Chapter 7

7

Detective Reyes of Aylesford Police stands on the drive surveying the mansion in front of him. It’s Tuesday after the Easter weekend, shortly after 11:00 a.m., and they’ve been called out to what’s been described as a bloodbath.

Detective Barr, his partner, stands beside him, following his gaze. “Sometimes having a lot of money can be a bad thing,” she says.

The place is busy. The ambulance, patrol division, and the medical examiner’s office have all arrived within the last few minutes. The scene has been marked off with yellow tape. The press has begun to gather at the end of the drive, and soon, no doubt, the neighbors will appear.

A uniformed officer from patrol division approaches. “Morning, detectives,” he says. Reyes acknowledges him with a nod. “The scene is secure,” the officer informs them.

“Tell me,” Reyes says.

“Victims are an older couple, Fred and Sheila Merton. One in the living room, one in the kitchen. They lived alone.” He glances at Detective Barr, no doubt noticing her fresh skin and still bright, blue eyes.

Reyes smiles ever so slightly; he knows Barr’s stomach is stronger than most. She has a keen curiosity about murder scenes, bordering on the macabre. It comes in handy. But he wonders what will happen if she ever has a family—she’s only thirty. Will she still stick pictures of corpses and crime scenes up on her kitchen wall? He hopes not. Reyes has a wife and two kids at home and if he did something like that, his sensible wife would file for divorce. He tries to keep a balance, tries not to bring his work home with him. Not that he always succeeds.

The officer says, “The cleaning lady found them. She called 911 at ten thirty-nine this morning. She’s in the patrol car, if you want to talk to her.” He indicates the car with his chin, then turns back to Reyes. “It looks like they’ve been dead a while.”

“Okay, thanks.” Reyes and Barr leave the cleaning lady for now and make their way to the house. Another officer is stationed by the front door, keeping track of who goes in and out. He tells them to be careful of the bloody footprints. Reyes and Barr pull on booties and gloves and enter the front foyer. As soon as he steps carefully inside, Reyes smells the blood.

He looks around slowly, getting his bearings. There’s a single set of fresh, bloody footprints leading from the kitchen he can see at the back of the house, and down the hall, toward them, fading as they approach the front door. Another less-distinct set of bloody footsteps seems to head from the kitchen up the carpeted stairs.

He looks to his left, into the living room, sees a broken lamp on the floor. Beyond that, a technician is kneeling next to the body of a woman. Avoiding the bloody footprints, Reyes walks over, Barr following, and squats down beside the technician. The victim is wearing a nightie and a light bathrobe. He sees the marks around the woman’s throat, the telltale bruising, the eyes flecked with red. “Ligature strangulation,” Reyes says. The technician nods. “Any sign of what she was strangled with?”

“Not yet,” the other man says. “We’ve barely started.”

Reyes notes that her ring fingers are bare, spots a cell phone flung under an end table, and stands up. He waits as Barr takes a closer look and tries to imagine what went on in this room. She opens the door, Reyes thinks, realizes her mistake, flees into the living room. There’s a struggle. Why didn’t her husband hear anything? Perhaps he was asleep upstairs, and the sound of the lamp falling and breaking was muffled by the thick carpet. Barr rises from her study of the body and the two of them return to the foyer. From there, Reyes glances into the dining room, sees the drawers of the buffet pulled open and left hanging. At the end of the long hall that runs straight to the back of the house from the foyer, he sees figures in white suits moving around in the kitchen. He walks forward soundlessly in his booties, close to the wall to avoid the bloody prints, Barr right behind him.

It’s a bloodbath, all right. The sight and smell of it briefly overwhelm him. For a moment he holds his breath. He glances at his partner—her sharp eyes are taking everything in. Then he focuses on the scene before him.

Fred Merton lies on his stomach on the kitchen floor, his head turned to the side, in blood-soaked pajamas. He’s been stabbed multiple times in the back and his throat appears to have been slit. Reyes counts the stab wounds as best he can, leaning over the body. There are at least eleven. A frenzied, violent crime. A crime of passion, perhaps, rather than a robbery? Unless it was a thief with some unresolved anger issues. “Christ,” he mutters. Out here, no one would hear them scream. He looks up and recognizes May Bannerjee, the head of the forensics team, a very capable investigator. “Any idea how long they’ve been lying here?” Reyes asks her.

“I’d say it’s been at least a day,” Bannerjee tells him. “We’ll know more after the autopsies, but my guess is they were murdered sometime Sunday night or early Monday morning.”

“Any sign of the murder weapon for this one?” Reyes asks, as he casts an eye around the kitchen. There’s no bloody knife anywhere that he can see.

“Not yet.”

He tries to decipher what might have happened. Barr is making her own silent study of the scene. There’s a tremendous amount of blood spatter, on the walls, the ceiling, the island. Reyes looks down at the smeared floor and the bloody trails leading out of the room. “What does this look like to you?” he asks Bannerjee.

“My guess—the killer wore thick socks, maybe more than one pair—and no shoes. Possibly booties on top. That way we can’t get any usable prints, or even a reliable shoe size.” Reyes nods. “You can see he went to the cupboard under the sink—there’s blood all over it. He entered the dining room from here.” She points to the entry in the kitchen that opens directly into the dining room, separate from the main hall. “He also went into the study, off the kitchen.” She points her head toward the other side of the house. “And he went down the hall and upstairs—looks like he tore the place apart after the murders looking for cash and valuables, then exited out the back. We can see the foot smears and there’s blood on the back doorknob and on the patio. There’s a bloody spot on the back lawn where he probably changed his clothes; after that, nothing.”

“How did he get into the house? Any sign of forced entry?”

“We’re still going over the perimeter, but nothing obvious so far. The cleaning lady said the front door was unlocked when she got here, so maybe the female victim opened the door.” She turns toward the kitchen sink under the window. “Some pretty obvious fresh, clear footprints from the body to the sink, and then out to the front door—those will be from the cleaning lady.”

The victims were in their nightwear, possibly already in bed, Reyes thinks. Sheila Merton might have put on her robe and come downstairs to open the door to the killer. She was obviously killed first, as there was no blood transferred to her from the murderer, who would have been drenched in it after killing the husband. They need to find out what, exactly, has been taken. The cleaning lady might be able to help with that.

“What do you think?” Reyes asks, turning to Barr.

“It seems unnecessarily brutal for a robbery. I mean, did they have to stab him that many times?” Barr says, staring at the butchered body on the kitchen floor. “Maybe it’s just supposed to look like a robbery, and it’s not a robbery at all.” Reyes nods in agreement. Barr adds, “And they really went to town on him, compared to her. Overkill, I’d say.”

“Indicating that the rage was for him, not her.”

“Maybe. And she was just there, in the way.”

“Although strangulation is also quite personal,” Reyes says. “Let’s talk to the cleaning lady.” As they exit the house and walk toward the driveway, Reyes’s eye is drawn upward to the dark shapes circling above them. Five or six large birds are gliding on the currents, high in the air.

“What are those?” Barr asks, shielding her eyes and staring up at the hovering birds.

“Turkey vultures,” Reyes says. “They probably smell the blood.”