Julianne hadn’t returned.
Amy looked out the window but didn’t see Julianne or any flicker of the flashlight. Where had her mother gone? She hovered between going outside to find Julianne and staying here, in the cheery light of the kitchen. The moments ticked by. She heard no cries, nothing to alarm her, only the chirp of crickets. Yet something was not quite right.
She stepped outside onto the porch. “Mom?” she called out.
There was no answer.
She saw no other house lights on the lake. Theirs was the only cabin occupied tonight. They were alone here, tucked into these woods and far from the main road. It was exactly where they’d wanted to be, but now Amy was having second thoughts. Wondering if coming here had been a mistake.
“Mom?”
Something splashed in the lake and she saw ripples disturb the reflection of moonlight on the water. Just a duck or a loon. Nothing to worry about. She went back into the cabin, but just as the screen door slapped shut behind her, she heard another sound. This one did not come from the lake; this was much closer. A rustling. A snap of a twig.
Footsteps.
She stared through the screen door, trying to make out who or what was approaching. Was it Julianne, returning from the car?
Then she saw the figure emerge from the shadow of the trees. It loomed on the path, silhouetted by the glow from the lake. Not Julianne. It was a man, and he was coming toward her.
That’s when she began to scream.
Even before Jane stepped into the cabin, she could see the blood. It was splattered across the floor and up the opposite wall in a machine-gun spurt of arterial spray. Wordlessly she paused on the porch and bent down to pull on paper shoe covers. As she straightened again she took a breath, steeling herself for what waited inside the cabin. Outside, the air smelled of damp earth and pine needles, but inside it would be a different matter, a different scent. Something she had smelled too many times before.
“As you can see, the attack started in the kitchen,” said Detective Sergeant Goode. He had been the first detective to arrive on the scene and his eyes were puffy and bloodshot from a night without sleep. In this rural county, homicide investigations were few and far between, and last night he’d walked into one that had clearly left him shaken. As though reluctant to revisit the horror, he paused outside on the porch before finally pulling open the screen door and stepping inside the cabin.
“It’s pretty obvious what happened,” he said.
The blood told the story. Streamers of it had dried on the walls, on the kitchen cabinets, pumped out in bursts by a frantically beating heart. A chair lay toppled on its side, and on the floor was shattered glass and smeared shoe prints marking the chaotic dance steps of attacker and victim.
“It goes into the hallway,” said Det. Sgt. Goode.
He led her out of the kitchen, following the trail of blood. Only weeks ago, Jane had followed just such a trail, in the home of Sofia Suarez. This felt like a nightmare, on repeat. She halted, staring at the single smeared handprint on the wall. It was left by the victim, who had been dizzy and weak, desperately reaching out for support before stumbling forward.
In the bedroom, the trail finally ended.
Here there were no more arcs of arterial spray on the walls. Too much blood had already been lost and there was little left for the heart to pump. What remained in the dying victim’s body had simply seeped out in a slowly weakening stream and collected in the congealed pool that now lay at Jane’s feet. The ME’s office had already removed the body, but the impression of where it had been lying was still there, left behind by the blood-soaked clothes.
“We had the body transported to Boston, as you requested,” said Goode, “since this seems to be connected to the case you’re already investigating.”
Jane nodded. “I’d like our ME to do the autopsy.”
“Well then, that makes it simpler for us. Simpler all around, actually, since you already have the background on this. The witness statements are pretty clear about what happened.” He looked at Jane. “Is there anything else you need to see?”
“The vehicle.”
“It’s parked a ways down the main road. Either he got lost on the way here or—”
“He didn’t want to alert them that he was in the area.”
Goode nodded. “Which is the explanation I’m going with.”
They left the cabin and tramped up the dirt driveway toward the paved road that skirted the southern end of Lantern Lake. They reached the paved road and Goode said: “There. That’s the vehicle.”