Tom’s older brothers were away at college, and it would be a while before his father got home from work at the hospital (and started asking about the untouched homework in Tom’s backpack). For the next precious hour, the boy had the TV and one of the decisive battles of World War II all to himself. He just hadn’t counted on interference from the civilian directly upstairs: Shirlee, who continued obliviously sawing the vacuum cleaner back and forth. Though Tom loved the portly, caring Shirlee, right now her kindness was forgotten and he felt only annoyance. Couldn’t she have done her noisy cleaning while he was at school?
Gritting his teeth, Tom prepared to refocus his aim when—incredibly—the doorbell buzzed.
“No way!” he roared. He tried to ignore the sound and gripped the controller tighter. But, again, the buzzer ricocheted through the huge house—this time more insistently.
“Shirlee!” Tom cried. “Can you get that? Please!”
At last, the vacuum cleaner mercifully stopped and Tom heard Shirlee’s tired tread as she walked to the front door. Turning his attention back to the game, Tom repositioned himself but then immediately heard loud voices. It sounded like some kind of argument, and then someone shouted. Heavy footsteps began walking back and forth overhead.
Suddenly, a loud thump of the floor was followed by a strange sound—a kind of muffled cry.
The boy cocked his head and listened. Frowning, he put his joystick down and then he heard another odd sound—almost like someone clearing their throat. And although it wasn’t a spoken word, Tom knew immediately that it was Shirlee. And that something was wrong—seriously wrong.
Tom stood and quietly went up the stairs. He paused at the top. Now, he didn’t hear a thing except for the game’s noises downstairs. But then he turned to look down the main hallway.
A man was standing there, a small man that Tom didn’t know. And he wasn’t exactly standing, he was swaying in the hall outside of the kitchen. His eyes were red-rimmed and very black, and his face was streaked with sweat although it was a mild spring day. Though Tom had never seen one in real life, his immediate thought was that this was a drunk person. A drunk man in a dirty coat was standing in the middle of his house!
Tom was so astonished he almost laughed. But then he saw Shirlee.
Kind, caring Shirlee—lying in a crumpled heap at the man’s feet. Blood everywhere.
And then he saw the knife in the man’s hand.
The scream that Tom let out seemed to startle the intruder, who blinked several times in rapid succession. In a flash, Tom bolted toward the front door—he was there almost before he was even conscious of running.
The man hurled his body forward and grabbed Tom’s shoulder. He yanked the boy backward and took a crushing grip of the top of his head. He roughly steered Tom into the dining room.
Tom yelped in panic. WHAT was happening? As he struggled, the man shoved him against the sleekly polished dining room table. The boy cried out, “HEL—”
His cry was cut off as the man’s hands went over his mouth. Tom fought wildly, grunting and twisting his body to and fro, trying to knock things off of the table. Through his terror and shock, he suddenly felt something hard and cold press against his throat. Then, strange spots began dancing in front of his eyes.
A wave of darkness started to wash over him. Through it, Tom was dimly aware that—off in a distance that seemed impossibly far away—the noisy Xbox effects coming from the television had abruptly stopped.
His game was over. The battle had been lost.
Chapter 2
Later, he would wish that something had looked wrong from the outside of the house. Some alarming telltale sign—a shattered window pane, the front door gaping open, a maroon stain on the front step—anything that might have helped prepare him.
But as the blue twilight fell and Dr. William Hunter pulled up to his two-story brick house, everything looked perfect, particularly its impeccably manicured lawn. All of the residents of the historic Dundee neighborhood took pride in keeping up their homes’ appearance, and the Hunters were no different. As the doctor glanced appreciatively over the front of the house, the only element out of place was the red Taurus parked in the driveway: Shirlee’s car. What was she still doing there, he wondered with a look at the dashboard clock. It was just after five p.m., and Shirlee usually left promptly at four thirty, as she had her own family to attend to.
The doctor sighed with mild exasperation. If Tom had made that poor overworked woman stay late to make him something special for dinner, he’d have to have a talk with his son. And with his housekeeper; she indulged the boy far too much. But as he got out of his car, Hunter found that he was smiling. He knew damned well that he was often just as guilty of giving in to Tom. How could he not? Tom had been an unexpected child, eight years younger than his nearest brother; it was almost inevitable that he would be a tad spoiled. Plus, he was simply a fantastic kid. Tom’s energy and enthusiasm for everything kept his white-haired and bearded fifty-five-year-old father feeling young.
Dr. Hunter opened the front door and glanced down at the elaborately carved console table; a stack of mail was piled on the glossy marble top. As he casually flicked through the bills and advertisements, the tinny sound of gunfire mixed with bombastic music suddenly came up from the basement. Tom was clearly playing a video game instead of doing his homework.
“Hey, Tom!” Hunter yelled from the hall. “Can ya pause the Normandy invasion and say hello to your tired dad?”
There was no response, just that same gunfire and music. It stopped for a moment, then started right back up. It seemed to be on a loop, as though the game was stuck on its program menu. The repetition was irritating.
