“He could still be alive!” Olivia yelled, searching the ground for a large rock. There was nothing but gravel.
Desperate, she grabbed one of the patio chairs, dumped the cushion on the ground, and raised it waist high into the air. Made entirely of metal, it was cumbersome, but Olivia smashed it into the glass door with all the force she could muster.
The glass splintered but didn’t break. She heaved the chair against the fractured door again and again until it crashed inward, chunks of ragged glass scattering across the floorboards, shards lethal as icicles raining everywhere.
“STAY!” Olivia shouted at Haviland and, only after being certain that he would obey, darted inside and fell to her knees alongside the prone writer.
Gently, she rolled him over and then cried out in shock. Covering her mouth with a trembling hand, she retreated.
“Too late,” she whispered, her voice echoing in the light-riddled room.
Chapter 7
Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
—EDGAR ALLEN POE
Nick Plumley’s glassy eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His mouth was misshapen, stretched unnaturally like a python expanding its jaw in order to swallow a fat rabbit. His lips were blue. A wad of paper filled the entire cavity of his mouth.
Olivia knew she should go back outside. There was nothing she could do to help the dead man, and though every fiber of her being longed to remove the papers crammed into his mouth, she knew that an influx of fresh air would provide him no relief. His lungs would never again expand or contract. They would no longer be invigorated by the sea breeze or by the sharp wind that raced ahead of a thunderstorm. The smoke from wood fires wouldn’t irritate the sensitive bronchioles. They’d never feel the keen ache of being outside on a frigid February morning or tingle as they were infused by the magic of the season’s first snow.
Exhaling slowly, as though she feared her own body might be affected by the writer’s immobility, Olivia tore her gaze from Nick Plumley’s frozen expression of agony. As her eyes traveled down the length of his body, she noticed an angry red welt encircling his neck, just above the larynx.
Plumley was clad in a cotton robe of blue and white checks and matching boxer shorts. He was barefoot and smelled of soap. Olivia noticed that he’d yet to put on his watch and that his hair was still wet. As her eyes returned to his face, she noticed a bead of dried blood on his chin, indicating that he’d cut himself shaving.
Olivia stared at the bright red drop. It was too vivid on a face that had already taken on the waxy pallor of death. She imagined him at the mirror, a handsome man in his midfifties, wiping away the fog with the corner of a towel. After squirting a cone-shaped measure of shaving cream into his palm, he’d have spread the foam over his face, noting the contrast between its whiteness and his tanned skin. Pivoting from side to side, he would have performed the daily ritual he’d begun many years ago as a shrill-voiced, lanky teenager. He would have winced at the cut, briefly, more irritated than injured, and stuck a shred of toilet paper on the wound to soak up the initial rush of blood.
“And then someone came to the door,” Olivia mused aloud. “And you let them in dressed like this. Did you recognize the killer?”
Knowing her proximity to the body could contaminate the crime scene, she tarried only long enough to examine the hardcover resting near Nick’s right arm. The book had been opened toward the middle and a handful of pages had been roughly torn from the binding. The header on an intact page identified the book as The Barbed Wire Flower. Nick Plumley’s mouth had been stuffed with pages from his own bestseller.
“Jesus,” Olivia whispered and stood up. Carefully maneuvering around the shards of glass, she returned to the patio. The force of the sunshine burned her eyes, but she was grateful for its heat. The wash of light made her acutely aware of her vitality, and she threw her arms around her agitated poodle.
“It’s all right,” she murmured as he bathed her face with kisses. “The chief’s on his way.”
Olivia and Haviland walked around to the front of the house. In the lee of a nearby sand dune, they waited for the police to arrive.
Rawlings was in the lead car. He jumped out, readjusted his utility belt, unclipped his holster with the practiced flick of a finger, and strode up to Olivia. Echoing her words to Haviland, he issued a firm command. “Stay here.” He then signaled to one of his men. “Please wait with Ms. Limoges.”
The officer in question tried to conceal his disappointment over having to babysit a civilian, but Olivia rendered his assignment void the moment she rushed after the chief. “The front door’s locked. I had to break a window around back to get in.”
Rawlings stopped and turned, blood rushing to his face. “And you did that because?”
“I had to see if I could help him,” Olivia stated with a calm she didn’t feel. “I couldn’t just sit on the patio and wonder if the man inside could be saved by CPR.”
Mumbling under his breath, the chief gestured at the officers following in his wake and jogged around the side of the house. Olivia glanced at the uniformed watchdog standing beside her and said, “I’d better show the chief what I touched in there.”
The young man was too eager to argue. He led the way with Haviland shadowing after him. Like most of Oyster Bay’s police force, the policeman had seen the poodle inside the station several times and knew he posed no threat. “How did you end up finding the body?” he asked Olivia.
“I walked over from my place to show Mr. Plumley a painting,” she explained.
The officer nodded. “And did your dog sense anything when you got here? Did he bark or seem nervous?”
Olivia reached out and touched Haviland’s head. “That’s an astute question, Officer . . . ?”
“Gregson, ma’am.”
They rounded the corner of the building, and Olivia stopped at the edge of the patio. “Haviland didn’t act like there was a malevolent presence nearby. If he had sensed any violence within the house—shouting or a physical altercation—he would have barked out a warning to me. But he didn’t and that makes me think the killer was well away before we arrived.”
Gregson’s brows rose. “The killer, ma’am?”
Olivia pointed to the shattered door. “You’ll see.” She sank into a lounge chair and invited Haviland to sit in the shade of the patio’s umbrella. “Don’t worry, I won’t move from this spot.”
During the course of the next hour, officers filtered in and out of the house. Olivia listened to the sounds of their work: the rapid-fire clicking of a camera, the crackle of radios, and the slap of measuring tape laid against the bare floor.
The men and women of the Oyster Bay Police kept their voices hushed, following the chief’s example. Olivia had witnessed Rawlings’ demeanor at crime scenes before and knew that he demanded respect be shown to the victim at all times.
Even now, she could picture him reservedly turning out the pockets of Nick Plumley’s robe or touching the stretched skin of his cheeks with his surprisingly gentle, bearlike hands.
Eventually, the coroner arrived and the body was removed. A pair of officers left to interview the neighbors. With half an acre separating the homes, Olivia doubted the men would glean any useful information, but Rawlings was methodical. Everyone living on the Point would be interviewed right away and then, when no clues were discovered, the chief would begin to widen his circle.
Impatient to provide him with her own statement, Olivia peered inside the house and saw that Rawlings was alone. He stood in the middle of the room, arms folded across his chest, head bent. He appeared to be staring at the damaged copy of The Barbed Wire Flower.