Matty paused as Lucy ran to the barn and dropped onto her belly again, just as she’d done on the patio. Not for the first time was Matty getting a creepy feeling from the dog’s behavior. She glanced behind her but saw no one and nothing but fields in the immediate vicinity. She felt for the phone in her pocket; luckily, she’d grabbed it out of habit when she’d walked out of the house earlier that morning. Of course that didn’t mean she had any service.
Lucy yipped again, but Matty still didn’t move forward. Instead, she took her phone out and made sure she had coverage. One bar was blinking on and off. Not the best, but better than nothing.
She jumped about a foot when she heard something coming up behind her, panic bursting through her body. And though it was followed by a flood of relief when Rufus’s nose touched her hand, she did wonder just what it was that was telling her to be worried.
She glanced at her phone and wondered if she should call Dash, or maybe even Vivi or Ian. But what would she say? My dog is acting weird and I have the heebie-jeebies? She wasn’t a woman who embarrassed easily, but even that would be too much for her.
“Okay, Rufus,” she said, looking down at where he sat and placing a hand on the huge dog’s head. “Shall we go see what has Lucy up in arms?”
His steady brown eyes looked back at her.
“Okay, then, let’s go.” With Rufus, she approached the barn. When they neared, Lucy stood but didn’t bark or make any other noise. Instead, she walked to the sliding door of the barn, nosed the closed door, then dropped onto her belly again. Matty glanced around. She didn’t know whose barn this was. It could be Brad’s, but it could just as easily belong to someone else.
Lucy let out a small whine. Matty glanced down again.
“You want me to open that door?” she said to the dog.
Lucy gave a single yip.
“There’s not going to be a serial killer or ax murderer behind there, is there?”
Lucy cocked her head to the side.
“Okay, I’m crazy. But you’re acting weird, so what am I supposed to think?” she asked as she made her way to the door. Gripping the handle, Matty expected Lucy to bolt inside the second the opening was big enough for her. But much to her surprise, and rising anxiety, Lucy did no such thing. Using her body weight, Matty slid the door open, pulling hard. When it was open far enough for her to get through, she stopped and eyed the dog. Lucy was on her belly again—nose down, whimpering.
Matty fingered her phone as her heart rate kicked up again. But knowing she’d have to sooner rather than later, she stepped toward the opening and looked into the barn.
CHAPTER 14
IT WAS DARK, TOO DARK to see anything until her eyes adjusted. But she didn’t need her eyes to know that something very bad had happened in the barn. The smell of decay hung in the humid, stagnant air and the sound of flies, thousands of them, echoed in the wooden structure.
The urge to know what had died in the barn battled with the knowledge that if it wasn’t an animal the barn might be a crime scene. And so for a moment, she stood frozen in indecision.
Then Lucy whined again, a sad, knowing whine.
If only for the dog’s sake, Matty needed to know more. Stepping inside and staying to the inner perimeter of the barn, she edged her way along the wall, careful not to touch anything. The smell clawed at her nose and while she tried to block it with her hand, it did little good. She thought about taking off the button-down shirt she wore over her tank top and using it to dampen the stench, but the flies, and the idea of them landing on her any more than they already were, stopped her.
And then everything coalesced—the buzzing of the flies got louder, her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and she was close enough to see what it was that Lucy had been trying to tell her.
Sprawled in a chair was a human form.
Covered with so many flies, it was almost unrecognizable. But Matty had seen enough in her life to know beyond a doubt that the form was human and, judging by the size, a man. She blinked back tears as her vision began to swim and she tried to control the pounding of blood through her veins because she knew, in her heart, that she was looking at her half brother.
Rufus let out a low growl, bringing her back from the dark place she’d been teetering into. Lucy followed up with a bark of her own. Matty did her best to shut her eyes, if only mentally, to the image of the figure and slowly made her way back out of the barn, trying to use the same path she’d taken on the way in.
