Page 25 of The Overnight Guest

As he drove closer, he realized that the battered, bloody figure was no animal, but a person, hunched over with pain careening from one side of the road to the other.

Matthew later told investigators thatit was like coming across a zombie from one of those old movies. It was dead eyed and lurching, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw who it was.

If Josie was aware of the truck approaching, she gave no indication. Her grandfather pulled off to the side of the road and leaped from his truck.

“Josie?” he asked. “What happened? What are you doing?” Josie acted as if she didn’t hear him, just kept walking. Not knowing what to do, Matthew finally grabbed Josie by the shoulders and forced her to look at him.

“Josie,” he said, staring into her red, unfocused eyes. “What happened? Where are you going?”

“To your house,” Josie managed to croak. It was an odd response, Matthew thought, since Josie was heading in the wrong direction. Josie’s arm was swollen and caked with dried blood and her arms and legs were slashed with scratches that were too many to count. He led Josie to his truck and helped her inside.

“What happened, Shoo?” Matthew asked, using the nickname he had given Josie as a toddler when she would follow him around everywhere. “Shoo fly, shoo,” he’d tease, and Josie would giggle and buzz after him. “What happened?” he asked in alarm. “Was there an accident?”

“I thought there must have been an accident at home,” Matthew told the deputy when he arrived on the scene. “It was the only thing that made sense at that moment. They were leaving for the state fair early that morning. They should have been on the road already. I decided to take Josie back to her house. I never imagined I’d find what I did.”

When Matthew and Josie pulled down the lane and parked behind two vehicles in the drive—his son-in-law’s Chevy truck and the minivan that Lynne drove. The only vehicle missing was Ethan’s truck.

This was where Matthew took another look at his granddaughter. A bright red rash feathered her cheeks, her hair was tangled and unbrushed, her eyes swollen and bloodshot as if she’d been crying. She was barefoot and dirty and it looked like someone took a switch to her legs. It was a closer look at Josie’s arm that caused Matthew’s throat to close up. He’d seen injuries like this before. “Josie, what happened to your arm,” Matthew asked.

Next to him in the truck, Josie forced her eyes open and looked down. Her arm was bloody and swollen and dimpled like a golf ball where the buckshot had embedded her skin.

Despite the hot morning, Josie began to shiver.

“Where is everyone?” Matthew asked.

Josie looked out the window toward the second floor of the house.

“Up there?” Matthew asked, his voice filled with fear. Josie nodded. “Do I need to call for help?”

Josie nodded again and then turned her head away, resting it against the car window.

Matthew stepped from the truck. The yard was silent except for the insistent tick of the engine cooling down. “Stay here,” he told her as he moved toward the back of the house.

Josie’s grandfather entered the house through the screen door, which creaked and banged shut behind him. Josie remembered screwing her eyes shut as if this could protect her grandfather from what he was about to see.

And even though she covered her ears, Josie still heard his strangled cry, the thumping on the steps, and the crash of the back door being thrown open. She heard the gasp of her grandfather trying to draw air into his lungs and then the wretched sound of gagging and the rush of liquid hitting the ground.

Matthew’s anguished cries filled the air and Josie pressed her hands more tightly against her ears to block out the sound, but it did no good.

Deb Cutter, who was in her yard, a mile away as the crow flies, reported she heard the cries. She looked up from her weeding when the shrieking didn’t stop, and thinking it must be an injured animal, Deb wished to herself that someone would put the poor creature out of its misery. Frightened, Deb gathered up the sheets hanging from the clothesline and took them inside.

Gradually Matthew’s cries turned to a soft keening and then to silence. Josie remembered hearing the screen door creak open again. He was going back inside? Why? she wondered. Why would he do that?

He wasn’t inside for long. Josie heard the truck door opening and the soft snick of it closing again as her grandfather climbed back into the truck. She dared to take a peek at him. He sat slumped in the driver’s seat with his head bent and his weathered, age-spotted hands gripping the steering wheel. They sat that way for what felt like a long time, the temperature in the truck rising as each second passed.

In the distance, a faint, persistent wail bloomed. Sirens. Help was coming.

“Shoo,” Matthew croaked. “What happened here?” He raised his head and his red-rimmed eyes found Josie’s.

“I think they’re dead,” Josie whispered. “Did you find Ethan and Becky?” she asked.

“No, just your...” He let out a shuddery breath. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“I let go of Becky’s hand,” Josie said as if in a daze. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.” The sirens were getting louder.

“It’s time to get out,” Matthew said as he opened the truck door. The blare of the sirens peaked and then abruptly stopped as two Blake County sheriff’s cars turned into Josie’s driveway and parked. “Stay behind me, Shoo,” he said and Josie held on to his belt loop as two men climbed out of their police cars, guns drawn. Once out in the open, Matthew held his hands up.

“They’re upstairs,” Matthew said, nodding toward the house. “They’ve been shot.”

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