I’M TRANSPORTED BACK hundreds of years, to a time when you rode by horseback or carriage, when you lived by candlelight and torches, when you treated infections with leeches.
When I close the front door of the house at 7 Ocean Drive, the sound echoes up to the impossibly high, rounded ceiling, decorated with an ornate fresco of winged angels and naked women and bearded men in flowing robes, all of them appearing to reach toward something, or maybe toward one another.
The second anteroom is as chilling and dated as the first, with patterned tile floors and more of the arched, Old Testament ceilings, antique furniture, gold-framed portraits on the walls of men dressed in ruffled shirts and long coats, wigs of wavy white hair and sharply angled hats—formalwear, circa 1700.
The guy who built this place, the patriarch of the family, a guy named Winston Dahlquist, apparently didn’t have a sense of humor.
My heels echo on the hardwood floor as I enter the airy foyer rising up three stories to the roof. Every step I take elicits a reaction from this house, fleeting coughs and groans.
“Hello,” I say, like a child might, the sound returning to me faintly.
The stairs up to the second floor are winding and predictably creaky. The house continues to call out from parts unseen, aches and hiccups and wheezes, a centuries-old creature drawing long, labored breaths.
When I reach the landing, it seizes me again, stealing the air from my lungs, pressing against my chest, blinding me, No, please! Please, please, stop—
—high-pitched childlike squeals, uncontrollable laughter—
Please don’t, please don’t do this to me.
I grasp the banister so I don’t fall back down the stairs. I open my eyes and raise my face, panting for air, until my heartbeat finally decelerates.
“Get a grip, Murphy.” I pass through ornate double doors to the second-floor hallway, where the smell greets me immediately, the coppery odor of spilled blood, the overpowering, putrid scent of decay. I walk along a thick red carpet, the walls papered with red and gold, as I approach the bedroom where Zach Stern and Melanie Phillips took their last breaths.
I step onto the dark hardwood floor and look around the room. Gold wallpaper is everywhere. Against one wall is a king-sized canopy bed with thick purple curtains and sturdy bedposts. The bed is dressed in a purple comforter and ruffle with velvet pillows, some of which are still on the bed, some of which lie on the floor. The dark wood dresser holds two pewter statuettes that were probably bookends for the thick volumes of short stories that also now lie on the floor. The statuettes, as well as an antique brass alarm clock, are knocked to the side on the dresser.
Opposite the bed, made of wood that matches the dresser, is a giant armoire. And in the far corner of the room, south of the armoire and west of the dresser, is the bathroom.
I remove copies of the crime-scene photos I xeroxed from the file. Zachary Stern was found lying facedown on the floor, his head turned to the right toward the door, his feet pointed toward the bed. Beneath him was a pool of blood and other bodily excrement from the horrific stab wound to his midsection. Several of his fingers were crushed as well. Melanie Phillips was found by the armoire opposite the bed, the back of her right hand touching the armoire’s leg; she was lying on her stomach like Zach, her head to the left, her eyes open and her mouth frozen in a tiny o. She was stabbed more than a dozen times, in the breasts and torso and then in the face, neck, back, arms, and legs.
Now back to the scene. The comforter on the bed has been pulled back on the left side, showing a large blood pool where Zach was first stabbed while lying in bed. There is blood spatter on the wall behind the bed, and a thick sea of blood embedded in the floor where he died. There is blood spatter on the armoire and all over the nearby floor where Melanie lay as she died.
Two more facts: Judging from the fresh semen found inside Melanie and on Zach’s genitalia, it seems clear that the two of them had had sexual intercourse not long before they were killed. And as of now, barring DNA testing that is still pending, there is no physical evidence putting Noah Walker in this house—no fingerprints, no carpet fibers, no shoe or boot prints.