When she emerged from the structure, she took several steps away and inhaled deeply, trying as hard as she could to purge the smell from inside her nose and tamp down the nausea. When she felt she was capable of having a cogent conversation, she pulled her phone out and, with shaking hands and fingers, dialed.
“Vivi,” she said when the other woman answered. “This is Matty Brooks and I don’t think you need to run that search on my half brother anymore.”
***
Dash squeezed Matty’s fingers that were intertwined in his. She turned her gaze from the barn to look at him.
“It might not be him,” Dash said.
The look on her face told him that, while she appreciated his efforts, they both knew different. He tugged her back against him and she came willingly, resting her head on his shoulder. They were seated on the lowered tailgate of his truck, watching Ian, Vivi, and various other law enforcement officers do their jobs in the old hay barn. The field, which looked like it should be a quiet and peaceful place, held several vehicles including the medical examiner’s van and a special truck from the state crime lab.
It was all a far cry from the tranquility they’d been basking in that morning.
“We should go,” he said.
Matty nodded but didn’t move. “I don’t have much empathy for my father or Sandra, but I would never have wished this on them. I can’t imagine anything worse than losing your child, even if that child is a grown adult.”
Dash couldn’t agree more, but even so, he was wondering what kind of effect it was going to have on Matty. True, she and Brad hadn’t been close, but based on the fact that he had asked her to come up to Windsor and she’d accepted, maybe they had both reached a point in life where they were finally open to getting to know each other. And knowing what he knew about Matty, she wouldn’t have reached that point easily. But now it was never going to happen. He pulled her closer and rubbed her arm, saying nothing.
They sat for a long while, watching people go in and out of the barn until, finally, a stretcher with a body bag on it was wheeled out and into the medical examiner’s van. Vivi had followed the body out and stood by as it was loaded. Once the van was making its way down the hill, she turned and started toward them. Within a few seconds, she was joined by Ian.
“I’m sorry you had to see this,” Ian said.
“For the second time,” Matty said, referring to the first body that had fallen into her car. “For a small town, Windsor seems to see a lot of violence.”
It wasn’t a mean comment; instead, it was laced with a sadness that Dash thought he understood better after hearing her revelations the evening before. In the Bronx, she had expected things like this, things like death and violence. But out in the country, out in a place that seemed so quiet and calm, people should be able to find peace. And the fact that they couldn’t, the fact that violence was everywhere, was a cause for sorrow for all mankind.
“Is it Brad?” Matty asked Vivi.
“We don’t know for sure,” Ian interjected.
Dash watched Vivi’s eyes dart to her fiancé and then soften as they landed back on Matty. “Ian is right, we don’t know for certain. But given what I know, I would say that yes, it’s Brad.”
It was a small thing, but as Matty leaned her body against his, Dash felt her sag just a bit. He knew it was all she’d allow herself. He held her hand tight in his.
“If you’re up for it, Matty, I’d like to ask you a few questions?” Ian asked.
Dash felt her s
tir against him before she answered. “Of course. I’m not sure how much I’ll know, but you can ask.”
“Maybe we could go to the house, sit somewhere more comfortable, and then I can have a look around once we’re done?” Ian suggested.
If anyone else noticed Matty’s moment of hesitation, they didn’t show it.
Soon, all four of them were seated in the kitchen drinking iced tea. The dogs, having sensed something was off, huddled around them in a steady, if somewhat bothersome, show of support.
“Will they be up there long?” Matty asked, referring to the crime scene officers with a gesture of her head toward the hill.
Ian inclined his head. “They’ll be there for a bit longer and then Carly and Marcus will come down here to help me look through some of Brad’s things. Do you mind?”
She shook her head and made a vague all-encompassing motion with her hands. “Please, whatever you need.”
“Thanks, we appreciate that. But for now, I just want to ask you about your last conversation with Brad and anything you can tell us that might shed some light on what happened in that barn.”
