Thicker Than Blood - Crouch Blake. Страница 69

Tranquil.

Ordinary.

Safe.

She absorbed her surroundings—the young pine forest across the street from the lakefront houses, the cul-de-sacs at each end, the road that dead-ended into Shortleaf Drive, the number of houses between cul-de-sacs (eleven) and that serene black lake.

Violet did not speculate or theorize. With the investigation only in its infancy it wasn’t useful to do so. All she knew was that a family of four had been slain in that brick ranch forty yards down the street. Coupled with the other murders—the clerk knifed to death in a Rocky Mount Wal-Mart and the woman hanged from the Bodie Island Lighthouse—this had been one of the bloodiest weeks in North Carolina since the Civil War.

As she opened the door and stepped out into the autumn evening she couldn’t help thinking, Most investigators never encounter anything like this. And then: You are not equipped to handle it.

Her legs gave out and she leaned against the Jeep.

Closing her eyes, she took a long calming breath, whispered a prayer, and started walking toward the flashing blue lights.

The perimeter of the Worthingtons’ half-acre lot had already been roped off with crime scene tape. Violet counted three police cruisers, an ambulance, a van, and two unmarked cars parked along the curb across the street.

A uniformed patrolman stood at the foot of the driveway, guarding the perimeter.

"Hi, Reuben," she said.

"Viking? You were on-call for this one?"

"Yep."

"Lucky you. That house next door is where we had the kidnapping on Monday. These are the neighbors we could never get to answer the door or the phone."

"You’re kidding me. You were first car?"

"No, Bruce was. He’s over talking to Barry."

Violet stepped under the tape and walked down the driveway toward her sergeant, a wide massive man with the girth of an oak tree and a voice as deep as her daddy’s. He was talking to a patrolman when she walked up between them.

"Hey, guys."

Her sergeant looked down at her and shook his head.

"You sure caught it this time, Viking," he said as though it were her fault. "I’m gonna go talk with Chip and the boys. Bruce can tell you what you got."

"You been in yet, Barry?" she asked.

"No. We just got the search warrant. Bobby’s executing it right now."

"CSI ready to start videotaping?"

"I think so."

"Would you ask them to hold off a sec? After I talk with Bruce, I’d like to do a quick walkthrough."

Sgt. Mullins gazed down at her for a moment. He rarely smiled. Standing under his undecipherable scowl always made her feel eight years old again. She knew exactly what he was thinking because she’d thought it too: she was incapable of handling this.

As Sgt. Mullins lumbered off toward the white-jacketed CSI techs, Violet glanced over her shoulder at a woman who stood weeping in the street at the edge of the Worthingtons’ lawn.

She turned back to Bruce.

He was a year younger than Violet, just a year out of the academy on uniformed patrol. They’d attended the same high school though they hadn’t known each other then. But Violet remembered him. He looked much the same—tall, slender, slightly bugeyed, with a fearful nervous mien.

She pulled a notepad and pencil from her purse as Bruce stared at the woman crying in the street.

"Bruce?" His large eyes came to Violet. "You all right?" Bruce took a deep breath. "Tell me what I got." They were standing by the Worthingtons’ minivan and Bruce leaned against the back hatch. "No, Bruce, don’t."

He stood back up, pointed toward the street, said, "That woman up there crying—name’s Brenda Moorefield. She lives three houses down. Earlier this afternoon—"

"’Bout what time?"

"Between three-thirty and four. She came over and knocked on the Worthingtons’ door. Apparently their children play together, and Mrs. Moorefield hadn’t seen the Worthington kids in two days. She had a key to the house and since their cars were in the driveway but they weren’t answering the phone or getting the mail, she decided to go in.

"She was halfway through the foyer when she smelled them. Came right out, called nine-one-one. I arrived a little after five.

"You’ve got one boy under the breakfast table in the kitchen. The other kid’s in his bed. I didn’t see any blood near the children. Zach and Theresa Worthington are in their bed…it’s bad. I couldn’t stay in that room very long, Vi. I’m sorry, I just—"

"It’s okay, Bruce. Not your job. What are the kids’ names?"

"Hank and Ben. They were eleven and seven. Ben’s the one under the table."

"Okay, mobile command should be here any minute. Reuben’s got the perimeter. I want you to go over and calm Mrs. Moorefield down. I’m gonna go in, see what I got before CSI starts taping. I’d like to talk with Mrs. Moorefield while they’re doing their thing, so make sure she doesn’t leave."

As Bruce headed back up the driveway, Violet rubbed her arms. She’d left her Barbour coat in the fellowship hall at church and a chilly breeze was blowing in off the lake, dislodging dead leaves from the enormous oaks in the front yard.

She took a moment to gather herself, then started toward the front porch where a gaggle of noisy lawmen awaited her on the steps. They intimidated her but she could handle them.

What troubled her more was what waited for her inside the house.

22

VIOLET kicked off her heels and slipped her tiny feet into the cloth bootees. Then she squeezed her hands into a pair of latex gloves and stood up.

Standing by the Worthingtons’ front door, the officer in charge of the scribe list wrote down her name and time of entry. Since this would be a cursory walkthrough she was going in alone. A crime scene is a delicate ecosystem and the more people come and go, the more evidence they disturb.

"I’ll be quick, guys," she said.

"Hey, Viking, want some Vicks?" one of the techs asked her. "From what Bruce says, they’re pretty juicy in there."

"No, I’ll be fine."

Sgt. Mullins said, "I’ve called Rick and Don. They’re gonna come out first thing in the morning."

"Good. That’ll move things along. We can each take a room."

Armed only with a flashlight, a notepad, and a pencil, Vi entered the home of Zach, Theresa, Hank, and Ben Worthington and closed the door behind her. Standing in the foyer, she noted two sounds: the rush of central heating and the voices of the lawmen standing on the front porch. It felt good to be out of the cold though she knew the warm air would only magnify the smell.

The house was dark, in the exact condition Bruce had found it.

Vi walked into the dining room. She hadn’t breathed yet and her eyes made slow progress adjusting to the darkness. At the dining room table she stopped, letting form and detail vivify in the shadows.

Then she took an unflinching breath.

Sweet. Rich. Rot.

Some putrid aberration of macaroni and cheese.

So keen she could taste it.

She sniffed again, letting the scent of decay engulf her. During her second month in Criminal Investigations Division she’d caught her first suicide—two summers ago on a sweltering July afternoon, a seventy-four-year-old man suffering with Alzheimer’s had put a twelve gauge under his chin. He was found a week later in a small trailer without air-conditioning. Though his smell was horrific, she discovered surprisingly that she couldn’t shun it, that she would accept, possibly embrace that awful stench out of reverence and compassion for her dead. The visceral intimacy of it inexplicably bound her first to the victim, then to the decoding of their murder.