Dead Silence

by Kimberly Derting

  “What’s happened exactly?” Sara was asking, still holding her, hugging her. “Are you all right?” Steam gusted from Sara’s blue lips as she gripped Violet’s shoulders with fingers that were icy, despite the summer heat, and all thoughts that Sara wasn’t entirely on her side evaporated just like that.

  Violet had grown accustomed to seeing Sara’s imprint, the one she’d earned when Violet had been attacked outside the Center—the day Sara had saved her life. But she’d never stop thinking that the imprint was probably the most fascinating one she’d ever seen.

  A fine layer of frost coated every part of Sara’s skin, making Sara glisten like an icy sculpture, making her look as if she’d been carved from a glacier. Behind that chilly facade, she studied Violet with eyes that were eerily similar to her brother’s.

  “I’m fine.” Violet turned her head and nodded toward the house. “They’re in there, three of them. All dead.”

  Sara looked past the gate, at the stately house overlooking the glittering waters of Lake Tapps. Her hands fell away from Violet and Violet wrapped her arms around herself. “How did you—?” Sara started to ask, and then reformed her question. “Did you know them?”

  Violet shook her head. “I was just driving by. . . .” She wiped the corners of her mouth with her thumb and forefinger, realizing she hadn’t bothered cleaning up after she’d puked, and wondering if they could see just how affected she’d been. “I felt them.”

  “Damn,” Rafe muttered, moving forward now, and Violet took a step back from him. She didn’t want to be comforted, not now. Not by him.

  She glanced at him, nodding. “It’s bad,” she breathed.

  “Who else did you call?” Sara asked, and Violet knew that what she really meant was had she called her uncle yet?

  “No one. Just you.”

  Sara reached for her cell phone. “I’ll call it in,” she said, breath gusting as she turned away from them. “You two wait here.”

  The police arrived in far less time than Sara and Rafe had, her uncle among them. He greeted her like her uncle, hugging her so tight she felt like she’d get lost in his arms, whispering quiet questions that only she could hear as she nodded assurances against his chest.

  Then, he transformed, slipping into his official role as chief of police, and Violet became an unintentional bystander, a witness to a crime. She watched as he interacted with the other officers, always fascinated by this no-nonsense side of him. Rigid, bordering on militant. So different from the carefree uncle she’d grown up with, the uncle who was always teasing and laughing and playing with her.

  She expected to be shuffled away shortly after giving her statement, taken home to face her parents, but instead she and Rafe had been left outside to wait for Sara and her uncle. They stood on the fringes of the scene, not really a part of the investigation but not forbidden from it either. Ignored was more like it.

  Or forgotten.

  She watched in silence as officers moved in and out of the house, unable to stop thinking about what was in there.

  But not about the bodies so much, and not about the blood either. Although both were forever seared into her memory, permanently etched into her mind’s eye.

  It was something else that bothered her, niggled at her.

  Something wrong about what she’d seen.

  Something was . . . off.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek, replaying the scene in her head once more. She thought of the word staged, and realized it fit the scene. The father had been placed beside the mother who had been placed beside the son. The only thing missing was a family dog.

  Violet’s head snapped up as she realized what was bothering her. Not the dog at all, but what was absent from the scene.

  “Rafe,” she said urgently, reaching for his sleeve and pulling him from his own quiet reverie. She knew where he’d been, what he’d been thinking about. Rafe had his own skeletons, and dead families played right into his deepest fears. “Where’s Sara? Do you know where she went?”

  Rafe looked at her, his eyes still glazed. “No.” He shook his head. “Inside, maybe . . .”

  Violet sprinted toward the house, but Rafe caught up to her, grabbing her arm to stop her. “Jesus. What’s up with you?”

  “Something’s wrong. I need to go in there.”

  “There’s a lot wrong in there, V.” He frowned back at her.

