked. We’re giving him some space to calm down. I’ve got people guarding his room at St Joe’s, so there’ll be someone there when he’s ready to talk.’
St Joseph’s was Belham’s main hospital. ‘The news said he was at Mass. General.’
Pine’s hound-dog eyes twinkled with delight. ‘Yeah, that’s what I told the press. Figured we’d get the vultures to head to Boston. Most of them did. Some of them, as I’m sure you saw on your way in, are still camped out front.’
Nice move, Artie. ‘What’s the kid’s name?’
‘John Hallcox. Mother’s name is Amy Hallcox – we found her Vermont licence in the handbag. Neighbours say she and her kid came here about a week or so ago. They don’t know his name. They pretty much kept to themselves. Some of the neighbours saw them flitting about the house but mostly they stayed inside. Woman drove a red Honda Accord. Got the plate number all over the radios but so far nobody’s seen a damn thing. You see the drag marks in the kitchen hall?’