by Leslie Nagel
His face was set in granite. “I got your back, Chip.”
The Sharpes’ home was a mirror image of the Carpenters’, its side entrance also opening onto a small landing with four steps leading up to the kitchen. More steps ran down to Charley’s left, turning once on their way to the basement, obscuring her view of what lay below. A dim light shone from beyond the turning.
The screaming was definitely coming from down there, but so was something else. The putrid smell of rotting meat hit her forcibly, borne on an updraft of artificially heated air. This had to be what she’d smelled earlier, the danger signal that had set off her internal alarm bells. The cooler outside air had drawn the odor out through the screen door and into the surrounding environment, including the Carpenters’ front yard. It was, she realized with rising dread, an odor she recognized.
“Hello?” Charley called again, although it was doubtful anyone could hear her over the infernal racket. With a final glance at Lawrence, she proceeded carefully down the rickety wooden stairs. As she ducked her head to clear the final joist, she saw Judith Sharpe kneeling on the floor, shaking the prone form of another woman, shaking it so hard, in fact, that the woman’s head was bouncing off the floor. The odor was very strong down here. A large space heater blasted out hot air at full capacity.
“Mrs. Sharpe? Judith!” Charley leaped down the last few steps and pulled her away. When she finally got a clear view of the figure on the floor, she gasped. Horrified, she took in the slack limbs, the staring eyes in a ghastly face, and the neat hole in the lavender flannel nightdress, stained with dried blood, which covered a corresponding hole just below Sarah Weller’s left breast.
Chapter 3
As Charley stared in disbelief at the corpse lying inches from where she knelt, Judith lunged again, braying and clawing at her dead daughter. Charley snapped back to attention. She seized Judith’s shoulders and struggled to hold her back.
“No, Judith! You mustn’t touch her. Lawrence?” she called as the distraught woman shrieked and tried to twist free. “A little help here?”
As Lawrence rushed forward, Judith suddenly went limp. Together they laid her gently on the floor as far away from Sarah as possible, no small feat in the cramped space. Charley grabbed a battered throw pillow from a nearby camp bed to elevate Judith’s head.
“Is she having a seizure?” Lawrence whispered. His eyes slid toward the body once before he averted his face. “Lord have mercy.”
“I think she just fainted. She’s breathing normally. We need to—” Charley heard a small sound. She glanced up to find two small white faces peering over the handrail. “Lawrence,” she whispered in dismay. “Oh, my God.”
Lawrence stood, mounted the stairs, and swept up one twin in each mighty arm. He hesitated, his face a mask of uncertainty. “Chip?”
She waved him away. “Go. Call nine-one-one. I’ll stay here with…them.”
He nodded, then slipped up and out with surprising grace, a gentle giant in a frilly apron, bearing away two tiny witnesses to this scene of death and grief.
Judith lay unmoving, her breathing still labored but fairly regular. In the blessed stillness, as the initial rush of adrenaline started draining away, Charley rose shakily to her feet. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, nearly gagging at the horrible smell, and then deliberately looked down at the body of Sarah Weller.
“I guess you really were in trouble,” she whispered. Through the glaze of death, Sarah’s bicolored eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. Charley felt a wave of guilt. Could she have helped this woman? Possibly prevented whatever had happened to her? And what had happened, exactly? Violent death at the hand of another, that much was obvious. But whose hand had dealt the killing blow? Who had stood in this basement with Sarah, stood face-to-face with her, and stabbed her to death? A stranger? Or someone closer to home?
Stabbing was an intensely intimate way to murder someone, she thought, second only to strangulation. Allowing for variations in arm length, the killer would have stood no more than two feet in front of Sarah, perhaps much closer. Close enough to lean in for a kiss. Or a slap.