  “No. I mean, I know . . . but there’s something I need to see . . . feel . . .” She trailed off, unable to explain what she was thinking. And then she looked past him. “Uncle Stephen!” She waved at her uncle who had just emerged from the front door.

  He was rubbing his eyes when he looked up at her, and his expression, that look of worry on his face, deepened. “What are you still doing here, Vi?” he asked, pulling her aside. “I thought you’d left—”

  “Uncle Stephen, I need to go back inside,” she insisted, cutting him off.

  But he was already shaking his head. “That’s not possible. You should go home. I’ll come by later and we can talk then.”

  She stepped closer, clutching his hand in both of hers, her voice dropping all the way. “I don’t need to talk. I need to go back in there.” She met his eyes determinedly. “Please. Just for a minute. There’s something I have to know.”

  For a moment she thought he would continue to deny her, and she tightened her grip. But then his shoulders sagged and she knew he was giving in. “Is it that important?” He didn’t ask her why she needed to go inside.

  She nodded. “It is. At least . . . I think so.”

  He sighed. “Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll take you in, but you can’t touch anything, Violet. I mean it. Stay right with me, and when I say it’s time to go, we go. Got it?”

  Violet nodded again, and when her uncle started leading her toward the house, she saw Rafe, his forehead creasing as he watched her, behind the spectacle of flashing colors that crowded her periphery as she left him behind on the lawn.

  Inside, there was that same over-air-conditioned feel, and that same smell of moldering coffee grounds.

  Violet walked exactly where her uncle did, following in his footsteps as if she were walking on stepping-stones. They passed Sara, who had stopped talking to one of the officers—or maybe detectives, Violet didn’t know for sure—as she watched the two of them with thoughtful consideration, her icy brows raised inquisitively.

  Violet was prepared this time for the explosion of colors that burst behind her eyes, and for the disturbing image of the family spread out before her on the couch, bloodied and gashed. They reminded her of flowers—fragile and delicate. Like death in bloom.

  Her suspicions were confirmed as she focused on the colorful explosions and the smell of old coffee.

  One of these bodies had no echo. At least none that she could discern.

  She took minuscule steps, moving closer to the family, until she was standing near the end of the couch where the man had been propped up, set up to look as if nothing were out of place, as if he were spending an ordinary evening with his family.

  Bending at the waist, Violet leaned in, keeping her gaze directed solely on him.

  The result was instantaneous. The kaleidoscope of colors exploded behind her eyes, blinding her and making it impossible for her to know if anyone was watching her. Blocking out all else.

  That echo belonged to him.

  She flinched, drawing away, and bit by bit her vision gradually returned, clearing with each millimeter of space she put between them. Then she turned to the woman beside him.

  She almost didn’t need to approach the woman to know . . . the coffee grounds were most definitely hers. But she did so anyway, tilting toward her ever so slightly, in the same way she had the man. And in that instant, the smell became so overpowering that Violet nearly gagged from the stench alone. She pulled back, more slowly this time, shuddering as she tried to find a breath of uncontaminated air in the too-chilled room.

  There was only one bod
y remaining. The boy.

  Violet approached him more tentatively. Her music-box imprint seemed to swell in her own ears, but it had nothing to do with the boy. Likely it was only her imagination that made her more conscious of it.

  She wanted to glance around her, to know who was still in the room with her because it felt like she was all alone now. Just her . . . and the bodies. Somehow, though, she couldn’t manage to turn her own head. She couldn’t stop watching the child with his lifeless eyes.

  The echoless corpse.

  She crept nearer to him and felt her heart stutter. At any other time she’d have felt something by now. At the very least, her skin would have prickled, her nerves tight with the awareness that she was so near a body. Even if the echo was faint and hard to find.

  But not now.

  Now there was nothing.

  She turned to her uncle and dropped her voice until it was almost nonexistent. “I know you said I couldn’t, but . . . can I try . . . I just need to touch him. I promise I won’t disturb anything.” She couldn’t imagine how much more disturbed the scene before her could possibly be.

