by Sean Black
And now this. Seeing her had been the worst of it. Katy had always been a daddy’s girl, right from the get-go.
He dug into the pockets of his jeans and pulled out his keys. He walked to the back door and peered inside. The kitchen betrayed nothing of what had happened. Apart from a cereal bowl on the table next to a half-empty gallon container of milk, everything was neat and tidy, just as Kim had left it before she had gone to bed. Satisfied that the place was empty, he unlocked the door and stepped inside.
He suddenly remembered the alarm. He listened for its chirp, but was met by silence. The cops hadn’t reset it. Why would they? There was no one left for the alarm to alert to danger.
He stood in the kitchen for a moment, then walked across to the refrigerator. Katy’s last report card was still tacked up. He reached out to touch her name, and that was when he lost it.
Malik dropped to his knees. Why his family? Why not kill him and leave them? It was more than he could take, a burden too heavy for one man to bear. His body shuddered with the force of what he felt. He rubbed his eyes, the side of his hands chafing against a three-day-old beard.
Minutes passed. Finally, he grabbed the kitchen table, and hauled himself to his feet, no longer sure why he had come back. The only reason he could think of was that he had nowhere else to go. He wasn’t going to turn himself in so that they could railroad him and end any search for who had done this. He knew that much.
He grabbed a clean glass from the dishwasher, filled it with water and drank it. He put the glass down and walked into the hallway. He took a moment to look at the family pictures arranged on a side table. It still seemed surreal to think that they were gone. His beautiful family, the people who mattered more to him than anything else. And for what? Because he had gone on some crusade for someone else’s child.
No, he told himself. He couldn’t afford to think like that. He had done the right thing.
He took the final few steps to the bottom of the staircase. He could see bloody footprints on the treads, barely dried. It took everything he had to climb them, stepping on his family’s blood as he went.
Thirty-one
Ty parked his car five hundred yards from the Shaw house and got out. He didn’t want to announce his arrival, or have any of the neighbors link him directly to the car. Plus he knew from years of experience that you saw more on foot than you did from a car.
The homes were detached, single-family dwellings, neatly kept, and well maintained with large front yards. Almost all had a double garage or a carport. The sidewalks were clean. He doubted that these streets had ever seen a single piece of graffiti, never mind a triple homicide. As he turned from Buffalo Drive into the Shaws’ street, he stopped and listened.
All he could hear was the occasional chirp of a bird and the odd lone vehicle. There were no main roads within earshot, no industrial plants, no major commercial area to attract a lot of traffic. The only people coming through this part of town would be those who lived here.
He walked down the street, checking off the numbers. He reached the house of the lady who had made the original call to the cops. A dog barked as he walked up the path. He took off his shades and put them into his pocket. He heard a woman shushing the dog, then an internal door close. Finally, the front door opened.
‘Mrs Henshall?’
She studied him through a gap in the door. He didn’t blame her for being wary.
‘My name is Tyrone Johnson. I’m looking into what happened at the Shaw family residence. I understand you were the first person to call it in.’
‘Are you from the police department?’ she asked him.
‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’m working in a private capacity for a friend of the family.’
She seemed hesitant.
‘It’s just a few simple questions. I promise I won’t take up too much of your time.’
‘Time’s not a problem. I’m retired. I have all the time in the world.’ Behind her he could hear the dog barking. The door opened. ‘Come in.’
‘Thank you.’ He walked into the neat-as-a-pin hallway. The dog’s barking grew louder and more insistent.
‘Their dog,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want the pound to take him. In case, you know. It might be difficult to rehome him if people knew whom he’d belonged to.’
‘That’s very good of you.’
‘He’s a little on edge.’
‘I’m fine with dogs,’ said Ty.
She opened the door, and the retriever bounded out. He stopped when he saw Ty, launched himself toward him in an excited frenzy of tail wagging, then began to jump at him, licking his hand and whimpering with happiness.
‘My,’ said Eleanor Henshall, ‘I’ve never seen him greet anyone like that.’
Ty shrugged. ‘I have a way with dogs, I guess.’
‘Well, it’s nice to see him so happy. Poor thing. Poor all of them. Can I get you anything, Mr Johnson?’
‘No, thank you.’
He followed her and the dog into the living room. The TV was on. Some kind of morning talk show. If Ty watched an hour of TV a day that was a lot. Eleanor clicked it off and they sat down. The dog sat next to him, shouldering against Ty’s leg.
‘Who did you say you were working for?’ she asked him.
‘A childhood friend of Mr Shaw’s. He wants to locate him before anyone else comes to harm. And, of course, to establish what happened.’
Her eyes narrowed, and he thought he might have lost her. After all, Malik was the man responsible for slaughtering his family, according to everyone here.
‘You don’t think he did it?’ she asked.
‘Not from what I’ve been told about him, no, ma’am,’ said Ty.
She took a deep breath. ‘Thank goodness for that. Neither do I.’
That was not what Ty had expected to hear. ‘You don’t? But didn’t you tell the police you saw him driving away from the house?’
