Page 5 of Bone Echo

Suppressing the urge to rush outside and lose his coffee, he reminded himself of the necessary steps.

The steps one took when entering the scene of a homicide.

Damn, he’d thought those days were behind him.

Focus. There was no getting around the reality of this now. He dredged up the training from the past he’d worked so hard to forget.

First, he turned on the light, using his elbow to flip the switch, and then took his time surveying the living room. The front door opened directly into the fair sized room, about fifteenby eighteen. No overturned furniture. Nothing out of place as far as he could see. Other than the pungent odor, one would think all was as it should be. A live Christmas tree sat in the far corner. More fresh greenery lined the mantel. But the evergreen scent was no match for the other darkly ominous one.

No matter that all looked as it should, Kurt’s instincts were screaming at him. The blood on Oglesby’s hands flashed through his thoughts. He had no reason to believe Oglesby would hurt anyone. It was possible, Kurt supposed, that he had gone over the edge for some reason. Had a disagreement with Satterfield. Yet he seemed calm enough now.

Whatever had happened, Kurt damned sure wasn’t going to find out loitering here in the living room.

He continued on through the kitchen. Looked tidy. No left over coffee in the cold carafe. No cereal bowls in the sink, no sign at all that breakfast had been prepared or consumed this morning. Back door was secure. More holiday décor here and there but no blood or anything else troubling. Maybe Kathleen had cleaned up before she left for work in Augusta. He should have checked for her car but he hadn’t thought of that until now. Whether she’d cleaned up or not didn’t explain the heavy smell of coagulating blood.

Another rush of air filled his hungry lungs in spite of his efforts to hold his breath. The overwhelming odor made him shudder.

Beyond the kitchen was the hall that led to the bedrooms. All four doors were partially or fully open except one. The first was a bathroom. He flipped on overhead lights as he went. Bathroom looked clean. No dirty clothes or towels lying around. He slid the shower curtain to one side and checked the tub. Nothing there that shouldn’t be. Directly in front of the toilet was a door. Linen or storage closet probably. The door wasn’t completely shut so he used the toe of his boot to nudge it open.

Towels. Toilet paper. Shampoo and soap.

On the tile floor in front of a laundry basket was a hand towel and what looked like a pair of flannel pajama pants. He crouched down and visually examined the items. He glanced up at the sink, no hand towel hung on the chrome bar indicating this one may have come from there. The towel was stained, the crimson color stark against the well-worn white of the terry cloth. Not a solid stain, more like smears where someone had wiped their hands after a hasty washing. He thought again of the blood on Oglesby’s hands. He could have come into the bathroom. Kurt’s scrutiny shifted to the green and white flannel pajama pants lying next to the hand towel. The pajamas were discolored similarly, only with larger and more solid stains than the ones on the towel. He didn’t have to search for the size to know these pajamas didn’t belong to Lloyd Satterfield. He was far too big a guy to be able to wear these.

Pushing to his feet Kurt moved to the doorway across the hall. Home office. Cozy and cluttered but not chaotic the way it would have been had someone ransacked it.

Dread expanded in his gut as he hesitated in front of the next door, the one that was closed. The poster of some alternative rock group he didn’t recognize or even want to know and a “keep out” sign marked the space beyond as belonging to the teenager who lived here. Kurt’s hand shook as he reached for the knob. Images and sounds long buried filtered through his mind, tightening the band of tension around his chest.

He’d sworn he’d never do this again...

Anticipating the worst, he bit the bullet and opened the door. He was surprised to find the air beyond was not filled with the coppery smell that had already permeated the rest of the house.

Brian Satterfield’s room looked exactly like it had been tossed in search of hidden treasure, but Kurt recognized the undeniable evidence of a seventeen-year-old who didn’t have theinclination or couldn’t find the time to clean up after himself. His daughter’s room looked much the same at times.

Nothing suspicious as far as he could see. Since he didn’t have any gloves he refrained from the urge to open drawers or to touch any items. He moved back into the hall and on to the final door that stood only partially open.

The smell of blood was stronger here.

The pressure swelled in his chest, compounding the dread already mounting. No putting it off any longer. He’d known from the moment he walked into the house that this would be the room where the trouble was found but he’d put off discovery. Some part of him didn’t want it to be true. Wanted to deny the possibility for as long as possible. A fall in the tub while showering or the slip of a knife while preparing breakfast. A dead animal in the kid’s room. He wanted to find something less complicated…less life-altering.

Not going to happen.

For one second, just one, he closed his eyes and steadied himself, willed what lay beyond this door not to be what he knew it surely was. He could feel the subtle shift in his carefully constructed new world already. The crack in the foundation of all he’d built since moving away from the past.

He opened his eyes and grabbed back his nerve. He had a job to do here. The community counted on him to keep them safe. If the worst had happened, and most likely it had, he needed to be prepared to carry out the job he’d been appointed to perform.

Since this room lay in darkness as the others had, he could only assume that if Pat had turned on the light when he’d come inside he’d turned it off again as he left. Strange but not necessarily unlikely. Oglesby had his own way of doing things, learned from a lifetime of coping with acute learning and social challenges and a world that preferred perfection.

Kurt flipped the wall switch to the on position as he’d done all the others, using his elbow. For half a minute, maybe more, he could only stare in disbelief at the bed in the middle of the room. The brown carpet and other furnishings, the framed photographs on the walls shrank into insignificance. When he could move again, he stepped closer to Lloyd’s side of the bed.

Kurt scrubbed the back of a hand over his mouth, swallowed back the burn of bile in his throat.

A pool of blood had coagulated on the pale blue fitted sheet on either side of the man. Lloyd’s bare chest was crusted with that same precious fluid. An angry purple gouge in the center was the only visible injury. The man’s eyes were wide open. So was his mouth. His left arm hung off the bed. His right lay at his side, the fingers of that hand bloody and nearly severed where he’d likely grabbed the blade of his attacker’s knife.

Beside him the front of Kathleen’s pink gown was painted deep crimson. In the center of the stain, a tear in the thin fabric lined up with a puckered wound approximately three inches wide. Her eyes were closed, her fingers clenched but undamaged as best Kurt could tell without touching her. No indication she’d fought her attacker at all. Probably slept through the whole thing. Lucky for her.

Two bodies, one lethal wound each.

Precision.

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