And now the theory the STPD and the district attorney are running with: Noah was obsessed with Melanie. He somehow learned of her affair with Zach and followed her here. We don’t know how he got in. The front door should have been locked, and no damage was done to it. In any event, he lay in wait until they had completed their sexual intercourse, when they were relaxed, when their guard was down, to spring into the room.
Noah surprised Zach in bed, plunging his knife into Zach’s chest and dragging the blade downward, causing a vertical cut of roughly five inches, tearing open the esophagus and stomach. At this point, Melanie, who was in the bathroom cleaning up, came out. Noah subdued her by the dresser, knocking over the books and alarm clock and stabbing her multiple times in the breasts and torso before throwing her to the floor by the armoire, where he continued to stab her from behind, slicing her cheek and ear and neck and then her back, arms, and legs. He then returned to Zach and threw him out of the bed and onto the floor, stomping on and crushing some of Zach’s fingers in a blind rage.
I move to the corner beyond where Zach’s body was found and squat down, trying to get the angle right and using the photos to make sure I’m accurate. Where Zach would have been lying on the floor, with his head to the right, his sight line travels beyond the edge of the bed to the armoire. I repeat the same exercise from Melanie’s vantage point and get the same line of vision, from the opposite end.
I remove my compact from my purse and squat down by the leg of the armoire that Melanie’s right hand touched. I curl the compact under the armoire and around the leg so I can see the back of it. As I thought, the wood is abraded—scraped and cut.
Ten minutes later, I’m walking on Ocean Drive toward Main Street, on my cell phone with Uncle Lang. “Melanie Phillips was handcuffed to the armoire’s leg,” I say. “He made her watch the whole thing. This wasn’t an act of blind rage, Chief. This was a calculated, well-executed act of sadism.”
7
I GET BACK to my car and drive to see the chief, who is away from the office this afternoon (don’t ever tell him he has the day off, because he’ll spend a half hour explaining that the chief of police never has a day off). My uncle lives on North Sea Road in a three-bedroom cottage set back from the road and flanked with well-manicured shrubbery that always reminds me of a defensive military formation.
The front door is unlocked and open. It smells like it always smells in here, musty guy scent: dirty socks and body odor combined with the latest fast-food takeout he ate. A bachelor pad, ever since Aunt Chloe left him two years ago.
On my way to the back porch, I detour to the kitchen, open his fridge, and peer inside. Cartons of Chinese takeout, half a Subway sandwich in its wrapping, a twelve-pack of Budweiser with three cans remaining, a long stick of summer sausage, a pizza box shoved in the back. Oh, yes, and then a tall plastic container of sliced fruit that’s packed to the rim, and a batch of veggie lasagna, still in the shrink-wrapped casserole dish, with only one square cut out of the corner.
I find Uncle Lang out back, sitting in a chair overlooking his lawn, a water sprinkler doing its thing, the air steamy as a sauna. Lang is wearing a button-down shirt and slacks and decent loafers. I’d forgotten he had that fund-raiser earlier today.
“Heya, missy,” he says to me. His eyes are small and red. The glass of gin in his hand isn’t his first of the day. He probably drank gin at the fund-raiser and pretended it was ice water.
I kiss his forehead and sit in the chair on the other side of the small glass table, the one holding the bottle of Beefeater.
“You haven’t touched the fruit I cut up for you,” I say. “And the veggie lasagna? What’s the deal there? You preserving it for posterity?”
He sips his gin. “I don’t like spinach. I told you that.”
“Yeah?” I turn to him. “And what’s your excuse for the fruit?”
He waves me off. “I don’t know, it’s … mushy.”
“It’s pineapple and melon and cantaloupe. You like them.”
“Well, it’s mushy.”
“That’s because you let it sit there for a week. I cut it up a week ago and you didn’t touch it. Not one piece.” I whack the back of my hand against his shoulder.
“Ow. Don’t hit me.”
“I’ll hit you if I want to hit you. You’re like a child. You’re like a little kid. That spinach lasagna is delicious.”
“Then you eat it.”
“Hopeless,” I say. “You’re hopeless. You know your doctor’s appointment is next week. You think Dr. Childress is going to say, ‘Congratulations, Chief, a month of eating meatball sandwiches and fried chicken and French fries did the trick—your cholesterol has plummeted!’”
Lang pushes the empty second glass over toward me and gives me a crosswise look. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, missy.”
“I’m looking out for the well-being of my only living family.”