She stiffened. ‘I said I thought it was him. I couldn’t be sure. It was definitely his car. Hundred per cent. And it probably was him …’ She tailed off.
‘I’m sensing a “but”.’
She shook her head. ‘It’s just … he adored those kids. And his wife. I’d been hearing some arguments between them over the past week, so maybe they had problems, but kill them? I just can’t believe it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just a naïve old woman.’
This was good. But he needed specifics. ‘Did you hear what the arguments were about?’
‘I thought maybe the kids. I don’t know. I tried not to listen. I didn’t want to be one of those neighbors.’
‘And the night they were killed? What did you hear then?’
‘I didn’t hear anything. Are you sure I can’t get you some coffee, Mr Johnson?’
‘No, thank you, ma’am. You didn’t hear anything? Nothing at all?’
She pointed at the dog, who had lain down at Ty’s feet. ‘First thing I heard was him barking.’
She was telling the truth, Ty was sure of it. ‘Do you take anything to help you sleep, Mrs Henshall? Or wear earplugs? I mean, if there had been a noise, would you have heard it, or might you have slept straight through?’
‘Oh, no. I’m a very light sleeper. When I sleep at all. Old age.’
Twenty minutes later, Eleanor Henshall walked him to the door. Ty thanked her for her time. Not that he’d had any doubt about Malik’s innocence, but if he had, talking to Eleanor would have laid it to rest.
His conversation with her had left him with fresh questions, though. A shotgun made one hell of a noise. And Eleanor Henshall was a light sleeper.
That meant there was a more than even chance that the cops who had lied about everything else were also lying about how Kim Shaw and the two kids had been killed, as well as who had done it.
Thirty-two
Ty waited until Eleanor Henshall had retreated into her house, then doubled back to the Shaw home. He walked to the rear of the property, stepped back and took a look. The upstairs b
linds were still drawn, the windows closed. He walked to the back door, ready to force it. He turned the handle and met no resistance.
His hand fell to the butt of his SIG Sauer 226. He eased the door open, and slowly stepped inside. It wasn’t unknown for crime scenes to be left unsecured, especially once forensics had been done. It was rare, but it happened. Something told him that this wasn’t one of those times. Someone had either been here to take a look, or to pilfer from the dead.
Or they were still here.
He stood in the kitchen, staying close to the wall, and listened. His eye fell to the dishwasher. He crossed to it, weapon still in hand. The contents were clean and dry. Apart from a solitary water glass that was still wet.
He pushed off toward the door that led into the hallway, the SIG punched out in front of him. The hallway was empty. He kept moving. He checked the living room and the family room. Here, things looked undisturbed — as far as Ty could tell when there had been two kids in the house. He looked for open drawers, or upturned cushions, signs of someone searching for something. He came up empty.
Still, it was good to see it all for himself. Salas had given a good run-down of what the cops were saying, but he hadn’t been able to access any of the paperwork. In any case, crime scenes were there to be absorbed. The subconscious worked on them as well as the conscious. You filed away details that you were barely aware of seeing. Things that seemed, to the conscious mind, to hold no significance. That was why, despite the wonders of modern science, there was still an art to deciphering what a crime scene revealed.
He moved back out into the hallway and started up the stairs. He was hyper-alert. You were rarely more vulnerable than when you were climbing a flight of open stairs. There were too many angles to cover. It wasn’t a task for one man. If someone popped out, and they were armed, you just had to hope they couldn’t shoot for shit.
He noted the bloody footprints as he skirted them. He made it to the top of the stairs. He checked the bedrooms, bracing himself for the horror that each might contain. The last bedroom he checked was the master, the one occupied by Malik and Kim Shaw.
This was the room that demanded the most attention. With each minute that passed he grew angrier. The rage built up until he couldn’t take it anymore. He had to get out for some fresh air. There was no art needed here. No special discernment. It was all laid out in front of you, as straightforward as multiple homicides got, which was a tall claim given the lack of eyewitnesses.
He walked back through the rooms, and took some snaps with the camera of his cell phone. He started out wide, then moved in closer. He wanted evidence. They would need it, and a whole lot more. This house told a story, all right. It was a story that swooped right out of the front door, chased through the streets of Harrisburg, and whistled slam-bang into the police department.
As he placed his left foot on the second to last tread, he heard a noise from the kitchen. Ty jumped down into the hallway and ran. The SIG raised in a modified Weaver stance, he swung into the kitchen. Through the window that overlooked the yard, he saw a man’s legs piston furiously in the air as he raced to the back of the property.
Bursting through the door, Ty took off after him. The legs disappeared over the fence, and they were off and running. Ty took the fence at speed, hands grasping the top. He hauled himself over. It was a hell of a lot harder than the person he was chasing was making it look. As he pulled himself up, he caught sight of the man booking it through the trees on the other side. He was fast, way faster than Ty.
