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‘And the third hit? This one?’ She gestured to the dressing on the side of her head, above her ear. The blow that had stolen her words.

Jack pointed to another set of markers – 7 and 10 – almost subsumed by the hungry pool of blood. Jet squinted, could make out small dashes of red just beyond its boundaries.

‘The blood spatter there suggests you were on the floor when you received the final blow, the one to the left side of your head. The attacker leaning over you.’

Jet swallowed, picturing it, because she’d already been gone by then, couldn’t remember the third crack. ‘Definitely wanted me dead, then.’

Jack rubbed his eyebrow, nodding to a forensic tech who’d just strolled into the room, a camera in his hand. Jet waited for him to leave, out toward the kitchen.

‘Does the blood spatter tell you anything else?’ she asked. ‘I’ve watched some Dexter , you know. Shit ending.’

Jack’s eyes shifted.

‘No one’s listening,’ she pressed. ‘Please.’

He spoke low and fast. ‘Trajectory of the spatter and the cast-off suggests that the attacker was using downward strokes. Which tells us that they are taller than you.’

Jet sighed. ‘I’m five foot three – it’s not hard. Anything else?’

‘Right-handed,’ he said. ‘The blow was only to the left side of your head because that’s the way you were facing when you fell. The attacker is right-handed.’

‘So, right-handed and taller than me?’ Jet said. ‘Doesn’t really narrow it down. Like, at all.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Anything else I should know?’

Jack looked around the room. ‘We don’t have all the findings from the search yet.

Hairs have been collected. Fibers. Fingerprints.

But, as this is a room with a lot of visitors, and there was a lot of activity after – from the first responders, the paramedics, Billy finding the scene – it’s hard to know if any of it will be relevant. ’

‘Do you know what time it happened?’

Jack pulled a small notebook from the chest pocket of his uniform, flicked through the pages. ‘We don’t know the exact time of the attack. But we have a range, from canvassing the neighbors, asking witnesses.’

‘Witnesses,’ Jet said. ‘They saw something?’

‘No. They heard something. The dog. Screaming.’

Jet’s heart inched a little higher, reaching for her mouth. She’d heard the scream too, right before she’d heard nothing at all. She never knew dogs could scream.

‘Did you hear?’ she asked Jack. He was their closest neighbor.

‘I wasn’t home,’ he said. ‘Was still out after escorting Andrew Smith back to his apartment. I was in the car when the call came through the radio. I can’t tell you what that felt like, when I heard it was this address.

’ He paused to clear his throat, to rub his nose.

‘Anyway. The doorbell cam shows Billy approaching the door at 11:05 p.m., drawn by the sound of the dog, so we know it was before then. The Thomases in number 6 think they heard the dog from about 10:40. But Mrs Elliott in number 12 believes it was later than that, more like 10:55 p.m. So, the attack happened sometime roughly between 10:40 and 11:00 p.m.’

Jet nodded, raking over his words again, committing those times to memory.

She’d write them down later. ‘So, the killer probably didn’t hang around much after, knowing that the sound was going to draw at-t-at …

’ Fuck. What was that word? The word for when people noticed something.

Fuck it, she’d go around it. ‘That people were going to notice the sound. So, the killer would have panicked, right? They left Reggie alone, but must have taken my phone and the weapon and ran?’ Jet’s eyes left the living room, darting into the hallway beyond.

But she stopped herself, corrected herself.

‘But not through the front door, because they would have shown up on the doorbell camera, and they didn’t.

Which means they must have known we had one. So how did they get out? And in?’

‘This way,’ Jack said, turning his back to the bloody scene. Jet followed him, taking their morbid tour through the open archway into the kitchen.

Sophia’s Halloween cookies were still out on the counter, untouched, unmoved.

Probably still good – it had only been a couple of days, right?

No, shouldn’t eat the crime scene. But she should probably eat something soon; her legs felt weak, and she was a little lightheaded, but maybe that was because someone had spilled all the blood out of it.

‘Here,’ Jack said, walking into the laundry room off the far side of the kitchen.

The back door was open, the crime scene tech standing outside, taking photos of the muddy grass right outside the door. More markers: 49, 50, 51, 52.

‘You seen the size of their pool?’ the tech said, not looking up, thinking they were somebody else.

The whine and hiss of the camera, a blinding flash. Another. Imprinted in the back of Jet’s eyelids. She cupped one hand over her eyes.

‘Sorry.’ The tech looked up now, a slow blink when he realized. ‘Sorry. I’m done.’ He dipped his plastic head awkwardly, disappearing around the side of the house.

‘This door was shut, but it was unlocked,’ Jack said. ‘We think this is how they got in. A lot of shoe impressions. We’ve taken casts. But it looks like this door gets used a lot.’

Jet nodded. ‘I come in this way when I take Reggie for a walk. Mom makes the cleaners use it too. Dad when he’s gardening.’

‘Your parents seem to think it was possible the door was left unlocked on Friday night?’

More than possible. Jet never remembered to lock it.

But neither did Mom or Dad. That doorbell camera at the front was all the security they’d thought they needed.

A show. A deterrent, Dad once said. But it had deterred nothing, and the killer had known to avoid it, to come around to the side door instead.

‘It’s possible, yes,’ Jet said. ‘Likely. Seventy-five percent chance it was left unlocked.’ Because she spoke in percentages now.

‘Got it,’ Jack said, making a note in his little book.

A phone buzzed. Jet patted her pockets, forgetting that the killer had taken hers. She felt naked, incomplete, without one.

Jack glanced at her apologetically and pulled the phone from his pocket, checking the screen.

‘That’s Billy again. He’ll be asking after you.’

‘Does he know?’ Jet asked, but Jack didn’t have a chance to answer.

Detective Ecker’s voice sailed through the open-plan house.

‘OK, that’s it. The scene is released. Let’s get those cleaners in here ASAP. Move this poor family back in. Oh, sorry, Jet. Didn’t see you were still in here.’

Didn’t see her. Because she was small? Or because she was dead in a week and didn’t matter as much as the other people here, the ones who didn’t have a countdown hanging over them. Halfway between the living and the not, her edges less defined somehow. No … probably just the small thing.