by Shari Lapena
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• • •
when catherine and ted returned home from the awful Easter dinner, they’d binge-watched something on Netflix to take their minds off things. Now, as the closing credits roll upward on the screen, Ted turns to his wife and asks her if she’d like to watch something else. He thinks she still looks too wound up to sleep.
“I’m not tired,” she says.
“Me either. Do you want me to make you a drink?”
She shakes her head dismissively. “No. But you go ahead if you want.”
“I won’t if you don’t.”
“I wonder,” his wife says, “if there was something else Mom wanted to talk to me about.”
He can hear the worry in her voice. What a particularly shitty Easter, he thinks. Ted says patiently, “Why don’t you go over and see her tomorrow? It’s Easter Monday, you’ve got the day off. You can find out then. No point in working yourself up anymore tonight.” But he knows his wife. She’s like a dog with a bone when she’s got something on her mind. She won’t let it go. She gets a bit obsessive about things. Like pregnancy. But he’s heard that many women get like that when they can’t conceive. It’s a fixation with a ticking clock attached.
He thinks about what it’s been like for her the last few months. The cycle monitoring—running into the fertility clinic first thing in the morning, before work. Having her blood taken, her egg follicles monitored. His own role hasn’t been as onerous, only the awkwardness of providing a semen sample for testing. The first three months of cycle monitoring, armed with the knowledge of perfect timing, they had done it the old-fashioned way—at home in bed. But last month they stepped it up. It was the first time they tried artificial insemination. He went in at the appropriate time to provide another sample, but other than that, there wasn’t much for him to do. He hopes it works and these interventions can stop soon, rather than becoming even more intrusive. If nothing else, it’s messing up their sex life.
“I think I’ll just call her,” Catherine says, breaking into his thoughts.
“It’s late, Catherine,” he says. “It’s after eleven.”
“I know, but she won’t be asleep yet. She always reads at night.”
He watches as she picks up her cell phone from the coffee table and calls her mother. He hopes it will be a short, reassuring call, then they can go to bed. But Sheila had said it was important. He tells himself it was probably about selling the house, and there’s nothing else.
“She’s not answering her cell,” Catherine says, turning to him in concern.
“Maybe they’ve gone to bed and she left it downstairs. Try the landline.”
Catherine shakes her head. “No. I don’t want to chance speaking to my father.” She seems to be considering something. “Maybe I should go over there,” she says.
“Catherine, honey,” he protests. “You don’t need to do that. She probably just left her phone somewhere—you know what she’s like.” But Catherine looks worried. “She probably wanted to talk to you about the house,” Ted says. “You can wait till tomorrow.”
But Catherine says, “I think I’ll just pop over there.”
“Really?”
She comes close to him. “I won’t be too long. I just want to talk to Mom, find out whatever it was she wanted to tell me. Otherwise I’ll never be able to sleep.”
Ted sighs. “Do you want me to come with you?” he offers.
She shakes her head and gives him a kiss. “No. Why don’t you go to bed? You look tired.”
He watches her go. Once her car has disappeared down the street, he turns away from the door, and as he passes by on his way upstairs, he notices that she’s left her cell phone on the hall table.
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-so
aked 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.”
8
Irena sits alone in the back seat of a patrol car, hunched over in her spring jacket, trying to get warm. It’s a bright day, but it’s only April and still cool. Or maybe it’s the shock. She’s shivering and she feels nauseated too. She can’t stop thinking about Fred and Sheila. All that blood, the stench of it. The look on Sheila’s face, staring up at her, as if she wanted to say something. Sheila probably knew who her killer was, but she’s not going to be able to tell anyone.
Irena trembles and waits. She notices there is blood on her shoes.
One of the officers opens the car door and pops his head in. “The detectives would like to talk to you now, if that’s all right,” he says.
She nods and gets out of the car. Two people are walking toward her—a tall, dark-haired man, probably about forty, and a woman who is shorter and younger. Both are in plain clothes. Irena swallows nervously.
“Hello,” the man says. “I’m Detective Reyes and this is Detective Barr of Aylesford Police. I understand you found the victims.” She nods. “Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
She nods again, then realizes this is confusing and says, “I don’t mind.” But she is shaking like a leaf.
