by Alex MacLean
Dana began sobbing. “Lily is gone, Seth. She’s gone.”
“She’s not gone. What do you mean she’s gone? She was playing in her room. I went out for an hour. I came back and she’s not here. She must be in the attic. It’s the only place I haven’t looked.”
“Seth, do you even hear yourself?”
“She’s not gone. She was here.”
Dana sniffed, and her voice took on a plaintive tone. “Seth, please listen to me. Please. Please. You can’t admit it to yourself. Maybe it’s too painful for you to accept. Maybe you created this false reality because you can’t cope. I don’t know. But Lily died the night those men broke into your house.”
The words crawled up his arms and neck, prickling his skin like they had tiny claws. He found it hard to catch his breath. Pain ripped through his chest.
“No, no, no.”
“She did, Seth. She did.”
“No, no, no.”
“They think she fell in her room trying to run away and bumped her head. The doctors at the hospital couldn’t stop the bleeding in her brain.”
“Bullshit!” he screamed, and the scream echoed throughout the house.
“I’m sorry,” Dana said. “It’s true.”
“You’re lying. She was just here. She—”
“Seth. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”
“What? What isn’t?”
“Lily. Camille. What happened that night. There was nothing you could’ve done.”
Seth blinked at the sweat dripping into his eyes. He felt himself shaking uncontrollably, the strength flooding out of his legs. He dropped his knees to the floor.
Dana said, “I’m calling Dr. Somerville.”
Seth gripped the phone so hard he could hear the plastic crack. “No, don’t you call him. Nobody is getting in here. Nobody. Understand?”
“He helped you before.”
“I’m not going back to the hospital. Don’t call him. Don’t betray me like that.”
“Then I’m coming up there.”
Seth perked up. “Don’t. It’s not safe.”
“What?”
“I don’t want something to happen to you. Just stay away. Please.”
Dana fell quiet for a brief moment.
“Seth, take your medication,” she said. “For me. It’ll calm you down. Make this all go away.”
He realized he had to convince her not to come. What if Higgins returned with his buddies? What if they hurt Dana?
“You’re right,” he said. “I never took my pills today. That’s probably it. I need them.”
“Take them, Seth.”
“I will. Going to right now.”
“I’m still coming up there—”
“No.”
“Tomorrow. Right after work. You hear me?”
Just not tonight, he prayed.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s fine.”
“I’m going to call you in two hours. Answer the phone. I want to make sure you’re well. If you don’t answer, I’m coming up.”
“I’ll answer.”
“I love you, li’l brother.”
“Love you too.”
Seth clicked off the phone, and it fell out of his hand.
Dana stood over his bed in the ICU. Her eyes were red, swollen, and ravaged. Hank, her husband, lowered his head with a solemn expression etched in his face. He folded his hands in front of him.
“Seth,” Dana said. “I need to tell you something.”
“What?”
“It’s Lily.”
Seth felt his chest flutter. “What? She’s okay, right?”
Dana took his hand, and he could feel the tremble in her fingers. Her face crumpled as she fought to get the words out.
“She died, Seth. Five days ago. You were in such bad shape, we didn’t have the heart to tell you.”
Seth vomited on the kitchen floor until his throat burned and his stomach ached. Then he hugged himself and wept.
He wept, rocking back and forth.
He wept, calling Lily’s name over and over again.
55
Halifax, November 25, 2009
2:47 a.m.
They had Oakland Road blocked off. A uniformed officer, standing at his car, waved Allan through. Straight ahead, the red-and-blue strobe of other police cars glanced off the night sky. Allan stomped on the gas and gunned it up the road. He parked behind the Special Investigations Unit.
The scene was a two-story family home with a breezeway and double-car garage. There was a dark patch of bushes below the living room window. Frost covered the deep lawn, and it looked undisturbed.
Allan sat in his car for a minute, watching those already at work. One officer strung up barrier tape around the property. Another stood on the front steps of the house next door, talking to a woman. Good. The canvass had started.
For the first time, Allan realized how much darker it was in this part of the neighborhood compared to the rest of it. Looking around, he spotted the burned-out streetlight across the road and shook his head. That would have to be addressed with the city. Probably why the house had been targeted. Neighbors and passersby had reduced visibility of the place.
Allan glanced up at the stars peppering the sky. Then he took out his notebook and wrote: Arrival, 02:47. Clear. −7° C. Roads dry.
Stepping out of the car, he breathed in a deep lungful of crisp November air and exhaled it as steam. Dead leaves skittered past his shoes, chased by a sudden gust of wind.
Popping the trunk, he grabbed two pairs of latex gloves from his homicide kit and slipped them on, one over the other. Next, he took out his camera and photographed a 360-degree view of the property and surrounding area. He made sure to capture the burned-out streetlight.
When he finished, he collected a mask and a pair of Tyvek shoe covers, tucked them under his arm, and closed the trunk. At the corner of his eye, he saw flashes of a camera. ID tech Jim Lucas appeared under the breezeway, snapping pictures of the back door frame. He was dressed in full protective coveralls.
Allan called out to him, “What’d you find?”
