DETECTIVE SONJA TEST yanked her rattling Peugeot into the Merryfields’ driveway and brought it to a lurching stop behind two cruisers.
Damn it.
The Vermont State Police were already on the scene, the cruisers parked at odd angles, doors left flung open as the police radios squawked, blue lights strobing in the black November night, turning the facade of the old creamery into a madman’s funhouse.
Damn it.
She’d hoped she’d be first on the scene. She was last, apparently. Which meant she’d have to rely on others to fill her in on the details instead of seeing them firsthand and arriving at her own conclusions and theories. She did not like relying on others. Especially regarding crime scenes. Not that she’d been to a murder scene in her young career. And if her superior in the Canaan Police Department, Senior Detective Harland Grout, had not been in the hospital for an appendectomy, she’d not have been to this one either.
Test had still been in her old Dartmouth sweats when the call had come in. She’d just finished her daily 10k on her treadmill, the country roads of Canaan too dark and treacherous with blind curves to run at night. She didn’t need to get struck by a car and left in a ditch like Stephen King. Besides, George and Elizabeth had been in bed, and Claude had not yet come home. What had been keeping him, she’d had no clue. It wasn’t like him to be late and not to call. She’d phoned him several times and finally got him, to find the roads over the mountains from St. Johnsbury, where he’d been preparing for his exhibit, were perilous with black ice. There’d been no time to get her babysitter, who wasn’t the most reliable anyway.
Test cranked the heater—if a fan that stirred cool air could be called a heater—then leaned back over her seat to hand her iPad to George. “You and Elizabeth can watch Peppa Pig or Caillou. Or play games your little sister likes. But no scary games to upset her. Got it?”
“Don’t leave, Mama,” Elizabeth whimpered from her car seat, her emotions ragged from being hauled out of a deep sleep and tossed into the car in flurry of activity to get to the scene.
Test reached back to pinch Elizabeth’s tiny chin between her thumb and finger. “Georgie will take care of you till Daddy comes. I’ll be right up there.” She pointed to the old creamery.
“When’s Daddy coming?” Elizabeth whined. “I don’t wanna be alone.”
“Soon,” Test said, not knowing if that was true or not. “And you’re not alone. You have Georgie,” she said, thinking, What kind of mother leaves her kids in front of a murder scene on a cold Vermont night in a car with a crap heater? But the only way she could be more irresponsible and heap more guilt upon herself would be to leave her kids sleeping alone in the house to possibly awaken without her there, or bring them inside the creamery to witness whatever gruesome scene awaited. “Georgie, take care of your little sister. And no scary games. Peppa, Caillou, or games your sister likes. That’s it.”
“They’re boring,” George said.
“You heard me.”
Test hastily dusted her cheeks and nose with foundation that hid her freckles. She was partial to her freckles, but in a professional setting they projected a girlish image she believed undermined her authority in a mostly male world. She’d not bothered to change out of her sweats, or to shower, wanting to get here straightaway. She’d thrown on her coat and strapped on her sidearm, bundled up the kids and buckled them into the car. She wished now she’d taken the two minutes to change out of her sweats. If she was going to be late anyway, it would have been good to be dressed accordingly. Now, she’d have to keep on her long parka while in the house. She probably smelled ripe with sweat, too. It was less than professional, but arriving at a murder scene posthaste had trumped decorum. All that, and she was still last to the party. As much as she had felt she’d been breaking a land speed record while leaving, getting the kids out of the house always took exponentially longer than she imagined.
“Keep the doors locked,” she said to George as she shut the door behind her and strode toward the house.
CRIME-SCENE TAPE, STRUNG across the boundaries of the yard, snapped in the November gust.
From the few houses down the dark street a ways from the old creamery, residents came out to stand on their porches and dead lawns. They gawked at the blue lights that splashed across the darkness, and stared at each other’s shadowed faces as if to seek permission from one another to proceed.
Then, they advanced, in bathrobes and unzipped parkas tossed on over pajamas, slippers and barn boots—the attire of a weekday evening that stripped them of any hint of the varied standings or tastes that divided them by daylight.
Those who lagged began to hurry. They swung their arms with the exaggerated restraint of speed walkers, not wanting to appear as eager as they really were to discover whatever horror waited at the old creamery. They formed a line behind the yellow police tape as if waiting behind the velvet rope of a swank nightclub.
Test noticed a sign staked in the lawn: TAKE BACK VERMONT.