Charley hovered between Judith and Sarah, breathing through her mouth and trying to ignore the stench, wishing she could leave but knowing she shouldn’t, not when Judith might regain consciousness and have another fit of hysterics. It might be too late to help Sarah in life, but at least she could help to preserve—
With a start, Charley realized she was standing in the middle of a crime scene. A murder scene, no less, with the victim and a potential suspect lying at her feet. Despite the grim circumstances, her natural curiosity began to kick in. Charley had proved her worth as an excellent witness for the police many times. She often noted details or made vital connections the official investigators missed. With nothing to do but wait for the EMTs, Charley began a detailed visual survey of the room and its occupants.
To her untrained eye—and nose—Sarah seemed to have been dead for many hours. Of course, the heat down here would have accelerated the processes of death. Could that have been deliberate? Charley recalled Sarah’s heavy sweater and icy hands on a warm spring evening. Maybe the poor woman had just preferred her living space extra warm. She was wearing fleece sweatpants under her nightgown, as well as thick, fuzzy socks. Not the attire of a woman who’d been expecting a visitor. She lay on her back, feet near the bottom step, arms outstretched. Charley made a mental note to tell the police that she’d seen Judith move the body.
She glanced at the stairs, where two little boys had crouched moments ago. The side door had been standing open when she arrived. Presumably this was how the killer had gotten in. Unless the killer was already inside the house.
Charley considered what she knew about the current occupants of the Sharpe residence. It wasn’t much. Paxton Sharpe was a man of average height and weight, with short brown hair and brown eyes in a mildly attractive, arrogant face. Charley put his age in the mid-forties. Since December, she’d seen him a handful of times as the two of them returned home or left for work. He’d barely acknowledged her called-out greetings, hustling importantly in and out of his house, eyes fixed on his cellphone in a transparent effort to pretend he hadn’t heard her. Jerk. A young woman driving a beige sedan with government plates occasionally picked him up or dropped him off. She wore the pale blue blouse and navy uniform skirt of the US Air Force. Some sort of aide, Charley assumed, a perk of being a ranking officer, or chief of surgery, or both.
In addition to his status as an air force surgeon, what else did she know about him? Well, she thought, he was prone to voluble fits of temper over trivialities. Had he snapped over a burnt dinner and stabbed his stepdaughter in his own home?
Brandon Sharpe, Paxton’s son from a previous marriage, attended a private military school. He was nineteen, a bit old not to have moved on to college. Trouble with his grades? Charley had no idea what he even looked like, much less how he felt about his stepsister—or about his father, his stepmother, his half-brothers, or anything else for that matter. Cats or dogs? Chocolate or vanilla? Paper or plastic? She’d have to set Brandon aside for the moment.
Judith Sharpe wheezed gently at her feet, still blessedly unconscious. She’d certainly seemed distraught over her daughter’s death, Charley thought. Not that that proved anything. Judith was not an attractive woman. She carried at least thirty extra pounds on a short, stocky frame that contrasted sharply with Sarah’s tall, slender body. Small eyes were set close together in a round, ruddy face with heavy brows, a low forehead, and a stubby chin. Even in repose, the woman’s general air of discontent was written in the deep lines carved around a blunt nose and a small mouth that seemed unused to smiling. Her age was difficult to determine; life had not been kind to that face. Still, she had four-year-old twins. She couldn’t be much older than her mid- forties, could she?
On the other hand, Charley felt certain t
hat Sarah was at least thirty. That would mean Judith had become pregnant at an extremely early age, possibly as young as fourteen or fifteen. Charley gazed at Judith with dawning pity, wondering for the first time whether this woman had had more justification for her unhappiness than anyone knew.
The only other permanent residents of the house were the twins, Henry and Phillip. Charley hadn’t seen much of the boys, although Lawrence, the neighborhood welcome wagon, had managed to engage “Hank and Pippo” in some friendly chitchat. Or at least, he’d chatted with Hank. According to Lawrence, Hank did all the talking. Pippo said nothing, just watched everything with large brown eyes in a pale, delicate face, occasionally whispering to his larger, bolder twin in some unintelligible language all their own.
