Page 39 of Long Way Down

The address Dispatch sent them to was in aniceneighborhood. Tall, Victorian brownstones with iron-fenced front yards and bay windows. The flashing blue lights and yellow crime scene tape looked obscene along the sidewalk in front of their destination; Melissa spotted residents standing on front steps and silhouetted in lit windows, trying to glean what was happening on the front lawn of a brownstone painted a creamy white with black trim, its front door brick red and standing half-open, a uniform stationed at the top of the steps.

An ambulance was turning out onto a side street as Contreras parked, siren cutting on with awhoop-whoopthat curdled the coffee in Melissa’s stomach. Lana Preston had been beat to hell. What state was this vic in?

“Remember,” Contreras said before he popped his door. “We don’t know that this is the same perp, yet.”

“Right.” But she had an unshakeable feeling that it was.

They ducked under the tape and were halfway up the front sidewalk when a man in Dockers and a sweater/collared-shirt combo came hustling down the steps, keys jangling in his grip and duffel clutched tightly in the other hand. His face was strapped tight with stress, brows furrowed and mouth flat. A uniform hurried to catch up to him, going, “Sir, sir.”

He pulled up with obvious effort; he looked like he would have rather shoved between them and kept going. “Are you the detectives?”

“Contreras and Dixon,” Contreras said, pointing to each of them in turn.

“This is the victim’s father,” the uniform said.

The man’s jaw flexed, but he jerked a nod. “Tim Wheatly. My daughter, Lynn–” He made a choked sound and swallowed hard. “My wife rode in the ambulance with her. I’m headed that way now.”

He was wired, aggressively so, and Melissa knew that the wrong word or tone could set him off. The trick was handling the situation correctly.

Contreras said, “Mr. Wheatly, we’re so sorry about your daughter. I’m a father and I know that I wouldn’t be able to function in your place right now.” Melissa doubted that was true, but the words had the desired effect: Wheatly blew out a massive breath and his shoulders drooped a fraction. “I know this is difficult, and that you want to be with your family right now, but Lynn’s in the best hands, and if you can, it’d be really helpful if you could walk us through what happened tonight.”

“Fuck,” Wheatly breathed, eyes squeezing shut a moment. He dropped the bag – it landed on the sidewalk with a soft thump – and massaged at his eyelids a moment, then nodded and dropped his hand. “Yeah, yeah, okay – but quickly. I gotta–” He gestured toward the street.

“Absolutely. We understand.” He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and eased him back around.

“We good to go in?” Melissa asked the uniform, and he nodded and leaped to lead the way.

“My wife and I were at a friend’s house for dinner,” Wheatly explained as they climbed the front steps. “We left here about five, and Lynn wasn’t home yet, but she’d called my wife already and said she was on the way. She had a big project coming up and she couldn’t concentrate at the dorms.”

“Your daughter’s a student?” Melissa asked. She noted heavy glazed pots on the stoop, planted with small firs and a spill of ivy. The wreath on the door was real cut greenery and must have cost a couple hundred bucks, at least.

“At NYU, yeah. Art.”

Ding-ding-ding.

Contreras cast a meaningful look back at her as they passed through the open door into the entryway.

The front hall was floored with black and white tile, and dominated by a massive modern art piece with a mirror stationed across from it, so it appeared in duplicate. Melissa didn’t watch any of those home reno shows, or subscribe toSouthern Living, the way her mother did – what good had those glossy multi-page spreads ever done her mother’s house, anyway? So she didn’t know how to categorize the tile, or the side table, or the moldings, or the chandelier overhead, but she knew they were expensive. Everything understatedly elegant in a way that left her feeling scruffy and shabby – and not just because her shower had been a slap-dash washcloth affair standing at the sink and she could still smell Pongo’s cologne on herself each time she moved. She felt ten-years-old and utterly white trash standing in this hallway, scuffed boots on a doormat that probably cost more than her monthly rent.

It was an old insecurity she’d been fighting since she was old enough to realize that having upholstered furniture on the porch wasnotthe done thing in nicer neighborhoods. An insecurity she shoved aside, now, to focus on the task at hand. Rich or not, this family had fallen into a nightmare.

Viewing a house, even one as nice as this, through the lens of a detective investigating a crime always helped to ease her old doubts. She stepped around Wheatly and glanced into a high-ceilinged living room done in creams and grays, floor-to-ceiling windows offering a view of the tiered back yard, landscape lights highlighting gravel paths and brick-work walls on three sides. No sign of anyone there or in the kitchen beyond, though she could hear the murmur of voices and tread of feet somewhere above.

“What time did you and your wife get home, Mr. Wheatly?” Contreras asked.

“God.” He scrubbed at the back of his neck and surveyed his own living room as if he’d never seen it before. “Late. I had some wine with dinner, and Elaine thought it would be best if I had some coffee and waited a while before we drove back. Midnight? One, maybe?”

He didn’t sound sure of that.

Contreras nodded, all his attention fixed on Wheatly; behind the man’s back, Melissa jotted notes in her pad. “Did you come in the front door, there?”

“No. The back. There’s a guest house and a garage out back, at the end of the garden. We always come that way if we’re home after dark.” He shot a glance toward the front door now, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides, anxious to leave.

“You came in the back door,” Contreras said, “and then what? Did you walk through here?”

“Yeah – no, wait. Elaine did. I went into the kitchen, first, to get a glass of water. She had to go to the bathroom, so she went through here. I could hear her on the steps: barefoot, and she always skips every other one at the top.” His gaze grew distant as recent memory took over. “I heard the water in the pipes – this house’s plumbing is so damn noisy. And then a few seconds later, she screamed. I went running – dropped my glass. I guess there’s a mess, I haven’t been back in there. I–”

“That’s understandable,” Contreras said, as Wheatly’s chest hitched, his breathing picking up. “You went upstairs?”