Jim glanced over. “Pry marks.”
Allan noted the dark outside light above the doorway. “Is there a motion sensor on that?”
Jim looked up. “Nope.” He stepped inside the house, came out again two seconds later. “They had it turned off.”
“Damn.”
“I hear ya.”
“So, we’re using the front as our entry point?”
“Yep.” Jim said. “Malone’s there.”
Sergeant Malone briefed Allan on the duties that had started and what was known so far. Camille Connors, twenty-nine, still lay in the master bedroom. The medical examiner had been notified. There had been two survivors, both of them rushed to the hospital.
First officers had found the back door wide open. The front door was closed but unlocked. Only two lights were on—the lamp in the living room and the hall light upstairs.
Allan wrote several lines in his notebook. He looked around the living room. It had been ransacked. Framed pictures thrown on the floor. Outerwear pulled from the closet. An entertainment center stripped of whatever electronics it had held.
As Allan’s gaze settled on a Barbie dollhouse across the room, he got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Who were the survivors?” he asked.
“Seth Connors,” Malone said. “Thirty years old. He’s a firefighter with Station Four. Officer Henley recognized him.”
“What’s his condition?”
“Bad. Paramedics didn’t think he’d make it. He had multiple stab wounds.”
Allan turned to Malone. “Was he conscious?”
Malone shook his head. He pointed up the staircase that climbed a wall to the second floor.
“They found him lying in the hallway,” he said.
“Who’s the second person?”
Malone licked his lips. He slanted his eyebrows upward and hooked a t
humb on his gun belt. He seemed to have trouble spitting it out, and Allan swore he glimpsed a spark of emotion in the sergeant’s deadpan eyes.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Her name is Lily,” Malone said in a tight voice. “Henley thinks she’s around four years old. My granddaughter’s age.”
Allan felt the words drive nails through his heart. He didn’t want to hear any more. Dealing with the brutality adults imposed upon each other was one thing. Dealing with the grief of a child tragedy was a whole other issue. Nothing prepared him for it. Nothing.
“Don’t tell me she was stabbed too?”
Malone shook his head. “No, no. They found her unconscious on the bedroom floor. She had a gash on the side of her head. There.” He tapped a finger on his right temple. “It looked like she had tried to get out of her bed too fast and fell, banging her head off the corner of a night table on the way down. Her feet were tangled up in the blankets.”
Allan clenched his jaw and shook his head. “Spooked, maybe.”
“That’s my guess.”
“Did the paramedics say anything about her condition?”
“Not a word.”
“Who rode shotgun with them?”
“Henley went in the father’s ambulance. Officer Bowden went with the daughter.”
Allan said, “Just in case they forget, contact both officers and make sure they ask the doctors to remove the victim’s clothing intact, if possible.”
Malone reached for his mike. “Ten-four.”
Allan slipped on his mask and shoe covers then worked his way upstairs. He noticed a bloody right handprint on the banister and a left one on top of the newel post. Smears and smudges of blood covered a patch of hall floor by the stairs. Cast-off had sprayed the left wall nearby. It looked like a struggle had ensued. Bloody fingers had swiped the light switch, leaving behind four long marks across the plate and drywall.
Allan captured everything on his camera. With careful steps, he went to the bedroom on the right. He saw a red swipe across the outer door casing and part of the wall, as if something bloody had brushed past.
ID tech Harvey Doucette took measurements inside the room. He wore head-to-toe coveralls and a HEPA respirator.
Camille Connors lay on her right hip by the dresser, one leg bent over the other. Her right arm extended across the floor; the other rested atop her waist.
Allan’s gaze settled on the gaping wound across her throat, and he winced with disgust.
“Cold,” he whispered.
The room had been ransacked. A cedar jewelry box lay upside down on the floor.
“Looks like the male was initially attacked in bed,” Harvey said.
Allan looked at the blood-soaked bed sheets, at the bloody hand trail leading to Camille’s body.
“He went to his wife,” he said.
“Called 9-1-1 from here.” Harvey pointed to the phone on the night table. It was off the hook; the handset dangled by the cord.
Allan nodded. His gaze moved up to the bloody finger marks on the windowsill. He wondered if Seth Connors had looked outside. With it being so dark, how much would he have been able to see?
Harvey said, “He made it out to the end of the hallway. That’s where they found him.”
“Looks like he tussled with someone there. Unless the paramedics caused all that mess moving him.”
“Officers said they were careful.”
“Let’s hope,” Allan said.
He left Harvey to his work. As he walked down the hall to a bedroom at the end, he saw an object on the floor just outside the open doorway. He dropped to a squat over a small pink pillow with a ribbon for hanging. Embroidery on the front read, The Princess sleeps here.
Allan took a picture of it, then he rose to his feet and stepped into the bedroom. A butterfly nightlight cast a dim glow. Was Lily afraid of the dark, of monsters under the bed, of sleeping alone?
Allan flipped the light switch. The room was painted in soft shades of pink and purple. There were stuffed animals everywhere. Stickers of castles, princesses, and fairies covered the far wall. Big letters, coated in sparkles, hung over the bed. They spelled Lily.
