Page 22 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘This way,’ Jack said, turning his back to the bloody scene. Jet followed him, taking their morbid tour through the open archway into the kitchen.

Sophia’s Halloween cookies were still out on the counter, untouched, unmoved. Probably still good – it had only been a couple of days, right? No, shouldn’t eat the crime scene. But she should probably eat something soon; her legs felt weak, and she was a little lightheaded, but maybe that was because someone had spilled all the blood out of it.

‘Here,’ Jack said, walking into the laundry room off the far side of the kitchen.

The back door was open, the crime scene tech standing outside, taking photos of the muddy grass right outside the door. More markers:49, 50, 51, 52.

‘You seen the size of their pool?’ the tech said, not looking up, thinking they were somebody else.

The whine and hiss of the camera, a blinding flash. Another. Imprinted in the back of Jet’s eyelids. She cupped one hand over her eyes.

‘Sorry.’ The tech looked up now, a slow blink when he realized. ‘Sorry. I’m done.’ He dipped his plastic head awkwardly, disappearing around the side of the house.

‘This door was shut, but it was unlocked,’ Jack said. ‘We think this is how they got in. A lot of shoe impressions. We’ve taken casts. But it looks like this door gets used a lot.’

Jet nodded. ‘I come in this way when I take Reggie for a walk. Mom makes the cleaners use it too. Dad when he’s gardening.’

‘Your parents seem to think it was possible the door was left unlocked on Friday night?’

More than possible. Jet never remembered to lock it. But neither did Mom or Dad. That doorbell camera at the front was all the security they’d thought they needed. A show. A deterrent, Dad once said. But it had deterred nothing, and the killer had known to avoid it, to come around to the side door instead.

‘It’s possible, yes,’ Jet said. ‘Likely. Seventy-five percent chance it was left unlocked.’ Because she spoke in percentages now.

‘Got it,’ Jack said, making a note in his little book.

A phone buzzed. Jet patted her pockets, forgetting that the killer had taken hers. She felt naked, incomplete, without one.

Jack glanced at her apologetically and pulled the phone from his pocket, checking the screen.

‘That’s Billy again. He’ll be asking after you.’

‘Does he know?’ Jet asked, but Jack didn’t have a chance to answer.

Detective Ecker’s voice sailed through the open-plan house.

‘OK, that’s it. The scene is released. Let’s get those cleaners in here ASAP. Move this poor family back in. Oh, sorry, Jet. Didn’t see you were still in here.’

Didn’t see her. Because she was small? Or because she was dead in a week and didn’t matter as much as the other people here, the ones who didn’t have a countdown hanging over them. Halfway between the living and the not, her edges less defined somehow. No … probably just the small thing.

5

They carried the rug out, rolled up, the browning blood soaked through the underside. There was no saving it, apparently. Even though they were#1 in Forensic Cleanup and Decontamination of Crime Scenes, or so said the vans.

More plastic people, in and out the front door. And now Dad too, heading toward Jet on the drive, carrying a plate with a sandwich.

He handed it over. ‘Made this for you. Found a loaf in the freezer,’ he said, as though that made the bread safe, separate from the murder somehow, behind the freezer door.

Jet’s stomach growled, a new song, now her head had gone quiet. She took a bite.

‘It’s the good cheese,’ Dad said with a small smile. ‘Not the low-sodium stuff. Figured you were allowed that now.’

Jet matched his smile. ‘Won’t be my kidneys that kill me after all.’ She took another bite. He’d been liberal with the mayonnaise too.

‘I bet that’s good.’

He was right, Jet already on to the second half.

‘You warm enough?’

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