  Her uncle looked around, considering her request uncertainly. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves—the kind she’d seen at other crime scenes on the people gathering evidence.

  It was all the confirmation she needed and Violet slipped her hands into them before he could change his mind. She took another short step, watching her feet as she closed the gap. She didn’t want to touch him, but she wasn’t sure she had any other choice.

  She watched her own fingers, thinking how stiff and cold they looked—so very much like the ones she bent forward to touch. Hers brushed across his, and she could feel the bloodless sensation despite the latex that separated them, yet the only thing she was aware of was the glaring absence of anything from him.

  She stared at his blood-soaked T-shirt, noting the way his head slumped against his mother’s shoulder, and she knew that what she felt wasn’t possible. She knew this boy hadn’t died of natural causes. He had been killed, just like his parents had been. He had to have an echo.

  Yet . . .

  She shook her head as she drew her fingers away, wrapping her other hand around them. Fingers that felt as if they’d just betrayed her. Lied to her.

  It wasn’t possible.

  Still . . .

  “What’s the matter, Vi?” It was her uncle, standing at her back now and staring at the same thing she was but seeing something entirely different.

  She stepped back, bumping into him. “I—I don’t . . .” But she wasn’t sure how else to say it. “He doesn’t have an echo.”

  She felt her uncle’s hands close around her upper arms and then his voice was at her ear, reminding her that there were others there with them, those who didn’t know what she could do. “Are you sure?”

  Half nodding and half shaking her head, so that she looked like some sort of deranged bobble-head, she whispered back, “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

  CHAPTER 5

  VIOLET LET HER UNCLE LEAD HER AWAY FROM the bodies. She felt staggered by her discovery; she’d never imagined that a body—especially one that had so obviously died at the hands of another—could be missing its echo.

  Yet it was true. The silence, the total dead space around the boy, was proof.

  The impact of that fact had yet to sink in.

  They’d almost reached the kitchen, when something else stopped her. Something that penetrated the near-blinding explosions behind and around her eyes.

  She turned toward the wall, which was tall, reaching up two stories, and she marveled at how she’d ever missed this in the first place.

  “What is that?” she asked, taking in the strange design as best she could. Taking in, too, the fact that, whatever the pattern was it had been drawn in blood . . . most likely blood taken from the very family who’d lived here. Who’d died here.

  She blinked, trying to clear her vision.

  The crimson smears were wide, too fat to have been made by any brushstrokes. No, whatever made this was misshapen and soaked in blood, as drops had oozed down the walls, gravity pulling them away from their intended formation.

  But the shape itself could still be distinguished, despite the dribbles and streaks and smears.

  If she were to describe it, she supposed she might call it a cross of sorts. Like the ones you’d see in church or on the Bible. But that wasn’t right, because it wasn’t a cross exactly. At its base, there was a strange, sideways figure eight, almost like a pedestal that it sat upon. And there was a second line, smaller than the one that generally intersects the cross, just beneath its top . . . perched above the other.

  “We don’t know yet,” Uncle Stephen said, drawing her attention as he pulled her away from it.

  But Violet kept it in her sight for as long as she could. Her eyesight cleared a little more with each step she took away from the man on the couch . . . and his kaleidoscope echo.

  The kitchen was spacious and overly bright, and Violet blinked as she stared at the granite countertops, with their swirled and flecked patterns. They seemed to blend with the swirls and flecks that were gradually receding to her periphery.

  “I don’t understand,” he was saying. “I thought all bodies had echoes. Everyone who’s been murdered anyway.”

  She nodded hesitantly. “They . . . do . . . at least they always have . . .” she said slowly, but then moved her head side to side, just as uncertainly. “Until now.” She frowned, feeling foolish for asking her next question. “And . . . and you’re sure that he was . . . you know . . . murdered?”

  Her uncle’s brows rose and she could feel the are-you-really-asking-me-that look he shot her way. Of course they’d been murdered. All of them, the boy included. Violet knew as much, she’d seen him with her own eyes. Felt his lifeless body even.