Lawrence had wondered if the smaller twin might suffer from a learning delay. Apparently they weren’t attending kindergarten or preschool. Perhaps Judith homeschooled them, Charley thought. If Pippo had a disability, that might be the reason. From his bedroom window Lawrence could look down into the backyard next door. As far as he knew, the boys had never had a friend over. It was always just the two of them, kicking a soccer ball or scrambling over the wooden play structure that had appeared shortly after the New Year. No school, no friends. Learning delays or not, Charley thought, that was just plain sad.
That summed up the players in this tragedy; Charley next turned her attention to the setting. Sarah had arrived maybe a week ago. As far as Charley knew, she’d rarely ventured outside. Based on the furnishings and personal effects down here, she’d been living in this basement. How depressing.
Charley turned in a circle, her arms wrapped tightly around herself to avoid accidentally touching anything. Like many prewar homes in this part of Oakwood, the ceiling was low, the stairs were steep, and the windows were high and narrow, providing very little light. But, although the layout and dimensions were identical to the Carpenters’ basement, this room lacked the bright lighting, whitewashed walls, and thick carpet that made Charley’s temporary office so warm and welcoming. The washer, dryer, and furnace took up a third of the space at one end, leaving a room about twelve by fifteen feet. Shelves above the appliances held cleaning supplies and a dusty assortment of hand tools, small jars containing screws and nails, and a cordless drill. Neither Paxton nor Judith struck Charley as being particularly handy. She wondered if Mr. Schmidt had left those things when he moved out.
A couple of hanging bulbs did a poor job of illuminating the remaining space. The concrete floor was partially covered with a threadbare carpet remnant. A few clothes hung from a broom handle jerry-rigged over some pipes. Among a meager handful of practical, drab garments, Charley recognized the brown dress and cardigan sweater Sarah had worn the night they met. Low-heeled brown demi-boots, blue ballet flats, and a pair of sneakers stood in a neat row beneath the clothing.
A sagging camp bed covered in a pink and white quilt had been pushed against the far wall. The bed was neatly made, but the coverlet was rumpled, as if Sarah had been sitting or lying on it. Charley’s butt was nearly touching an old desk placed at right angles to the bed. A brush, comb, and cloth zipper bag Charley assumed contained toiletries were lined up neatly on the scarred surface. Too bad she couldn’t peek inside, she thought; nothing revealed a woman’s secrets like a survey of her medications and cosmetics. A small brown purse hung by its strap from a wooden chair.
The only other object on the desk was a silver laptop computer. The laptop stood open, an extension cord trailing down behind the desk, a small amber light indicating that, despite its blank screen, the machine was still on. Had Sarah been working on something? Charley bit her lip, then gently bumped the desk with her hip. The laptop screen came instantly to life. The desktop image was a photograph of a slightly younger, smiling Sarah. She stood before an artist’s easel containing a half-completed picture; Charley could make out a white farmhouse and the beginnings of a split-rail fence. Sarah’s baggy clothes were splotched and spattered with a rainbow of colors. She held a paintbrush aloft like a torch, as if saluting the photographer.
Charley checked the bar at the bottom of the screen. No applications appeared to be running. However, the cursor arrow was poised over the recycle bin icon, which displayed as empty. Wasn’t that fairly unusual? Charley almost never emptied her own recycle bin, just in case she changed her mind and needed to see a deleted file again. Had someone just deleted something?
Charley’s fingers itched to click open that folder to peek inside Sarah’s purse or cosmetics bag, but her better judgment prevailed. She also longed desperately for the cellphone she’d left sitting on the kitchen counter at home. She yearned to hear Marc’s voice. Even more, she longed to get out of here, away from the terrible smell and the dead woman lying barely three feet away on a scrap of moldy carpet. How long had she been standing here? Was her father okay? Where were Lawrence and the twins? What was taking the EMTs so long?
Suddenly a hand clamped onto her ankle. Charley bit back a scream as Judith clung with an iron grip, nearly pulling her to the floor. She stared up at Charley, or rather through her, eyes wild with the whites showing, muttering strange words in a guttural voice.