For a long moment, Matty just stared at Ian, her mind sluggishly processing what he was saying. Then, with a little shake of her head, she started speaking. “I last spoke to Brad the day before I arrived here. It wasn’t a very long conversation. He just asked me to come up and house-sit for him.”
“But the request wasn’t a usual request, was it?” Vivi asked.
“No, you both know it wasn’t. I hadn’t spoken to Brad in years, and to be honest, the only reason I took his call was because I was looking for a distraction from my writing. But we talked for about ten minutes. At first I thought he was crazy and then I made some offhanded comment about needing an expert in modern Chinese politics and he said he could hook me up with one if I came up. I figured, what the hell, and so I did.”
“And who is the expert?” Ian asked.
“Chen Zheng,” Vivi supplied, earning her a look from Ian. “I met his sister the other day when I dropped by to see Matty. He’s a professor at the university,” she provided.
“So, you know how to reach him?” Ian asked.
“Matty probably knows better than me. I can get his contact information from the school, but she probably has it,” Vivi answered with a look at Matty, who nodded.
“It’s here,” she said, rising from her chair. She plucked a business card from a drawer, returned to the table, and handed it to Ian. “He and his sister, Mai, may know more about Brad than I do, they seem to be good friends with him.”
Ian thanked her and tucked the card into his shirt pocket. “Now, is there anything you think we should know about Brad? How did he sound when you spoke to him? Did he sound depressed or worried about anything? Distracted?”
She gave a half-hearted shrug. “No, but you have to understand, even if he was any of those things, I didn’t know him well enough to necessarily pick up on it. He was insistent that I come up. That alone was strange, given our history. But he’d called a couple of times over the past year and I thought that maybe he was just trying to extend the olive branch or something. How did he die?” she asked abruptly.
Ian looked at Vivi, who gave a small nod then answered. “It was a gunshot wound to the head. It wasn’t an accident and he was holding a shotgun, but as of right now, we can’t tell if it was self-inflicted or not.”
“So, murder or suicide, then,” Dash said.
Vivi nodded. “We’ll know more tonight or tomorrow. Now, Matty, I think it’s time to mention why I was here the other day,” she added gently.
Dash turned toward Matty and knew that whatever Vivi was talking about was part of what had been holding her back from him a few days earlier. As if to confirm it, her eyes flickered to his before she looked back to Ian and spoke.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of Brad since the first day I arrived and found out that I didn’t have just the dogs to take care of but all the other animals, too. I’ve called maybe a dozen times since I arrived? After the conversation we had at The Tavern the other night, I asked Vivi if she wouldn’t mind looking into it, looking into whether or not Brad could be found.”
“Did you think something might have happened to him?” Dash asked.
Her eyes met his briefly and he saw a hint of an apology in there. “Like I told Vivi that night, I don’t—didn’t,” she corrected herself after a pause. “I didn’t know him well, so I didn’t know if he was the kind of guy to hike off into the woods for two weeks with no cell phone or if there might really be something wrong. But given that I couldn’t reach him and I found those weird pictures, I thought it might be worth looking into.” She finished her sentence a little uncomfortably and Dash wondered if there was something more. But before he could ask, Vivi interjected.
“And because I could understand her confusion, I agreed to look into it myself. I came by a few days ago and collected a missing persons report that I took up to the lab. I was just getting around to looking into it when Matty called me this morning.”
Dash watched Vivi communicate this information to Ian, who couldn’t have been happy about Vivi doing this on her own. But Ian’s expression, though fixed on his fiancée, remained utterly unreadable. At least to Dash. Vivi on the other hand, arched an eyebrow at Ian in what looked like a subtle challenge.
“We’ll discuss protocol later, Vivienne,” Ian finally said before turning back to Matty. “Is there anything else you think we should know? Any phone calls or mail or other messages? Any letters he left or that have come for him?”