  “I don’t get it,” she admitted. “There should be . . . something.”

  “But the others?” her uncle asked. “The mom and dad . . . ?”

  “Yeah. Both of them. Clear ones.”

  Violet leaned back, trying to make sense of it herself as she stood propped against the edge of the counter. But she paused as she glanced at the refrigerator, her eyes skimming the array of photos taped to the face of the stainless steel door. They were cluttered and disorderly, lending it a homey feel.

  She saw a picture of the boy pinned up there, suited up in his Little League uniform. His smile revealed his two missing front teeth and he held his bat at his shoulder, as if preparing to swing at the next pitch. Beside that was a photo of the couple—the husband and the wife—taken in some tropical locale. Both of them were wearing flowered leis, and he had on a garish Hawaiian shirt—the kind tourists wear. Among the images, there were report cards and colored drawings, and a birthday card that read: Who’s Ready for a Fiesta??? with a Chihuahua wearing a sombrero perched eagerly in front of a birthday cake.

  At the top right of the refrigerator, there were twin school photos with the same bland gray backdrops, one was of the boy—taken several years earlier, when he was probably in the first or second grade. The other was a girl, several grades older than the boy. She had braces and freckles and wore a T-shirt with a rainbow emblazoned across the chest.

  She’s cute, Violet thought, stepping closer to examine the images. She looked like she could be the boy’s sister.

  Her eyes moved over a collection of magnets and a Crock-Pot recipe for chili. And then she froze and her heart hammered against her breastbone like it was trying to punch its way out.

  There was a photograph, buried amid the others, almost unnoticeable at first.

  She took a step closer, until her nose was practically pressed against the image, and she lifted her fingertips to brush across the stippled surface of the photo paper.

  She stared at the couple, all dressed up. He, in his jacket and tie, a boutonniere pinned to his lapel. And she, wearing a short white dress with black r
ibbon trimming the hemline and tied around her waist. It had a dramatic effect. Her hair was pinned up and tiny curls fell strategically to frame her face. Balloons fashioned together in the shape of a giant heart created a whimsical backdrop to the vignette.

  It wasn’t the picture, though, that made bile rise into the back of Violet’s throat all over again. It was who she was looking at in the image.

  The girl was the same girl from the school picture. She was older in the dance photo, but it was most definitely her.

  “Holy . . .” Her uncle breathed from between gritted teeth, and Violet guessed that he was thinking the same thing she was: That the girl belonged here. In this house. With this family.

  Violet nodded, unable to tear her gaze away from the image, because there was more. The boy in the dance photo with her . . .

  She knew him better than she probably wanted to. And she hated that he was there, standing next to the smiling girl in her prom dress, while Violet had to be here . . . in the girl’s house . . . with her murdered family.

  “We need to find her,” her uncle said now, reaching over Violet’s shoulder and snatching the picture off the fridge. “We need to make sure she’s safe.”

  Violet stumbled after him, realizing she was losing him—her uncle. That he was already disappearing into police chief mode. “Uncle Stephen,” she called, before he was too far gone.

  He stopped at the kitchen door and turned to her. “What is it, Vi?”

  “That’s Grady,” she said, nodding toward the picture in his hand. “The boy with her, at the dance, it’s Grady Spencer. You know him, don’t you?”

  Her uncle glanced down at the image, and Violet saw a quick flash of recognition before he slipped back into the living room, leaving Violet to decide whether or not to follow. She lagged behind, her hand hovering over one of the other pictures, the school photo of the girl in her braces.

  As she plucked the image from the fridge, tearing the tape that held it, she heard her uncle on the other side of the wall. “We need to find the girl in this picture. Go up and look through her bedroom. Look for anything to tell us where she might be. In the meantime,” he added, his voice lowering, but not so much that Violet still couldn’t hear him, “start with a kid named Grady Spencer. He might have some idea where she is.”