The sign made Test cringe. It was an insult to human rights, as she saw it. Others saw it as gospel. The original signs had been the ugly brainchild of opponents to the 2001 civil union passage, the historic and incendiary law that had ignited bigotry and a seething, divisive hatred in people across the state and across the country. Test had been at Dartmouth at the time, and some students whom she’d counted among her friends had reacted in ways that had frightened and disillusioned her. The law had also brought out a compassionate nature in folks from whom Test had least expected it. With the actual gay marriage bill now being hammered out, the Take Back Vermont signs had cropped up again, like poisonous weeds never fully eradicated.
For some people, the ashes of that time were being stoked into flames again by Jon Merryfield and his work on The Case.
As Test approached officer Larkin at the door, she wondered how he had managed to get here so soon and be so put together in his patrol uniform on a night she knew he had off from duty. It made her look bad. Then again, Larkin, with his boyish face and lank body, lived in the village, and not a half hour away in the hills as Test did. And he was single, with no sleepy kids or absentee husband.
As Bethany nodded at Larkin, the Canaan County ambulance pulled into the drive. Its lights were off, which meant one thing: The victim, Jessica Cumber, whose name Test knew from the updates on the police radio in her Peugeot, was dead.
Seeing the ambulance, those neighbors who had not yet reached the creamery raced toward it. They elbowed to join the crowd. A father perched his young daughter atop his shoulders as if they were watching a circus act. Behind them, two TV crew vans had set up, their harsh lights invading the darkness.
“Do me a favor?” Test said to Larkin, wishing she could retract what she’d just said. She was not used to being in command; however, with Grout MIA she needed to be assertive. She was not asking for an optional favor, she was giving a mandatory directive.
“Name it,” Larkin said, shaking his head with disdain at the crowd.
“Bag and tag that sign in the yard,” Test said.
“On it.”
“And. Keep an eye on my car, the Peugeot,” she said, trying not so appear as embarrassed as she felt.
“Of course, Detective.”
“My two kids are in there. Make sure it stays that way?”
If he was taken aback by this revelation he concealed it expertly. “Yes ma’am, Detective Test.”
TEST STEPPED INSIDE the home, even the soft soles of her Asics echoing in the vast marble entry. In the fireplace room off the foyer, Richard North, senior detective for the Vermont State Police, stood between John and Bethany Merryfield, both of whom looked like they’d just been washed ashore after a shipwreck.
North spotted Test and grimaced, then looked back to Jon Merryfield.
In her brief interaction with North, Test knew the state police detective as affable. But that interaction had been at a softball tournament fund-raiser, not a murder scene. She couldn’t expect the same congenial man tonight. Especially since state police detectives defended their turf ardently. Even if Test had not been late, the investigation would still belong to the state police, with her in a subordinate and supportive role. Being late only made it more difficult for Test to gain entry into the inner fold of the investigation.
Test made room for two forensics technicians, both wearing surgical gloves, white paper booties, and hairnets, to pass by her with lighting equipment. One of them, a woman, barked at her: “If you plan to go any farther into the house, put the garb on.” The woman nodded at a plastic tub containing booties, masks, and hairnets and strode away.
Test peered into the plastic tub. She glanced at North. He wore no hairnet, though he likely didn’t require one. His hair was shorn severely tight. A mask hung backward behind his neck from its elastic band. She could not see from her vantage if he wore booties; but his hands, big hands, were gloved.
Test took a moment to put on the garb, letting the mask hang around the front of her neck, so she could speak to North.
Done, she waited for North to come over and brief her. When after several minutes he didn’t extend the professional consideration, Test went to him.
As Test approached, North averted his eyes to the cellar stairs. Test could tell from the creases carved in his face by his scowl that whatever was down in that cellar was nasty. She’d not worked a murder scene. They were few and far between in Canaan.
She prepared herself by taking a slow deep breath through her nose; a technique she employed when running half marathons.
Her first homicide and she would work it—or support it, rather—alone.
“It’s not pretty,” North said to Test without saying hello or shaking her hand. Had he thought she’d think it would be pretty? Was he patronizing her? She was uncertain.
She disliked being uncertain even more than she disliked relying on others.
Under the circumstances, she was willing to give North the benefit of the doubt. For now.
“I don’t expect it to be pretty,” Test couldn’t help saying, realizing too late that it may have come off as defensive. “I’d like to see.”
