FOURTEEN
“So let’s get this straight,” Sergeant Mike Wolfowitz was saying to Jessie. “Your daughter heard a scream about what time?”
“I don’t know. I guess a little over an hour ago now.”
“May we speak with her?”
Jessie wrapped her arms around herself. “I really don’t want to wake her. She’s going to be very upset when she finds out about this, and I’d rather break it to her when there aren’t police and flashing lights around.”
“But we need to determine when she heard that scream,” the cop said.
“I can tell you.” The voice was Monica’s, coming up behind them. “I heard it too. It was exactly an hour and fifteen minutes ago. I remember looking at the clock.”
“And you are . . . ?” Wolfowitz asked.
Monica gave her name and explained the circumstances of being in the bathroom and hearing a scream.
“Did you see anyone around the property at all?” Wolfowitz asked, looking at the entire group. In addition to Monica and Jessie, Todd was there, standing behind his wife, as well as Caleb and John Manning. Aunt Paulette watched from the back door, and out in the street, Gert Gorin was angling to hear what was going on, though she was prevented from coming into the yard by a couple of policemen.
“We saw no one,” John Manning told the sergeant.
“I didn’t see anyone either,” Todd said.
Jessie hesitated. “I . . . may have.” She swallowed. Off to her left, the coroner had arrived and was standing with an assistant over Inga’s body. A huge light was switched on, practically turning night into day. “I may have seen . . . something,” Jessie said.
“What did you see?” Wolfowitz asked.
“A figure. Something in the darkness. Right before I found the body. Something moved.”
“A person?”
“I can’t say for sure. It was so dark, and whatever it was, it moved before I could land my flashlight on it.”
“Could it have been a person?”
“I don’t know. . . .” Jessie tried to remember. She hadn’t really seen anything, just a shape in the darkness, and the sense of movement. “To be honest, it didn’t seem big enough to be a person.”
“An animal, then?”
Jessie nodded. “Yes, probably.”
“Whoever took this girl down was very strong,” Wolfowitz said.
Jessie saw who he was looking at.
John Manning.
“I’m going to have to ask all of you to come down to the station with me,” the cop said. “We need statements from all of you. What you saw, what you heard . . .” He returned his eyes to John Manning. “And where precisely you all were exactly one hour and fifteen minutes ago tonight.”
The five nodded. Jessie asked if she could go into the house and put on some clothes. Wolfowitz agreed, but told her to hurry. She scurried inside, filled a tearful Aunt Paulette in on the details, and pulled on a pair of jeans and a light sweater. She wanted to run into Abby’s room and give her a quick kiss, but she didn’t want to risk waking her up. She told Aunt Paulette not to tell the girl anything yet if she woke up. Jessie hoped she wouldn’t be gone long. Then she rejoined the group outside.
In the back of Wolfowitz’s car, she cried all the way to the station. The image of Inga’s throat—sliced open, gushing blood—was burned into Jessie’s mind.
Whoever had killed Inga had done so in exactly the same way Emil had murdered his victim six years earlier.