The Overnight Guest(32)

“Mr. Ellis said that there were two bodies,” Levi said as they backed out of the room.

“Yeah, you cover me this time,” Butler said. “I’ll go first. You okay?” he looked at Levi with concern. His face was pale, eyes wide.

“I’m good,” Levi answered.

The sheriff led the way, pausing at the next bedroom on the left. This door stood wide-open and the male victim lay face-up on the hardwood floor. He was barefoot and dressed in boxers and a T-shirt, but where his face should have been was a great yawning wound that exposed bone and gray matter.

“Damn,” Levi breathed. “That the husband?” he asked, his heart pounding.

“Looks like it, but we’ll have to confirm that,” Butler said.

Levi looked around the room. It was clearly a young teen’s room. The girl sitting outside beneath the maple tree. On the wall, there was a poster of a horse galloping through a yellow meadow and another of NSYNC. The baseboards were decorated with baseball stickers.

There was a single bed covered in a purple comforter and piled with stuffed animals. Either the bed was made earlier or wasn’t slept in. There was a white wooden dresser with a softball glove and a bottle of pink nail polish sitting atop it. Above the dresser was a bulletin board covered with 4-H ribbons. Next to the bed were two unrolled sleeping bags.

“Come on,” Butler said. “We have one more room to check out.”

The final room, a typical teenage boy’s room with piles of dirty clothes, pop cans, and car magazines. It smelled like sweat socks and Axe body spray. No dead bodies.

The men returned to the hallway stood in the doorway where the male victim was. “What do you think? Murder-suicide?” Levi asked. “He offed the wife and killed himself in here?”

“Doesn’t look like a suicide to me,” the sheriff answered. “No weapon.”

“Right,” Levi said, nodding. “Now we talk to the girl downstairs and find the brother?”

“And find the other girl,” the sheriff said grimly.

“Other girl?” Levi asked. “What do you mean?”

“There are two sleeping bags on the floor,” Butler explained. “The gym bag filled with clothes next to it. It was a sleepover.” The sheriff shook his head. “What the hell happened to the other girl?”

In the ambulance, paramedic Lowell Steubens was trying to distract Josie Doyle from the frenzy of activity just beyond them.

Lanky and long limbed, with basset hound brown eyes and an easy smile that put his injured charges at ease, thirty-nine-year-old Lowell had gone to elementary school with Lynne Doyle and remembered her as a shy, quiet girl but they hadn’t said more than a few words to each other in passing. Despite the small community, Lowell and Lynne ran in different circles.

“You look cold,” Lowell observed. “Let’s check you out quick and then I’ll get you a blanket.” Josie didn’t respond. She closed her eyes but couldn’t mute the deputies’ chatter, the click and buzz of their radios. Sounds so foreign to the farm.

The back of the ambulance smelled like a hospital room. Like rubbing alcohol.

There was the snap of latex gloves and Josie flinched.

The female paramedic gently brushed a stray lock of hair from Josie’s eyes.

“My name is Erin,” she said. “And this is my friend, Lowell. We’re going to check you out, and then once Sheriff Butler says we can leave, we’ll take you to the hospital so the docs can take a look at your arm. How about you let me look at your other one so I can take your blood pressure?” she asked.

Josie held up her right arm so the woman could wrap the blood pressure cuff around her biceps. Josie winced as the pressure in her arm built and then eased. “Did I hurt you?” Erin asked. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Josie said dully. “It doesn’t hurt. Just feels weird.”

There was a flurry of activity next to the house. Josie tried to sit up to see what was happening. Lowell eased her back down on the stretcher.

“Can you tell me what happened to your arm?” he asked. A bloody ragged notch had been taken out of the fleshy part of Josie’s tricep, and buckshot was embedded in the skin.

“We were playing on the trampoline and we heard the bangs. We went to see what was going on and someone came after us and we ran. I made it to the field but Becky didn’t. Then he shot me. Is Becky okay? Did you find her?”

Lowell and Erin exchanged a look. “I’m sure a deputy is going to talk to you soon,” Erin murmured. “I’ll go see what’s happening.”

“Do you know where my brother is?” Josie asked Lowell. “I couldn’t find him or Becky.”

“Try not to think about that now,” Lowell said soothingly. “I’m going to leave your arm for the doc to take a closer look at,” Lowell smiled encouragingly.

“This might sting a bit,” Lowell said, lightly swiping the soles of Josie’s feet with a with cold liquid. “It’s alcohol,” he explained. “To clean your cuts.” Josie winced at the burning sensation. “They aren’t too deep. We’ll clean them up and get you to the hospital where the real docs will check you out.”

“Can’t I stay with my grandpa?” Josie asked. “My arm really doesn’t hurt that bad.”