“ ‘Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’ ” Judith groaned and then began again: “ ‘Yet he does not leave the guilty…’ ”
Charley didn’t recognize the lines, but it sounded as if the woman might be quoting from the Bible.
“Judith? Can you hear me?” Charley tried to pull her ankle free, without success, her heart pounding as she almost lost her balance again. Judith seemed to come to her senses, and her death grip on Charley’s ankle eased. Charley stared into eyes that were bloodshot but appeared sane enough. “Judith. It’s Charley, from next door. Just lie still, all right?”
“Is she not dead?” Judith struggled to sit up. “Has she not suffered the Lord’s judgment?” she wailed, her voice rising toward hysteria. “Do we not all deserve to suffer?”
“Yes,” Charley bent low and murmured in what she hoped was a soothing tone. “Sarah is gone. I’m so— Wait.” She jerked upright. “What did you say?”
Judith screamed and then fainted again, her oddly phrased questions echoing in Charley’s ears. She realized she’d just encountered the same strange, old-fashioned syntax that very day. What were the chances that was a coincidence?
She finally heard sirens approaching, and a few moments later Camille Bronsen and Mitch Cooper clattered down the wooden stairs, both dressed in EMT field blues and ball caps, both laden with emergency gear. Upon seeing Charley they stopped short in surprise, even as they grimaced at the strong odor. Charley pointed.
“Sarah Weller, dead from an apparent stab wound. I haven’t seen a weapon. This one is Judith Sharpe, her mother. She’s fainted, but it might’ve been a seizure.” Charley blew out a long breath. “I am very, very glad to see you two.”
Because the Oakwood Safety Department was fully integrated, with all personnel cross- trained and rotated through police, fire, and EMT duties, she’d had no idea who would respond to this 911 call. As luck would have it, Mitch and Camille had assisted Marc on several major investigations, including two recent murder cases in which Charley had been intimately involved. She’d come to know them well, and in Marc’s absence, she knew she could trust these two to do things properly.
Camille stepped around Sarah and dropped to her knees beside Judith, her large capable hands checking for vital signs. “Judith? Can you hear me?” she said loudly, even as she removed a small ampoule from her gear and cracked it beneath Judith’s nose.
As she worked, Mitch turned his attention to the corpse. “Is there any possibility that the perp is still in the house?” he asked.
Charley stared in shock. “I have no idea. The side door’s been standing open, Judith and her chil
dren just got home a few minutes ago…”
Without another word, Mitch dropped his gear and headed back up the steps at a trot, hand hovering over his sidearm. She could hear him speaking into his radio as his footfalls creaked across the kitchen floor overhead. Her stomach clenched as she considered that Sarah’s murderer might’ve been in the house with her this entire time.
“Victim is unresponsive at the scene. We need to transport. I’m going to need some muscle.” Camille keyed off her radio and glanced up at Charley. “I can’t get her to wake up. Does she have a history of seizures? And what’s with the heater? It reeks down here.”
“I didn’t want to turn it off. I didn’t touch anything except Judith. And I’m afraid I don’t know anything about her medical history.”
Camille stood and unplugged the heater with gloved fingers. Mitch came back down the stairs as another officer, Brad Landry, entered through the side door lugging a backboard. Together the three of them strapped an unconscious Judith down, then Camille and Landry maneuvered the board up and outside, where an ambulance waited to take Judith to the emergency room. Charley heard car doors slamming and the sound of a siren receding.
“There’s no one else in the house.” Mitch pulled out a smartphone and began typing notes. “Who else lives here?”
Charley ran down the family members and their convoluted relationships, and included the fact that Lawrence had taken the twins next door. Mitch tapped away as she spoke. To her surprise, he then began snapping pictures and shooting video with his phone.
“Won’t the lab techs do that?”
“They will,” he said. “But phone cameras are so powerful, and since every interaction with a scene compromises evidence, first responders are supposed to document what we can.” He glanced down at Sarah. “The coroner and an investigator are on their way.”