“We’ve already seen it,” North said. “I have. And the ME. Cause of death was a blow to the cranium. A hammer or pipe, likely. No weapon found.” He tapped his forehead, between his eyes, with two fingers. “Right here.”
“Ironic,” Test said.
“What?” North dug a thumb between his belt and chinos, and Test noticed he’d hand-tooled a rough, extra hole in the black leather belt to accommodate his narrow waist. The time she’d seen him before, last summer, he hadn’t had the build of the typical state police detective: that compact, bulldog’s build that imposed a physical dominance on a subject and came in handy when approaching a car pulled over on a dark, lonely stretch of Vermont highway. No. North was tall but lean. In the several months since, he’d lost tremendous weight, and not in a good way. Test wondered if he was ill.
“What’s ironic?” North repeated.
“The frontal lobe,” Test said, touching her forehead. “It’s the part of the brain that helps us decide between bad and good behavior.”
“Hmm.” North said, unimpressed or perhaps just confused.
“It allows us to imagine the future repercussions that might come from our present actions, so we can overcome our base urges,” Test continued. “Something the doer obviously lacked.”
“Hmm,” North said. Unimpressed.
Test wished she hadn’t said anything. Her own sticky, flypaper brain had a knack for snatching bits of factual flotsam out of the air as much as her tongue had a habit of then spouting those facts. At Dartmouth, she’d spewed inane and arcane facts with all the certitude and desire to astound that was shared by insecure undergrads everywhere. She still harbored a nostalgic embarrassment at the earnest girl she’d been, so desperate to be taken seriously that she’d mistaken reciting numbing facts as intelligence and subverted her own native intellect in the process.
These days she brought forth such facts only when useful to her police work, or when she was nervous or excited.
“I’d like to see the victim,” Test pressed.
“As I said—”
“I recognize this is your case, Detective,” Test said. “The state police’s case. I respect and appreciate that. Still, this is my jurisdiction. My town. I live with these people. They’re my neighbors. It’s my duty to them to be involved and to help in whatever capacity I am able.”
“In whatever capacity you are allowed,” North corrected. “It is not your duty to be involved. It is at my discretion. Not that I don’t welcome your assistance. I do. Ready?”
Test nodded, her fingers shaking.
North noticed. “Nervous? We all get that way our first few murders. Especially ones like this. It’s normal.”
Test wondered how normal North would think she was if she told him the truth: She wasn’t nervous. She was excited. Senior Detective Grout’s misfortune of being in the hospital was her good fortune.
“Be careful,” North said, “follow closely.”
As Test followed North toward the cellar stairs, she attempted to peer out a window to her car. But the glare on the windows from the lights inside returned a warped reflection of herself. She hoped Claude would be here soon to take the kids home. She had her cell phone on vibrate in her coat’s pocket for when he called or texted, which she had expected him to do by now.
North shone his flashlight down the cellar stairway. A soft thumping came from the darkness, like the muted beat of a heart hidden beneath floorboards.
Thud. Thud thud.
North ducked his head and started down the stairs. Test placed her foot on the step gingerly, her heart knocking. As a young girl, she’d had an irrational fear of cellars. When her father would send her to their basement at night to retrieve a bottle of wine, she’d descend the stairs with a sense that someone, or something, was down there, lurking in the dark recesses, waiting to snatch her. She’d hurry down, search wildly for the bottle lying in its rack, then race back, certain she’d be grabbed before she got to the top stair. She’d outgrown the fear, of course. Now, however, it did not seem so irrational after all.
Thud. Thud thud.
At the bottom of the steps, North paused. From the cellar rose a bodily stench that polluted the nostrils and caught in the back of Sonja’s throat. She felt overheated even as her skin felt clammy. Her excitement fled in a rush.
She placed a palm flat to an old beam, steadying herself. “Breathe,” she whispered quietly, so North would not hear. “Breathe.”
North turned as though he’d heard her. Rumor had it North was astute at sensing mood, could peg a person’s true nature quickly. A quality trait in a detective, and one Test hoped to hone for herself.
North shone his flashlight at the floor and crouched. The ME’s klieg lights were off, the skeletal metal legs of the several tripods looking alien. Why was North using just a flashlight? Test could barely see her own hands.
Thud.
North pointed. “See that?”
Test leaned over his shoulder, got a whiff of aftershave that reminded her of the hunk of cedar wood Claude put in his drawer. “No,” she said.
“There.” He pointed again.