Reyes turns to Barr and says, “There’s a blanket in the trunk, can you grab it?”
She lopes off, returning with a navy wool blanket, which she drapes over Irena’s shivering shoulders.
“It’s the shock,” Reyes tells her. He raises his eyes to the yard and says, “Why don’t we go sit in the gazebo—we can talk there.”
They make their way across the lawn to the pretty structure, where she settles on a bench, hugging the blanket around her, and faces the two detectives. She used to play in here with the children, a long time ago.
“Can we have your name, please?” Barr asks.
“Irena Dabrowski.” She spells it out, watching the female detective write it down. Irena may have a Polish name but her English is perfect and unaccented. Her parents came here when she was a baby.
“I understand you’re the Mertons’ cleaning lady,” Reyes says. She nods. “How long have you been working for them?”
“A long time,” she begins. “I started when their first child was born. I was a live-in nanny here for many years—till the last child went to school. Then I continued on as housekeeper, and then as their cleaning lady. I come in twice a week now.”
“So you know the family well.”
“Very well. They’re like my own family.” She realizes she should probably be crying, but she just feels numb. Irena breathes in fresh air, trying to dispel the smell of blood.
“It’s okay,” Barr says gently. “Take your time.”
“I just can’t believe it,” she says eventually.
“When was the last time you saw the Mertons alive?” Reyes asks.
“It was on Sunday, at Easter dinner. I was here all-day Saturday, cleaning. They were having the family for Easter, and Sheila wanted the place spotless. I had extra polishing to do. And then I came back on Sunday, to join them for dinner.”
“Who came to dinner?”
“The kids were all there. Catherine, the eldest, and her husband, Ted. Dan, the middle one, and his wife, Lisa. And Jenna, the youngest. She brought a boyfriend. They always come home for holiday meals—it was expected. Usually Fred’s sister, Audrey, comes, too, but she wasn’t there on Sunday.” She looks up at them. “Do the kids know yet?” she asks the detectives. “Have they been told?”
“Not yet,” Reyes says.
“They’ll be absolutely devastated,” she says.
“Will they?” Barr says, looking out from the gazebo to the house, which is worth millions.
What an extraordinarily tactless thing to say, Irena thinks. She glances at Reyes as if to convey this thought to him. Barr doesn’t miss it and she doesn’t seem to mind.
“I imagine they stand to inherit quite a lot of money,” Barr says.
“I suppose so,” Irena agrees coolly.
Reyes says, “So you came here this morning—was it to
clean the house?”
She averts her eyes and looks at the house instead. “Yes. I usually do Mondays and Thursdays, but Monday was a holiday, so I didn’t come in till today.”
“Take us through what happened when you got here. Every step.”
She breathes deeply and exhales. “I drove in at just after ten thirty. It was very quiet, none of the cars were in the driveway. I knocked like I usually do, but no one answered. I let myself in—the door was unlocked, so I assumed they were home.”
“Go on.”
“As soon as I got inside, I noticed the smell and saw the blood in the hallway. I was afraid. I saw the lamp on the floor, and then I saw Sheila.”
“Did you go near her body?”
She nods, remembering. She notices that her hands are still trembling in her lap. “But I didn’t touch her. Then I went to the kitchen, and—I saw him.” She swallows, forcing the bile down.
“Did you go inside the kitchen?” Reyes asks.
She suddenly feels dizzy. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s just that there’s blood on the bottom of your shoes,” Barr says.
She looks at Barr, startled. “I must have—it was so shocking, but yes, I remember now—I walked up to Fred and looked down at him.” She swallows again.
“Did you touch him, or touch anything in the kitchen?” Reyes asks.
She looks at her hands in her lap, turns them over, as if looking for telltale blood. They’re clean. “I don’t think so.”
“You didn’t walk over to the sink?” Reyes presses.
She feels confused now. “Yes—I was afraid I was going to throw up. I did throw up, in the sink. And I washed it down.”
She knows she’s being a little unclear, but what do they expect? She’s never been in this situation before. It’s completely unnerved her.