“Hey, Tom, come on!” Hunter yelled again. Shuffling the bills, he turned slightly and almost walked into the vacuum cleaner that was standing in the middle of the hallway. How very unlike Shirlee to have just left it here, he thought. Sloppy, even. Hunter liked a tightly run home. He might really have to have a talk with his housekeeper after all.
Heading toward the kitchen, Hunter’s gaze was caught by something up ahead at the end of the hallway: a dark pool of some kind of liquid. Now what was that? A spilled cola? Why hadn’t it been cleaned up?
“Shirlee!” he called out. “Hey, what’s going on around—”
As he approached, he saw that there were more stains, a spray of them across the walls.
And on the floor lay Shirlee Sherman, facedown, covered in blood.
Hunter gasped and froze on the spot.
It was only the video game music starting up again that startled him into panic.
Tom. Where is Tom?
He pivoted around and inadvertently stepped on something that gave a loud crunch. He moved his foot and saw that they were oval-shaped glasses.
Tom’s glasses.
Hunter lunged toward the basement door, but before he got there his eye was caught by something off to the side in the dining room.
He saw it was another body.
He saw that it was his son.
His eleven-year-old son, Thomas Hunter.
The images came in such quick succession they almost knocked the doctor over. It was too much to take in all at once, yet he had no choice. He had to process that he was standing in the hallway of his home staring at the bent over body of his son.
Hunter raced over and dropped to his knees. He grabbed Tom’s wrist and desperately started checking for a pulse, but some part of him—the pathologist with decades of experience behind him—was fully aware that the boy was dead.
And then, an instant later, he saw the awful confirmation of that fact.
On the other side of his son’s throat, sticking out at an almost perfect forty-five-degree angle, was a long, glinting kitchen knife.
Chapter 3
Every face in the crowd turned to look and then stare—some stared with curiosity, some with suspicion, many with fear.
Detective Derek Mois was used to it. A craggily handsome m
an with short copper-colored hair and a weightlifter’s neck, Mois’s physical presence commanded attention. He was often called “Jarhead” by his friends, even though he hadn’t served in the military. He didn’t mind; it was a useful front when dealing with unruly mobs and potential suspects. And the tattoos on both of his forearms provided good backup.
Mois wove his unmarked car past the gaping onlookers and television camera vans. He couldn’t help but compare this crime scene to those he’d seen in Omaha’s lesser neighborhoods. Even the prospect of a juicy murder rarely lured all three local TV stations out to the dicier areas. And most of the time, the residents were too afraid to come out and see what was happening. Or, they just didn’t want to get involved. There had been five murders in Omaha already that year, but none had occurred in an upscale suburb like this one.
Probably for that very reason, it looked like nearly every resident of the historic district was milling about in front of Dr. William Hunter’s home. Mois had to steer around five flashing patrol cars and two ambulances huddled closely together in front of the house. The usually tranquil neighborhood was so congested that the closest available parking spot was four doors down.
Walking back up the street, it seemed to Mois that this crowd’s mood was almost festive. Everyone gathered on the street was excitedly talking, mostly on top of each other.
“It was a burglary, right?”
“We’ve been overdue. The last robbery I can remember in Dundee was in 2005.”
“No, that guy over there said this is a domestic abuse situation.”
“William and Claire Hunter? Are you crazy? They’re doctors, for goodness sake!”
“They’re married, aren’t they? Even doctors can fight.”
“No, no—it’s something to do with one of the boys. A drug overdose.”
Mois ruefully shook his head. So much misinformation out there, and it spread so quickly nowadays thanks to the Internet and smartphones.
The police had cordoned off the perimeter around the house, but one of the junior officers recognized the detective with a nod and let him through. Lights blazed out of the house’s graceful front windows; Mois thought the scene looked as lit up as a movie premiere. A balding, jowly cop with a thick gray mustache was guarding the door.
“Hey, Matt,” Mois said. “Big night, huh?”
“Big understatement,” the older man replied with a snort. “It’s like election night at the governor’s mansion.”
Mois looked over the elegantly appointed home. “Swanky digs. What do we have? Hedge-fund manager take a bullet from a pissed off investor?”
“Nah, this one’s bad, Mois,” the cop said with a deep sigh. “Middle-aged woman and a kid, no more than ten years old.”
“Here?” Mois exclaimed. “What, some kind of family dispute?”
“No idea,” Matt shrugged. “They don’t tell me nuthin’.”
Clapping the other man on the shoulder, Mois entered the house. A swarm of officers and technicians were clustered together at the end of a long hallway. Mois approached and saw that the group was surrounding a short, stout woman curled up on the floor in a near fetal position. She looked to be in her late fifties and was wearing hot pink sweat pants and a light blue shirt, now accented with splashes of bright red blood.
Bending over the body was a petite woman in her mid-thirties wearing a face mask and plastic gloves. She glanced up through her stylish designer glasses at Mois and beckoned with a nod of her head for him to crouch down next her.
“Dr. Allen,” Mois said formally. He’d encountered medical examiner Jane Allen on a few crime scenes and recalled that she was all business, all the time.
“Good evening, Detective,” the doctor answered back just as formally. “Victim number one: Shirlee Sherman, housekeeper. Discovered by the homeowner, William Hunter, a doctor and professor at Creighton University. He’s outside.”