“Yes,” she said. She saw: The ghost of a boot print in the dirt on the stone floor. An evidence card marked #1 sat beside the print.
“Could be our man,” North said.
Thud.
“What is that noise?” Test said.
North ignored her and trained the flashlight just ahead of the boot print.
“There,” he said.
“Where?” Test said.
He pointed.
The delicate impression of a small bare foot. It, too, was marked with an evidence card: #2. A score of such cards pocked the way to the darkened corner.
North stepped off the bottom stair, avoiding the marked footprints. Slowly, he made his way past numerous cards, past the washer and dryer, until he almost disappeared in the darkness.
Thud.
The sound was coming from the dryer. Something thudding in it as it went around and around. What on earth was in there? Why had the detective left the dryer running?
Test picked her way toward North, squatted beside him.
The beam of his flashlight jabbed into the corner’s crowding darkness.
“Why aren’t the klieg lights on?” Test asked. She’d kept quiet as long as she had because she feared there was some obvious answer she could not comprehend and she’d look the fool for asking.
“This is how it was when I arrived,” North said. “Just the light of that weak bulb.”
Of course. He wanted to see it as it had been at the time of the murder.
Test’s eyes followed the beam that cut through the darkness.
“No sign of a struggle,” Test said.
North did not reply.
“What the hell is thudding in the dryer?” Test asked, unable to hold back.
“A pair of running shoes. Among men’s clothes. Jon Merryfield says they’re his shoes. He said it was like the girl to go overboard with chores, even though she was told not to concern herself with things other than child care. The machine has about ten minutes left. We found it with sixty-two minutes left, when we arrived at seven thirty. So, unless the killer decided to do laundry, if the dryer was set at the maximum ninety minutes, the victim was killed no earlier than six fifty.”
The victim. Jessica Cumber. North’s cold use of the term “the victim” unnerved her.
“See that,” North said. “There.”
She saw.
A foot. The pale soft foot of Jessica Cumber, the heel grimy with dirt.
A child’s foot.
The other foot was not visible.
North worked the flashlight up, following a leg clad in jeans.
The other leg was bent beneath the body at a peculiar angle.
As North stood, his back cracked audibly.
He inched closer to Jessica Cumber. Test followed.
Jessica Cumber lay with her face against the grimy stone floor. An arm, like her leg, torqued beneath her body, so the shoulder looked dislocated. Test felt her own shoulder twitch.
“This is how we found her,” North said. “Or close to it. We tried to put her back as she’d been when her photos were taken, and before the ME and I looked her and the surroundings over.”
Jessica’s hair was a pale strawberry blonde, cut at the nape of her neck. In her tiny earlobes were stuck simple silver stud earrings in the shapes of stars. The kind of earrings one found on assortment placards on turnstiles at every Rite Aid and Walmart.
North held the flashlight out to Test. “Keep it on her.”
The flashlight was heavy. Its hatch-marked steel handle cold.
Test held it so the light shone on the back of Jessica’s head.
North touched Jessica’s shoulder gently, as if he intended to wake the child. Then, he took firm hold of the shoulder and turned Jessica over with a great show of courtesy and humility. Jessica rolled over like a log in water.
Test’s throat clenched. She thought she’d prepared herself. But no one could be prepared for this. Test’s world swam. At the academy five years prior, it had been pounded home for cadets to keep emotions in check, go numb to the violence. But they never told her how to go numb.
“Keep the light on her face,” North said, curt. Test lifted the flashlight. She’d let it fall in her shock. Her mouth tasted metallic. Her throat burned. Dots of silver light glimmered in her vision.
“Sorry,” she managed to whisper.
“It’s OK.”
Test had not been speaking to North. She’d been speaking to Jessica. She was sorry for her. Sorry that sorry changed nothing.
Jessica’s forehead was obliterated. A gaping wreck of skull from which brain and a swamp of blood soaked the floor, turning it oily. Her face was no longer a girl’s face but a bloated macabre caricature. Her eyes stared out at oblivion, fogged with death.
One blow. A heap of rage.
“Whoever did this despised Jessica,” Test said.
“That’s a leap.” North grabbed the flashlight from Test, startling her. “There’s no damned murder weapon,” he said, swinging the flashlight to light dark crevices. He stood.
Test remained crouched. She touched Jessica’s blood-splattered cheek, the girl’s flesh like cold clay.
Not a girl anymore.
A body.
A corpse.
“Come on,” North said. “Let’s get the fuck out of this hellhole.”