Missing Pieces(53)
Is something wrong? Sarah began to text. How about finding out your husband was the main suspect in the murder of his mother and was arrested? You forgot to tell me that part. Yeah, something is wrong. Sarah exhaled in frustration and then hit Cancel. She thought for a moment and then typed again. Just have had a lot to think about. I’ll be back soon. At least Jack had made the effort to go see his sister. That was something the Jack she thought she knew would do.
She climbed back into the car and tried to figure out where she could read the case file without interruption. A hotel? That was certainly appealing. She hated the thought of returning to the house where Jack’s mother died, hated facing her liar of a husband. In a hotel room she could spread out the entire contents of the box and go through each document thoroughly, take notes and try to fit the pieces of her husband’s early life together. Somehow this seemed wrong, though, deserting Jack the night before his aunt’s wake. She was hurt and possibly irreparably angry with Jack, but she couldn’t completely abandon him, not here, not now. Not yet.
Sarah found herself back on the same stretch of gravel road where she first listened to the audiotapes. She had only seen the one vehicle with the hunters here earlier in the day and hoped that it would be equally deserted now. The sun was dipping below the horizon and she knew she had only a few minutes of daylight left to use as light to read by. She pulled off to the side of the road, put the car into Park, turned on her hazard lights and turned off the ignition. She didn’t want to be rear-ended by a car coming up unexpectedly behind her.
Sarah locked the doors, rolled down the windows a few inches and felt a cool light breeze brush across her skin. The road was empty for as far as she could see. A cornfield that had yet to be harvested sat to her right and a meadow filled with long grass and clover sat to her left. No homes rose up in the distance, no silos stood sentry. She was all alone. The only sounds were the rustling of grass and crickets announcing autumn with weary, almost melancholy chirps. She fought the urge to start the car again and turn on the radio just for the noise—she didn’t want to miss hearing a car approaching.
Sarah flipped on the overhead light and pulled out the file folder that Katherine Newberry gave her. She skimmed the handwritten notes, learning nothing new. Young Jack maintained his innocence just as he did in his interview with Gilmore.
Next she slid Margaret’s jacket from atop the evidence box, removed the lid and pulled out the first file folder.
Inside the musty manila folder she found a thick pile of photographs, bound together by a frayed rubber band, all labeled in black permanent marker with the date, case number and location. The rubber band snapped when she tried to slide it from the stack. She braced for what she was about to see. After hearing the audiotape of Jack’s account of the discovery of his mother’s body, she knew that the photos were going to be graphic, a harrowing step-by-step visual chronicle of a brutal murder. The first few photos were benign enough. Snapshots of the house, Dean and Celia’s house, Jack’s childhood home. The photographer documented his journey into the house. The mudroom with an array of shoes and boots neatly lined up against one wall. The kitchen, sun shining incongruously through the window, splashing colorful prisms of light onto the floor. The door to the cellar, slightly ajar, smudged with blood. Jack’s fingerprints according to the audiotapes. The steps leading downward into the darkened cellar.
Sarah’s fingers stopped. In the distance she heard the lowing of cattle, a mournful and lonely sound. Her heartbeat quickened and she glanced up, aware of how alone she was. The sun had finally set and except for the car’s overhead light she was enveloped in darkness. No stars dotted the sky; there was no sliver of moon, no streetlights. She almost wished she had gone to a hotel. At least there would have been people around. With shaking fingers she continued to thumb through the photos, finally coming to the pictures she dreaded seeing.
The first shot of Lydia’s body was taken from above. She was lying faceup on the concrete floor, the lid to the freezer still open, her yellow hair, dark and sticky with blood, fanned out on the floor around her. A piece of fabric obscured the top half of her face, her mouth frozen open in a silent scream.
One hand was outstretched and Sarah wondered if she was trying to protect herself or reaching out for someone, pleading for them to stop. Her dress, the color of lemon drops, was hiked up around her waist, revealing long, pale legs.
The next photos zeroed in on her injuries. The fingers on one hand were bloodied and bent at odd angles, broken, Sarah thought, when Lydia must have tried to ward off the blows. Dark purple bruises bloomed across her arms. Next, the camera focused on Lydia’s head wound. A deep gash, four inches long, ran at the edge of her hairline just above her ear, exposing paper-white bone. Sarah had to look away; her stomach flipped dangerously. Who could have inflicted such horrific injuries? Someone very angry or very evil, she thought. Or both. Could Jack have wielded the weapon that did this and then watched his mother die? Not the Jack she knew, the Jack she thought she knew, anyway. But she also would never have believed that Jack could have lied to her so blatantly.
The temperature in the car had dropped and goose bumps erupted along her arms. She reached for Margaret’s jacket and threaded her arms through the sleeves, grateful for the warmth. The next photo was a close-up of the fabric covering her eyes, a dish towel embroidered with flowers, already stiff with blood. At first Sarah wondered if perhaps a police officer had placed it over Lydia’s face to cover up her gruesome injuries, but quickly realized that wasn’t the case. It was part of the crime scene. Jack mentioned on the audiotape that his mother’s eyes had been covered with a cloth of some kind. Had Lydia had the towel in her hands when she was attacked and it had fallen across her eyes when she tumbled to the ground? Or had it been placed there by a killer, too ashamed to look into the eyes of the woman he had murdered?