The room started to spin.
I dropped onto the floor. Into a sitting position. I shut my eyes.
When I opened them a few moments later, Kent’s blue eyes still stared at me. As I stared in horror, one eyelid slowly drooped, drooped until it closed, leaving Kent’s face with a hideous wink.
I swallowed hard, forcing down my nausea.
I shut my eyes. Blinked several times. Hoping, praying that when I looked back, the head would have disappeared. Would have returned to Kent’s body.
Sobbing, I raised myself to my knees. “Kent . . .” I murmured his name.
The head had been sliced off. A jagged line across the throat.
The body stretched out calmly over the floor, as if taking a nap. The head stared blankly at its own body.
First the Kramers. And now Kent.
Had Lucy murdered them all?
It made no sense. No sense at all.
Without realizing it, I had climbed to my feet.
I turned away from Kent’s headless body. I gazed at the window.
“Oh!” I cried out when I saw the two faces on the other side of the glass. The two grim faces of the gray-suited police officers.
They stared in at me. Stared at the headless corpse on the bloodied den floor. Stared at the kitchen knife still clutched tightly in my hand.