With a furrowed brow, Mois leaned in closer and noted that the bloodstains were concentrated around the woman’s upper body. In the middle of her throat, a long knife had been stuck nearly to the hilt.
“All the wounds are in her neck?” he asked.
Dr. Allen nodded. “At least ten. We’ll get the exact number at the autopsy. Looks like killer was aiming for the carotid artery.”
Mois let out a low whistle. “Brutal, leaving the knife in the body like that. Haven’t seen that signature before.”
“Well, you’re about to see it again,” Dr. Allen said curtly as she stood up and removed her face mask. “The second victim is in the dining room.”
As the two moved away from the cluster, the detective glanced down and saw a yellow evidence marker on the floor; it pointed to a pair of broken eyeglasses—so small that they had to belong to a child.
“Brace yourself,” Dr. Allen warned, seeing Mois pause at the chilling sight. “It doesn’t get much worse than this.”
Chapter 4
Dr. Allen’s point was well taken.
Though Mois had seen plenty of gruesome murder scenes, this one seemed both savage and coolly executed.
The boy was twisted over on his side, facedown on the rug. In his shorts and striped T-shirt, he looked like pretty much any other skinny, slightly awkward preadolescent boy. In fact, Mois was immediately struck by how much Tom Hunter resembled his own son, Danny. Though there was a pool of blood to one side of the body, the wounds visible on the child’s throat looked eerily neat and precise. The savage aspect was the glinting knife sticking out from the child’s neck; to Mois, it looked like a macabre Halloween costume prosthetic.
“Five wounds total,” Dr. Allen said. “Same location.”
“Who could do this to a kid?” Mois wondered with disgust.
Dr. Allen gave a small, bitter shrug.
As a group of technicians took swabs off the corpse and a photographer documented the area, Mois looked back and forth at the position of Tom’s body relative to the housekeeper’s.
“So…it looks like the killer came in from the back of the house and attacked the housekeeper first?” he asked.
“Got me; that’s your area,” the examiner said. “But it seems more likely the killer came in by the front door. The vacuum cleaner was in the middle of the hall, like the housekeeper was cleaning when he entered. No signs of forced entry in either the back or front, so it’s probable she let him in.”
“Or the boy let him in,” Mois countered.
“Mmmm. He was playing a video game in the basement. Would your son leave his game to answer the door?”
Mois gave a rueful nod. “Good point. So…if he came in the front, he would have had to make his way to the kitchen to get the knives. Maybe he came through the front door without either of them being aware?”
They both mused on the possibilities for a moment. Then Mois asked, “In whatever order, why kill an eleven-year-old boy and a middle-aged woman? Any signs of sexual assault on either?”
“Doesn’t look like it. I’ll show you the basement.”
Mois and Dr. Allen again walked past the housekeeper’s body. As they moved down the hall, Mois noted the opulent home’s luxurious silk drapes and gold-flecked embossed wallpaper. He couldn’t help but wonder how much a house like this listed for.
Glancing into the kitchen, Mois saw another yellow evidence marker: an expensive-looking knife set was prominently displayed on the counter. Two knives were missing. Allen nodded toward them.
“It doesn’t look like the killer came prepared for attack. He used what he could find. But there aren’t any signs of ransacking,” Dr. Allen said with puzzlement. “And the housekeeper’s purse was sitting on the counter right there. With eight hundred dollars in her wallet.”
She opened a hallway door and they went down into the basement. It was a comfortably furnished den with a big sofa and two leather club chairs. Yet another technician was at work. She lifted a dismantled Xbox console from the television and placed it carefully into a plastic evidence bag.
“The
rest of the house is just as immaculate as this room,” Dr. Allen noted. “Looks like Mrs. Sherman was just about finished with her work…”
Mois took it all in and then, with a long, pained sigh, turned to Dr. Allen. She gave him a knowing nod—this time it was just a little less businesslike.
“You can only put it off for so long,” she said sympathetically.
“Yeah…Time to talk to the father.”
Chapter 5
Dr. Hunter kept trying to look away from the bloodstains on his hands. And on his shirt. And on his pants. He forced himself to stare at the red and blue flashing lights on top of the police cars but, eventually, his gaze would drop back down.
As he sat in the back of an ambulance, a paramedic tried to put a blanket over his shoulders. He shrugged it off. It wouldn’t help. There was nothing the paramedics could do, there was nothing anyone could do.
His beloved youngest son, Tom, had been brutally attacked and was lying inside the house, dead. This was the cold hard fact. And the only thing Hunter could do was try to find some way to accept that awful reality and make some sense of it—an impossible task.
His wife, Claire, had been away on an “alone time” holiday in Hawaii. He had imagined her coming back relaxed, happy, her skin tanned and glowing. Her time swimming in the ocean might have given her light-brown hair some honey-colored streaks. What would she look like when she got off the plane now?
“Dr. Hunter?”
A man stood in front of him. A handsome, tough-looking man.
“I’m Detective Derek Mois,” he said. Hunter thought that this guy had a real take-control kind of look, which gave the doctor a sudden jolt of hope—though just what there was to hope for at this point he couldn’t say.
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