Page 7

Yellow and black and striped – angry wasp colors – from one hedge to the other, blocking off the driveway, only a glimpse of the house beyond.

CRIME SCENE – DO NOT ENTER.

A cop was posted in front of the tape, screwing his eyes to stare at the approaching cars.

The chief and Jack Finney pulled up ahead, lowering a window to speak to the cop. He nodded, unhooking one side of the tape, letting it fly free, slithering against the road before he rolled it up.

Jack stuck his arm out the open window, beckoned them to follow.

Luke did, releasing the handbrake and rolling forward.

Silent. Silent the whole way. Jet had ridden with him from the hospital, couldn’t face the way Mom wept and the way Dad stared, carrying a guilt that wasn’t his.

Luke had never been the better option, but today he was, and Jet met his silence with her own.

He could learn to breathe quieter, though.

Their parents were following behind, too close, pulling up and parking beside them. A driveway this big and there was hardly any space, white vans and dark vans and police squad cars all boxed around Jet’s blue truck, trapping it there.

The red-and-white front door was wide open, a rectangular mouth mid-scream, burping human shapes in white plastic suits, blue gloves and blue masks and blue shoe coverings, only a band of flesh around their eyes to prove they were people at all.

In and out. Paper and plastic bags marked up with thick pen that Jet couldn’t read from here, passing them over to disembodied gloved hands waiting inside the vans.

Jack Finney stepped out of the squad car, so Jet did the same, avoiding her parents’ eyes as they emerged too, the twin slams of the car doors burrowing into her chest. She looked ahead.

The house Dad had built with love and hard work and a fuck load of money, and now another daughter had died here too.

Could it ever be a home again, now that it had been a murder scene?

Jack sidestepped the narrow pathways between vehicles, walking back over to Jet.

She pulled the toggle tighter on her gray sweatpants, the cuffs rolled up but still dragging on the ground.

Luke’s. The spare gym stuff he kept in his car: sweatpants and a hoodie that swamped Jet. Smelled a little stale too.

‘The crime scene techs will be finished soon,’ Jack said, looking down the line of Masons all the way to Luke, back to Jet. ‘About an hour or so. Then we can get the cleaners in. They’ve already been called, waiting down the street until we’re ready. Get your house back.’

Mom sniffed, her eyes red raw.

Jack looked at her, opened his mouth, but nothing came out, just a glimpse of his bottom teeth. He turned back to Jet.

‘You said you wanted to see it? You sure?’

Jet nodded, jaw tight and creaking.

‘It’s …’ Jack hesitated. ‘There’s a lot of blood. Even some of the officers can’t –’

‘– I want to see it,’ Jet said, rolling up her sleeves to uncover her hands. ‘Please.’

Someone was walking over to them. A person with a face not made of white-and-blue plastic. Detective Ecker, already here, pulling off his shoe coverings.

‘Jet. They said you wanted to see the scene before it’s cleared. I really would advise against that, but if you want, I can take you around now.’

‘I want Billy’s da– Sergeant Finney to,’ Jet said, standing taller, still the shortest person here.

Jack knew her and she knew him, so maybe he’d tell her more than this stranger would, protocol forgotten because he’d known her since she was in diapers.

He couldn’t even escape the crime scene when he went home, his front windows facing it. Maybe that’s why he looked so tired.

The detective studied Jack for a moment. ‘OK, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘No need for full PPE, everything’s bagged. They’re just taking the last photos now. Shoe coverings only. And don’t touch anything until the scene is released.’

‘Detective.’ Jack bowed his head once. ‘Come on, Jet.’

‘Luke.’ Detective Ecker turned to her brother. ‘I know you must be tired, but I didn’t get a chance to take your statement at the hospital. Can I talk to you now?’

Luke coughed but didn’t catch it, something Mom hated. ‘Sure,’ he said, burying his hands in his pockets.

Jet followed Jack, winding around the vans and cars, up to the front door. The tallest trees in the backyard swayed over the house, leaves jeweled in amber and ruby, the colors that brought the tourists and leaf-peepers to Vermont every year. Forests of fire. And Jet’s final time seeing them.

‘Here.’ Jack pulled out two fresh shoe coverings and Jet slipped them on over Luke’s gym socks, staring back at the pumpkin on the front step – a mean grin.

Jet lost the staring contest, eyes trailing to the front door, to the splintered wood around the lock, catching on the plastic box mounted above.

