“Sure.” I nodded somewhat absentmindedly, knowing that the help I really needed would have to come from elsewhere, but more thinking that I had an important call to make, one I could no longer avoid.
I checked my watch again and, for a split second, considered the time difference between California and Arizona before remembering that the Grand Canyon state didn’t observe daylight saving time and was therefore also on Pacific Daylight Time, same as San Diego.
Which meant it wasn’t too late to make that call.
“Give me a few minutes,” I told Villaverde as I stepped out of his office and reached for my phone.
10
COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONA
Tess couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
At first, she’d been elated to get Reilly’s call. It was never easy when he was out on a live assignment, not knowing where he was or how much danger he was really in. And at those times, his name showing up on her caller ID never failed to make her heart soar. She’d felt the same anxiety tonight, not knowing why he was out in San Diego, not knowing what level of threat required his immediate presence, and she was about to call him when his call lit up her screen. She’d felt the same visceral uplift at hearing his voice, the same surge of relief and joy—only this time, the surge proved short-lived.
She knew he was doing his best to massage her feelings and, to his credit, the words he used were carefully chosen and sensitively delivered, but it was still one hell of a bombshell, and despite all his efforts, she couldn’t help feeling torn and pulled in all directions and dragged through a wringer of sadness, heartache, sympathy, melancholy, pain, and, yes, much as she hated the feeling—a touch of jealousy.
By the end of it, she felt dazed, emotionally pummeled, and physically exhausted, and her heart broke into even smaller pieces at the thought that however low she was feeling, the man she loved was surely feeling far worse.
And at the top of that whole tower of heartache, of course, was a young mother who’d just lost the rest of her life and a four-year-old boy who’d just watched his mother die.
There was really only one thing she could think of saying.
“I’ll fly out in the morning,” she told Reilly, her tone even and subdued and not really leaving any room for debate.
He didn’t argue either.
“You all right?” Villaverde asked me as I stepped back into his office.
“Yeah,” I said, feeling an unfamiliar, cold hollowness inside. I glanced out the glass partition at Alex and said, “Let’s get the kid out of here. But after we get him tucked into bed, I need to do something.”
“Shoot.”
“Michelle’s place,” I told Villaverde. “I want to see it.”
11
The street outside Michelle’s house was comatose-quiet, the tranquil residential neighborhood even more so that night, like it had clammed up from shock. A solitary police cruiser was parked out front and yellow crime tape was strung out around her property, the lone, faint echoes of the bloodstorm that had struck earlier that day.
The only ones on the outside, that is.
Inside, the echoes were much louder.
A large, congealed puddle of blood was the first thing that greeted Villaverde and me as we walked in. A messy streak broke off from it and arced sideways, away from the doorway. I visualized how it must have happened, when Michelle’s boyfriend’s body was shoved sideways by the shooters as they rushed out of the house with their wounded, or dying, buddy. Another trail of blood—the wounded shooter’s, presumably—snaked deep into the house and disappeared into a dark hallway, accompanied by the bloody boot prints of at least two others.
I advanced into the hallway, trying to avoid the red stains on the ground. The place was littered with crime scene debris—black fingerprint dust, discarded index cards, rubber gloves, and empty tape dispensers. I’ve always been struck by how quickly death takes hold and imposes itself on whatever territory it’s invaded, how quickly it can suck the life and light out of a victim’s home and make it seem like they’ve been gone for years. This was no different, and the brutal finality of it was all the more striking given how close I had once been to Michelle.
I followed the macabre trail deeper into the house and down a narrow corridor. At the end of it, where it opened up into the kitchen, was another bloody mess, this one all over the floor and the walls. A frenzy of images rocked me, ones my mind was throwing up based on what Michelle had described. I pictured her plunging the kitchen knife into the shooter’s neck, matching it with the red spurts lining the walls. I imagined the shooter collapsing to the floor, by the big puddle of blood, then being hustled back out of the house, almost if not already dead, his feet dragging behind him like twin paintbrushes and leaving a snaking red trail.
I stepped into the kitchen. It was relatively undisturbed. I could see the ghost of Michelle going around it, going about her Saturday morning routine. I noticed the dishwasher, open and with its trays out and still half-full, but what drew my eye was the fridge.
I moved closer to it.
Every square inch of its door was covered with photographs, drawings, and other personal mementos, like a montage of her life. I couldn’t stop my eyes from feasting on them, and as I did, I felt my lungs shrivel. It was a shrine to happier days, a testament to a woman and her son and the abundance of good times they’d shared—good times I’d not been a part of, good times Alex would never enjoy again with his mother.
I lingered there as the images took root inside me, pictures of Alex from when he was a baby, of him and Michelle in parks and swimming pools and at the beach, all of them lit up by big smiles and laughing faces. My throat tightened as I took in Alex’s drawings, crude and colorful creations of stick people and trees and fish and misshapen letters, enchanting expressions of an innocence that the boy was unlikely to enjoy ever again. Throughout it all, my mind was vaulting ahead, dropping me into those scenes like a digital special effect and taunting me with endless what-could-have-beens.
“Seems like she had a nice life.”
Villaverde’s words broke through my reverie.
I gave him a slow nod. “Yeah.”
Villaverde stepped closer and took in the mementos on the fridge in silence. After a moment, he said, “Forensics have been over everything, so if you want to take something . . .”
I looked at him. He shrugged. I turned back to the fridge, took another long look at it, then peeled off a photo of Michelle and Alex posing next to a sandcastle on some beach.
“Let’s check out the rest of the house,” I told Villaverde as I slipped the pic into my breast pocket.
The rest was more or less undisturbed. Framed photos of Michelle and Alex kept calling out to me as I went through the living room and the master bedroom, but apart from accentuating the cold feeling in my gut, nothing in either room seemed out of place or looked to be of use to the investigation. Alex’s bedroom was more of a challenge—I knew it would help him to have some of his favorite things with him, but I didn’t know where to start or what to choose, and that only made me feel worse. It was cluttered with all kinds of toys, books, and clothes, and its walls were a colorful mosaic of cartoon posters and more of Alex’s drawings. I thought that a good place to start would be to bring back the cartoon-covered bedsheets with me, as well as the three plush animals that were scattered on them. I pulled them all off the bed and rolled them into a ball, and I also grabbed some clothes from his closet.