The last act is bloody.
However fine the rest of the play.
I knelt beside Ardis’s body.
Late forties. Slightly overweight. Blonde hair, now splayed sadly across the steps. She had gentle-looking features, wore jeans, wool socks, no shoes. Earlier, I’d found no phone in her purse. I felt her pockets. Nothing.
The pattern of blood spatter on the carpet confirmed that her body hadn’t been moved. Based on the angle of the blood droplets on the wall and railing, the shooter would have been positioned directly behind her near the top of the stairs when he-or she-fired.
She was fleeing when she was killed.
Her flannel shirt was a mess of blood from the fatal gunshot wound to her back, centered almost directly between her shoulder blades.
From the police reports I knew that Donnie was forty-eight, and, with the age of the couple, I wondered briefly if Lizzie might have been adopted. Something to check on later.
I inspected Ardis’s hands. She had short unpolished fingernails that might contain the DNA of her attacker if she’d been able to scratch him. We’ll see.
No visible defensive wounds on her hands or forearms.
Behind me I heard Jake asking Ellory if they’d moved anything. The deputy said no.
“This is how you found her.”
“That’s right.”
I looked into her unblinking eyes.
Ardis.
Her name was Ardis Pickron.
Anger tightened like a knot in my chest and I was glad. Forget objectivity. I like it when things get personal. I want to feel grief and want it to be like a hot knife inside of me. It keeps me focused on why I do what I do.
I’d been dreading this next part of the investigation ever since Margaret had told me about the crimes.
Viewing the body of the four-year-old girl.
Carefully, I stepped over Ardis. It wasn’t easy because of the narrow staircase and the position in which her body had fallen. Crossing over her like this felt uncomfortably intrusive, and I had the sense that I should apologize, even though there was no one to apologize to.
Still, in my thoughts, I did.
At the top of the stairs I noted the two bedrooms to my left. The door down the hall would be the master bedroom. I would check on that in a minute. The room closest to me was obviously Lizzie’s and looked just as you’d expect a four-year-old girl’s room to look-a pile of stuffed animals on the bed, posters of horses covering the walls, a Dora the Explorer play set in the corner, a stack of Dr. Seuss books on a shelf near the window. A small pile of little girl’s shirts lay folded neatly on the bedcovers, a dresser drawer still sat open.
Lizzie’s body lay in the doorway to the bathroom on my right.
She had blonde hair like her mother’s and wore pink tights and a flowery red dress that didn’t seem quite appropriate, considering the season. Lizzie lay face up, and the front of her dress was stained with blood.
I closed my eyes.
It’s always hardest when it’s children.
Over the years I’ve known more than one street-hardened cop who was assigned to a child homicide case and was never the same again. Some quit. Some ask for transfers to desk jobs. One FBI agent I knew took his own life. It affects you deeply and forever and you’re never the same again.
I took a breath, opened my eyes again, then forced myself to examine the position of Lizzie’s body. Based on the location of the doorway in relation to the stairs and the adjoining walls, the killer would have been on the far side of the landing when he shot her. He hadn’t posed or repositioned her.
The cold, calculated nature of the crime appalled me.
Did your father do this to you, Lizzie? Did he kill you?
Seeing the young girl’s body like this hurt so badly that I had to fight hard to keep from losing it.
A girl. A four-year-old girl.
Could a father really do that to his daughter?
You know he could. You know how often this happens all over the country.
I tried to shake that troubling thought, found it nearly impossible. Finally, I turned away from the girl and went to the far door, the master bedroom.
Staying in the hall, I peered inside.
The bed was neatly made, covered with a checkered quilt. Light purple walls brought a calm mood to the room. The closet door stood slightly ajar. On the bed stand: a Thomas H. Cook novel, and a cell phone charging beside a small lamp.
Closing my eyes again I tried to picture how things might have played out, but I was interrupted by Jake, who’d joined me on the landing. “So that’s the girl.” He spoke softly, with a reverence I wouldn’t have expected.
I opened my eyes. “Yes.”
He was looking at Lizzie. “I hate it when it’s kids.”
For the second time today we agreed about something.
“So do I.”
A small moment passed between us, and I sensed that neither of us could think of the right thing to say.
“All right,” I said at last. “Let’s reconstruct this, try to figure out what happened here at 1:48 this afternoon.”
9
Jake’s gaze moved toward the staircase. “Well, it’s pretty obvious Lizzie was leaving the bathroom and Ardis was on her way down the stairs. Probably fleeing.”
I nodded. “The killer was back here near the master bedroom when he shot Lizzie. I think Ardis was in Lizzie’s bedroom when he did. Probably putting the laundry away.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The shirt drawer is still open, there are folded shirts on the bed. Someone was interrupted putting them away. And if Ardis had been in the master bedroom and tried to flee, she would’ve had to get past the shooter and most likely would’ve been killed on the landing.”
“Hmm,” Jake reflected. “So the killer ascends the stairs, positions himself where you are, and the bathroom door opens. Lizzie appears. He shoots her.”
“That alerts Ardis”-I was thinking aloud-“who leaves Lizzie’s bedroom, sees her daughter lying in the bathroom doorway.”
It was possible that Ardis had been descending the stairs and the killer shot her first before Lizzie left the bathroom, but it seemed more likely that a child would be frightened by the sound of a gunshot and stay in the bathroom, hoping that her mother would come to check on her. For now, I proceeded as if the order of events was along the lines of what we were thinking. “What’s the first thing you do,” I said, “if you hear a gunshot and then find the body of your daughter?”
“Run,” Jake said. “Call 911.”
I evaluated his answer. “Before that you’d check to see if your child was alive, then you’d look around to see where the shooter is. To see if you’re in danger too. And if you are-”
“You’d run.”
“Or hide.” I was studying the angles of the staircase and the location of Lizzie’s body. Would you respond differently if you knew the shooter? If it was your husband? I imagined you would but thought the specific response would depend on the state of the relationship. At the moment, postulating any further bordered on trying to decipher motives, which is something I try to steer clear of doing. “Remember, it’s possible Lizzie wasn’t dead when Ardis found her.”
Jake looked at me questioningly.
“It seems probable that Ardis didn’t see the shooter or else she would’ve hidden in the bathroom or been killed on the landing rather than making it nearly all the way down the stairs.”
“Okay,” he said. “So the killer steps into the master bedroom, then hears Ardis descending the stairs. He rushes out and shoots her before she reaches the bottom.” He contemplated that for a moment. “So what about the bullet holes in the window?”
“The neighbor heard two initial shots. Those were the kill shots.”
He looked at me skeptically. “And how do you know the shooter didn’t fire the shots through the window first, then kill Ardis and Lizzie?”