“Yes, I did. That must be so difficult for you.”
“It was, it is, finding him was the most horrific thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.” Tears came to Jamie’s eyes, but he tilted his chin up. “We designed this house together, and the cottage is where he loved to go. It was his man cave, only with books instead of a TV. I just ran out when I saw him and called 911. I left everything in there.”
“What do you mean by everything? His phone?”
“No, his laptop. He probably had his phone on him when they took him away, and I assume the police or the funeral home have it. I know the Wyoming pictures are in the cottage because I saw them Thursday night, on his desk. He printed them out for you.”
“If you want, I can go in there and get that stuff for you. I can see if his phone is there, too.” Chris kept his tone low-key, but he was asking for legal reasons. A consent search was lawful, and if any evidence of foul play turned up, it would be admissible.
“Would you do that?” Jamie asked, hopeful. “I mean, I just don’t want to do it myself. Our friends are already talking about me moving, but I would never do that. This was our house.”
“Of course, you have memories here. I’ll go look for his phone and get the pictures.”
“Thank you, I’d love that. Don’t forget about his laptop. He had a passcode that I don’t even know, but I’d feel better if the laptop was in the house.” Jamie gestured to a glass door at the end of the kitchen. “You can take the back door and go across the lawn to the cottage.”
“Is there a key or is it open?”
“It’s open. We never lock anything.”
Chris didn’t bother to correct him. Once again, the illusion of safety rendered people unsafe. “Be right back.”
“Thanks again.”
Chris headed for the back door, left the house, and walked across the lawn, then reached the cottage and opened the door, stepping inside and throwing the deadbolt behind him so he wouldn’t be interrupted.
Chris looked around, sizing it up. It was an A-frame with one large great room, which was undisturbed, with no signs of a struggle or a forced entry. A cherrywood table dominated the room, cluttered with papers and a MacBook Pro. Books lined both sides of the room on matching bookshelves, and the tall triangle of the ceiling was constructed of the same rustic wood as the house, with three thick oak rafters.
Chris crossed the room and stood underneath the middle rafter. Sadly, it was easy to see that it was the one Abe had hung himself from—or had been hung from. A stain soiled the beige rug, and Chris surmised that it was from bodily fluids, postmortem.
Chris gazed at the stain, and it struck him as obscene that such a kind soul had died on this very spot, now flooded with sunlight. The back wall was also entirely of glass, offering a view of a flagstone backyard, two green Adirondack chairs, and the woods beyond. There was a back door, and Chris opened it and went outside, trying to understand how Abe could have been murdered.
He passed the patio and kept going to the edge of the woods and looked down. There were trees all the way down a steep hill, and at the bottom was a single-lane country road. He could see that the trees weren’t that dense, so a killer could have parked along the road, climbed the hill to the back door of the cottage, and let himself inside. Escape would’ve been accomplished the same way, with the car left on the road below, which looked hardly traveled, like the roads he had taken on the way here.
Chris returned to the cottage, entered, and went directly to the spot, deep in thought. There was a random cherrywood chair sitting near the middle rafter. He looked over at the desk, seeing that the chair’s mate was sitting in front of the desk and that it also matched the desk chair itself, which was on rollers.
Chris mentally reconstructed the murder. The killer wouldn’t have chosen the desk chair because it had rollers, so the side chair was a rational choice. The killer could’ve entered the back door, surprised Abe at his desk, and either chloroformed or injected him to incapacitate him, then used the side chair to hang him. Abe would have kicked the chair over in his struggle or death throes. It was likely that the police, when they came to cut him down and take the body away, would have righted the chair.
Chris reasoned there had been more than one killer, because Abe would have been too heavy for one person to lift and hang from a rafter, deadweight even if he wasn’t struggling. Chris walked over to the desk but didn’t touch anything, looking around. His first impulse was to go to the computer, but Jamie had said it was under passcode that even he didn’t know.
The bright sun illuminated the cluttered desk, covered with correspondence, pages of poetry in draft, and notes written on lined paper. He read the notes to try to see if they contained any clues, but no luck. He slid his phone from his pocket and took pictures of the papers, the desk, the rafter, the stain, and everything else, to be reviewed later, in case he had missed anything.
Chris stood next to the spot, looking around in a 360-degree turn. The circular motion stirred up dust motes, the tiny specs visible in the solid shaft of sunlight, sending them swirling. It brought him to a realization. If killers had come in and hung Abe, there would have been signs of a struggle, even if they only had to hoist the body up. But the room was undisturbed, which meant that everything had been put back in order—and if that had happened, the proof could be in the dust.
Chris bent over and looked at the desk more closely. There was a clean square, book-sized, on the left side of the desk, and it was the only place not dusty. His gaze went to a paperback dictionary, which sat on top of another note-filled legal pad. It was the same size as the dictionary. So somebody had moved the book, and that wasn’t something the police would do. They might have righted the chair, but they wouldn’t have straightened up a desk.
Chris felt his heart beat faster. He continued scrutinizing the desk, finding more blank spaces where an object had been but was placed somewhere else. He didn’t get the impression that the desk was searched, but merely put back in order so it would look as if Abe had simply been reading his rejection letters, rose from them, moved the side chair, and hung himself with the power cord.