‘The doorbell cam,’ she said suddenly, grabbing Jack’s arm. ‘Did they check? Does it show who –’

Jack shook his head, cutting her off. ‘We’ve checked. It doesn’t show. Just you coming home, then later Billy finding you, kicking the door in. Whoever attacked you, they got in the house another way. Come on.’

Jack stepped over the threshold and Jet followed. It didn’t smell any different, still smelled like home. She thought it wouldn’t. That it would smell like decay and dead things somehow. But there wasn’t a body rotting inside. Nope, she was rotting right here, on the Welcome mat.

A white-and-blue man passed them in the hall, out of place against the Moroccan runner rug.

Jack veered left, through the door into the living room.

Jet followed, her covered feet shushing against the pale polished oak.

She looked down to take a breath, before entering the room, before seeing …

everything. But she saw something worse instead.

A trail of blood. Shaped into little paw prints.

Jet gasped, leaned back against the door to catch herself. ‘Reggie?’ she said, her heart crawling into her throat. ‘No. Is he OK? Is he –’

‘He’s fine.’ Jack steadied her, arm under her elbow. ‘The dog is fine.’

Jet still couldn’t swallow, not past her roving heart.

‘Billy brought him in the ambulance, refused to leave him behind,’ Jack said. ‘The dog is with your sister-in-law now, at their house. He’s fine.’ Jack’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you sure you want to see this?’

She had to. How could she work out who had killed her if she couldn’t even stomach seeing the place where they’d done it?

Jet nodded.

Blinked and held on to it, then stepped out and opened her eyes.

Not her living room. Not the place where she cuddled Reggie and watched Netflix too late.

Not where she once dropped spaghetti and stained the rug and begged Dad not to tell Mom.

Not the extra-long couch, one corner that belonged to teenage Luke, the other to Jet.

It used to be Emily’s, until Emily didn’t need it anymore.

Jet had left it a few years, just to be safe.

The TV was now just an empty black mirror, trapping Jet inside it.

This was a different room, no longer living.

It wasn’t even the red she saw first; it was the yellow.

Little crime scene markers, black numbers printed on them, placed around the room, counting up and up.

The red was next.

More paw prints in panicked circles.

Jet’s eyes followed Reggie’s ghost feet to a pool of blood, drying but not yet dry, winking the afternoon light back at them. Thick and spread out, half on the wood, half soaked into the corner of the rug. Well, forget spaghetti sauce – that stain was never coming out.

It was more blood than Jet thought a person could lose.

Hers.

Instinct moved her hand to the bandage at the back of her head. She stopped it before her fingers touched the dressing. So much blood it needed four markers of its own: 6, 8, 9, and 11.

‘You OK?’ Jack asked. ‘We can stop anytime.’

Jet took a breath, looked up at the ceiling for air that wasn’t tainted by blood. That was a mistake too. Two more yellow markers, stuck there on the white ceiling. Numbers 31 and 32. Droplets of red dashed in a strange pattern up there, across one of the LED lights, caking the glass.

‘What’s that?’ she sniffed.

Jack joined her, looked up. ‘It’s a cast-off pattern,’ he said quietly. ‘From the weapon … between hits.’

‘And they don’t know what the weapon was?’

‘It has not been recovered.’

Cop speak for no.

Two voices moved through the hallway then, a snatched view of her mom and Chief Lou as they passed, bumping shoulders, Lou’s hand hovering behind Dianne’s back as they headed for the stairs. Shoes covered in blue.

‘We already did a walk-through with Scott yesterday,’ Lou was saying to her, voice butter-soft again, ‘but it would be really helpful if you can check for us too. Might have a better eye. See if you think anything is missing or out of place. Anything at all.’

Their footsteps disappeared upstairs.

Jet moved closer to the bloodstain, seeking permission in Jack’s eyes. She passed behind the couch, cushions fluffed, their top corners pointy, so neat and out of place in this room of horror.

Jet stopped. Right where her feet must have lain while her head was making all that blood.

‘The doctor said I was hit three times,’ she said, bending it up into a question.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s what the evidence shows.’

‘What else does it show?’

Jack chewed his tongue, checked over his shoulder.

‘Please, Mr Finney. I need to know.’

Jack sighed, lowering his voice. ‘The blood-spatter evidence, there.’ He pointed to the fireplace in front of the pool of blood, markers 13, 14, 15. ‘Suggests that you were hit twice while you were still standing, in the back of the head.’

Jet could have told them that. She heard it again: the crunch of her skull, an echo that reverberated inside her head. She should take more painkillers soon.