Allan looked at the tiny white nightstand by the bed. He winced when he saw a spot of blood on the carpet.
Three hours later, while out canvassing Oakland Road, he received a call from Malone. Lily Connors had died on the operating table. Doctors had found hemorrhaging in her brain and couldn’t get it under control.
Allan thought he was going to be sick. When he returned to the crime scene, he witnessed Malone, a veteran sergeant who was as tough as nails, break down in tears.
An hour after that, word came back about Seth Connors. Due to the severity of his wounds and the length of his surgery, doctors had induced coma. The next forty-eight to seventy-two hours were critical.
Allan found himself wondering what man, what father would want to come back to this.
HALIFAX, JUNE 18, 2010
8:46 p.m.
Allan pulled his car into Seth’s driveway and parked beside a blue Mazda. For a moment, he sat there, looking over the black security grilles covering every window in the house, even the ones on the top floor. He noticed motion lights over the back door under the breezeway.
Was this his man? Had Seth Connors murdered Todd Dory and Blake Kaufman? Were those two responsible for that deadly home invasion here? Was Lee Higgins involved too?
Allan stepped out of the car and began walking toward the back door. His cell phone rang. It was Constable Weisberg.
“I think I lost him, Detective,” he said.
“What? Who, Higgins?”
“Yeah.”
Allan stopped. “What happened?”
Weisberg breathed into the phone. “I followed his car for nearly an hour. All over Halifax, Bedford, Fall River, Dartmouth. I mean, the guy was just driving around. Going nowhere. I started to get suspicious and had Patrol pull him over. Just a routine stop. Nothing to give us away. Turns out it’s not Higgins inside.”
“Who is it?”
“Colton Reynolds,” Weisberg said. “A friend of his.”
Allan mulled that over. “He might’ve been a decoy.”
“Don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know how he saw me. I was careful.”
“Where are you now?”
“Coming across the old bridge.”
“So, we don’t know if Higgins is home or not?”
“Sorry, Detective.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Allan said. “Let me know if you manage to see him tonight.”
“I will.”
Allan hung up, staring at three brass locks in the back door of Seth Connors’s house. He heard the scrape of a footstep behind him, but before he could turn around, the cold muzzle of a gun dug into the skin behind his ear. He felt his phone being slipped from his fingers.
“Move,” a voice said, “and you’re dead.”
56
Halifax, June 18
8:49 p.m.
The shudders had stopped. The tears had stopped. And Seth sat there on the living room floor, drained of emotion. He felt dead, an empty shell of skin and bones.
He saw Lily on the other side of the room, sitting her Barbies around a little kitchen table inside her toy townhouse. Every so often, she looked over at him and smiled. Oh, Christ, she had the most beautiful smile. Just like Camille’s.
Seth stared at her for a long time. Then he squeezed his eyes shut and leaned his head back against the wall behind him.
Dr. Somerville had been right—posttraumatic stress could do nasty shit to your brain. Alter your sense of reality. Make you hear things. Make you see things that weren’t there. Make you wake up screaming at night. Throw your mind into complete turmoil.
But the mental fog had lifted, and everything was clear now. Seth realized he had avoided facing Lily’s death by creating a false world where she remained alive and he protected her. Protected her from the monsters and predators lurking b
eyond these walls. Protected her from the men in scary masks. It was the only way he could cope with the guilt tearing him apart. He had let the ugliness of the world come into his house and steal away his baby.
And when he opened his eyes again, Lily was gone. Gone like she should be. Her Barbies sat around their little table, having tea and cookies, or whatever her imagination had had them doing when she last played with them so many months ago.
The phone rang, and Seth looked at the clock on the wall, 8:56. It would be Dana, he knew, calling to check on him. Late by an hour.
At the fifth ring, the answering machine kicked in. Camille’s haunting voice on the recorded message sounded in the room, and it bristled the hairs on the back of his neck. He felt fresh emotion swelling in his chest.
Dana’s voice shot over Camille’s. “Seth, are you there?” she said. “Pick up, please. Pick up. Pick up. Seth. Pick—”
The beep cut her off.
Seth knew he’d better return her call before she hopped in her car and headed for Halifax.
He got to his feet and went into the kitchen. His pills were scattered all over the counter. A glass lay broken in the sink.
He picked the cordless phone off the floor where he’d dropped it earlier. As he began punching Dana’s number, he noticed a car roll up in front of the house. It was black with tinted windows and bronze rims. The emblem by the door belonged to Saturn.
He set the phone down by the sink, staring out through the window. He noticed a navy-blue Impala parked on the other side of the Mazda he’d rented. Two men appeared in the driveway, one walking close and a little behind the other. The man in the lead wore a khaki sport coat and black pants.
“Stanton,” Seth whispered.
Fingers trembling, he gripped the edge of the counter. The man in back of him was the guy he’d seen earlier at Higgins’s place—the one wearing the black do-rag. He had on a black leather coat with both hands tucked into the pockets.
They walked down the driveway and over to the Saturn. Opening the back door, Stanton seemed hesitant getting in. Do-rag prodded him inside and climbed into the backseat next to him.