She looked around the room, as if it might tell her something, then lifted a shoulder. “Nothing really. There were a couple of bills that were stamped and addressed that I dropped at the post office the first or second day I was here. But I don’t know if he has a PO box, because I haven’t seen any mail in the mailbox at the end of the road. As for the rest, the house was tidy when I got here and the only note for me was the one about the animals.”
“And the suggestion to look in his liquor cabinet,” Dash interjected.
“And that. And there haven’t been any calls, either,” she added.
“There was the incident with Bob’s toe,” Dash added. At the sound of his name, the yellow Lab stood, ambled over, and nosed Matty’s hand. Absentmindedly, she stroked his head.
“Yes, there was that, but you’re looking into that already,” Matty added with a look at Ian who nodded.
“Yes, we are looking into it, but I think we should bump it up on the priority list given the circumstances,” he said. Vivi nodded as the sound of a car in the driveway caused the dogs to bark and stir toward the door.
“That’s probably Marcus and Carly. Do you mind if we have a look around?” Ian asked, rising from his seat. For a brief moment, Dash wondered what condition Matty had left the bedroom in. Her clothes had been scattered on the floor, the sheets twisted, and the blankets tossed aside when he’d left that morning. He didn’t really care but didn’t want Matty to feel uncomfortable about anything.
But she didn’t seem to notice or care; she just nodded her head and let the three officers get to work as she sat with him and Vivi in the kitchen, listening to the rummaging going on throughout the house. On occasion, Ian, Marcus, or Carly would pop in and ask if something was either Brad’s or hers. More often than not, it was Brad’s, with the exception of her laptop that, once identified, was brought to the table, presumably to keep it from getting mixed in with the other items the team was either rifling through or collecting.
“Will you stay with Dash tonight?” Vivi asked softly from her position on the other side of the table.
“Yes,” he answered for her.
But Matty shook her head. “There are too many animals here, Dash. I can’t stay away for the night and leave the cats and rabbits and dogs and chickens. There is too much to take care of here.”
Vivi must have heard the same hint of desolation he heard in Matty’s voice because she
cast him a look warning him to tread carefully. He didn’t know Vivienne DeMarco well, but he did know that, in addition to being a doctor, she was also a psychologist. He thought her specialty was forensic psychology, but even so, she’d know much more about what was probably going on in Matty’s mind than he would.
“Of course you don’t have to come to my house if it’s easier to stay here. Maybe we can just swing by my place after Ian and the team leave. I’ll pick up some clothes, then we can grab some food and we’ll just have a quiet night here,” he said, brushing her hair from her neck. For the first time in several hours, she looked at him, really looked at him. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but she offered him a small smile and a simple thank you.
A couple of minutes later, Ian came down with a comb in what Dash assumed was an evidence bag. “Is this Brad’s?” he asked.
Matty looked at the item and nodded. “Yes, but why are you taking his, oh,” she paused, the reality of the situation sinking in. They wanted his comb for DNA. She cleared her throat. “He was meticulously clean. Well, his house is anyway. You may not find what you need with that,” she said with a nod toward the comb. “My toothbrush is the electric one. His is the green one in the cabinet. Or at least I assume that was his since it was here when I got here,” she said.
Ian gave a nod and muttered a quick thank you before exiting again.
Matty turned to Vivi. “You can take a sample from me if it would help to have someone you know would be a half-familial match,” she offered.
Vivi inclined her head. “Thanks. I may ask Ian to do that, just in case.”
“Will you tell his parents?” Matty asked.
Vivi shook her head. “Not until we’re sure it’s him and then, yes, Ian will make that call. Unless you want to?” she added, her tone suggesting she was testing the waters.
Matty gave a little laugh. “No, if it turns out to be Brad, I don’t want to be the one to tell his parents. I know we share a father, but it’s only biologically. I haven’t seen my father since my grandmother’s funeral and, before that, only pictures of him. Besides, my feelings for him aside, if it is Brad, this is going to be devastating to him and his wife and I don’t need to complicate things further.”
These Sorrows We See Page 19