His speed was no surprise to Ty. Even retired pro basketball players could outrun most folks. He stopped and shouted after Malik. But Malik either couldn’t hear him, or was just too damn scared to register who he was.
After what Ty had seen back at the house, he didn’t blame him. Who the hell knew the state of Malik’s mind right now? If the roles had been reversed, and Ty was being pursued, he wouldn’t have stopped running until he’d fallen down from exhaustion. At least he knew his friend was alive. He turned and started back toward the house.
Thirty-three
Ty stood in the master bedroom and stared at the blood on the back wall. There were three main areas of spatter. All three patches were skeletonized – the blood drying to the point where it had begun to flake, leaving a ghost image of the outer circumference as the only clue to the original spread. The stippling was clear evidence of the use of a firearm.
The first two spatters were large, perhaps a foot or more in diameter. The third, the blood from the head shot that would have killed little Katy Shaw, was less than a foot in diameter. Smaller head, less blood. None of it was rocket science, which was what made the police line that had been fed to Salas all the stranger.
The height from the floor to the spatters were also different. The smaller spatter was lower, maybe three feet up the wall. The other two were four and a half to five from the floor. Three neat little circles marked where each round had passed through and into the wall. The blood patterns on the cream carpet were messier, less easy to read. Ty prodded at the first major area of blood with the toe of his boot.
The patterns didn’t take a forensic expert to analyze. All three had been kneeling down, facing the wall. Going by the lack of handprints they had probably had their hands tied, likely in front of them, from the lack of the smear that would have been left if they had fallen forward, which they almost certainly had.
Ty stepped back into the doorway, and mimed the likely actions of the shooter.
The killer, or killers, must have lined them up one by one. He had already had them trussed by the time he’d got them here. He had made them kneel against the wall, then gone along the line, working fast so they were still absorbing the shock before it was their turn.
There hadn’t been any shotgun involved. This had been up close and personal, with a handgun. And it wasn’t a murder scene, domestic or otherwise. The bedroom had been a place of execution.
Thirty-four
Ty spent some time circling the Shaw neighborhood, searching for Malik. But Malik had gone to ground. After a couple of hours he headed back into town and checked into his room at a small family-run motel a couple of short blocks from Joanna’s Diner. The manager fussed over his late check-in, and how he could have sold his room three times over for double the price.
Upstairs, the place was bare bones, a little frayed at the edges. Ty guessed that most of the guests were parents dropping off or collecting kids from the college. It was another reminder of how central it was to the town. Apart from some agriculture, and a large e-commerce packing facility, it was a case of no college, no town. There were thousands of places like it around the country. Places dominated by one large institution or business.
He was given an actual key to his room rather than a plastic card, and headed up to the third floor in the tiny elevator. When he got inside his room, he followed standard operating procedures. He dumped his bag, checked for surveillance devices and placed small markers that would tell him if someone had visited while he was out.
A few minutes later, Ty rolled back out in the Audi. He drove with a map next to him on the passenger seat. Lock had drilled into him an instinctual distrust of satellite navigation systems, and now he avoided them when at all possible. As far as he was concerned, a well-used satellite navigation system was as good as having a tracking device attached to your car. Plus it was faster to pick up the layout of a new place if you weren’t on auto-pilot. You saw more too. You had to look out for street signs, and generally be more alert.
Ty pulled up outside the Barnes family home and got out of the car. He walked across the street and knocked at the door.
There was no answer. He knocked again, this time more forcefully. Still no one came to the door. There wasn’t a car in the driveway or parked directly outside. He walked back down the path and checked the mailbox. The mail hadn’t been collected in at least a few days.
Ty walked to the back of the property. There were three windo
ws. One had been boarded over. He pulled away the board, punched out the rest of the glass from the window with his elbow, and clambered inside.
He moved quickly through the house. In the mom’s room, clothing tumbled from open drawers. The bed was unmade. He checked the bathroom. Toothbrushes were gone from the holder. The boy’s room was also untidy, but that didn’t signify much.
In the kitchen a heap of dishes had been left to molder in the sink. Ty opened the refrigerator. The milk was beginning to sour. In the crisper drawer there were two wrinkled peppers and a wilted lettuce.
Everywhere else in the house was clean and as tidy as life got with a young boy living there. Eve Barnes clearly took pride in her home. She had also left in one hell of a hurry. His day had just gotten a little better. If they had skipped town, there was a chance that Eve and her son were still alive.
Thirty-five
Gretchen Becker’s friends called her Pollyanna. The nickname fitted her so well that she didn’t even mind when they used it when she was in their company. She just laughed.
Gretchen was always optimistic, always cheerful. Nothing ever seemed to get her down. The past week had tested her sunny disposition, but she had done her best to maintain it. For a start she didn’t believe a word of what was being said about Aubrey. It was simply preposterous. He was a good husband, kind, loving and considerate. And he most certainly wasn’t a goddamn faggot, never mind a man with an interest in young boys. Oh, how Gretchen loathed fags — and to think she would have married one! The very idea made her want to vomit.
