Two Days Gone (Ryan DeMarco Mystery #1)(18)
DeMarco turned the knife back and forth in the light. In the two indentations closest to the bolster were tiny rust-like stains. The rest of the blade was clean. DeMarco said, “I’m betting this isn’t rust here.”
“It’s the baby’s.”
“Nobody else’s?”
“None that can be identified.”
“I’m surprised there’s any left at all. It was in the water how long?”
“Approximately thirty-eight hours.”
“Long enough to wash any prints off the handle.”
“Unfortunately.”
“So we can’t place it in the hands of any particular individual.”
“But we do know it’s the murder weapon.”
“Yippee,” DeMarco said. He handed the bag back to Trooper Morgan. “Anything else?”
“Lab reports on the bed linens. I left a copy on your desk.”
“Summarize them for me.”
“The blood smear on the cover in the master bedroom is Claire’s blood only.”
“So he slit her throat, then wiped the blade clean.”
“Not completely clean. The smear on the boy’s cover is mostly his blood but with a bit of Claire’s mixed in.”
“And on the girl’s?”
“He took a little more time here. Actually wrapped a corner of the sheet around the blade to clean it instead of just wiping the blade across the sheet. And the blood this time is mostly the girl’s, trace amounts of the boy’s.”
“None of Claire’s or the baby’s?”
“A trace amount that might be Claire’s. The lab can’t say conclusively.”
“None of the baby’s?”
“None.”
“But only the baby’s is on the blade currently?”
“Correct.”
“So…first he killed Claire. Then the boy. Then the girl. He slit each of their throats, wiped the blade clean each time afterward, did an especially good job after the girl. Maybe even washed the blade clean. Can that be right?”
“It’s how it looks.”
“Why would he clean the blade so thoroughly before stabbing the baby? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“The rest does?”
“Also, the baby was stabbed.”
“Yes, sir. Twice.”
“Why?”
“Apparently to make sure he hit the heart.”
“Why didn’t he slit its throat too? Why did he change his method of killing for the baby?”
“I guess only he knows that.”
“I guess you’re right. You got anything else?”
“The vaginal swabs on the girl came back negative.”
“Thank God for that.”
“But the DNA profile of the sperm sample matches the DNA from the kids.”
“So it was definitely her husband’s. Was the lab able to determine the age of the sperm?”
“It was from that night.”
“No sign of forcible rape?”
“None.”
“So he made love to his wife that very night.”
Trooper Morgan said nothing.
“He makes love to his wife. Then he gets dressed again and methodically murders his family one by one.”
“Unless he murdered them first and then got dressed.”
“I guess we won’t know that until we find him, see if there’s any blood on him.”
“How could there not be?”
“You ever see a murder scene as clean as that house was? Not a single bloody footprint. Not a blood splatter anywhere except in the beds. Nine drops of blood leading from the baby’s crib to the hallway. That’s it. Nine fucking drops.”
He was angry and the fluorescent light hurt his eyes. “So you know what we’ve got here?” he asked.
Morgan spoke softly. “No, sir, I don’t.”
“We have a lot of fucking questions and not a single fucking answer.”
Thirteen
It is important to understand things. This was what Thomas Huston kept telling himself. You need to figure things out.
He was walking through the woods now, picking his way between the hardwoods and birches, moving in what he hoped was a northeasterly line. He guessed the time at midafternoon; the light had softened and was slanting in behind him through the mostly leafless branches. There was a peculiar sensation of tunnel vision, of a blurry, black periphery wherever he looked, and when he tried to see into the distance, his gaze seemed too weak to travel more than forty yards or so. His head felt heavy, full of dark clouds, and though he ached in his neck and shoulders, knees and feet, the aches seemed somehow apart from him, as if he were experiencing another man’s pain.
You are a writer and a teacher, he reminded himself. A writer first and then a teacher. As a writer, it is your job to make order out of disorder. To find the meaning in metaphor. And as a teacher, it is your job to explain that meaning to your students. And now you are the student. You are the writer and the teacher and the student.
Find the meaning and explain it, he told himself. That is your job now.
Annabel could help. His writer’s instincts told him that Annabel would understand more of this than he did. Annabel lived in the kind of world where these things happened. He did not live like this. His life was blessed.