CHAPTER FOUR
As it turned out… no, Erika couldn’t handle it.
Sitting at her desk in the Bull Pen, a.k.a. the Caldwell Police Department’s homicide division, she was having a hard time believing that she had left a murder scene. Voluntarily. And not because she had somewhere she desperately needed to go.
Like an emergency room for an arterial bleed.
Trey had been right with all his warnings, and she knew she should be grateful that he’d tried to look out for her. Instead, she was annoyed with everything. It felt like a theater light was trained on her fragile parts, and everybody, from the patrol officers who’d stepped out of her way as she’d run for the bathroom to the CSI people she’d mumbled to as she’d left the house to Trey who’d seemed like he was thinking of following her back to headquarters, was seeing way too much of her behind-the-scenes.
That was the problem with being the only survivor of a family massacre that had been so awful, it had been national news, so gruesome that there had been renewed coverage on its ten-year anniversary, so true-crime-discussion worthy it had its own hashtag. With something as high profile as the #SaundersTragedy on your existential résumé, you wore that proverbial name tag for the rest of your life, particularly if you’d insisted on living in the town where it had happened and decided to become a homicide detective.
Then again, when your boyfriend killed your parents, your brother, and very nearly yourself, and then slashed his own wrists and shot himself in the head to die in a pool of his own blood, people were kind of curious about the whole thing. Especially when there was no obvious “why” behind it all.
Here was the thing. On the whole, other people’s demons were better hidden than hers. Secret vices, shameful pasts, actions that made somebody ache with regret in the dark? Most of that crap was on the down low for the folks you stood in line with at Starbucks, got stuck in traffic behind, worked around, walked past. Maybe if they drank too much you guessed something was up for them. Or if they banged too many people, did drugs hard-core, or gambled their way to bankruptcy, there was a tip-off for the peanut gallery at large—although even with those obvious markers, rarely did third parties get details. Her worst life events, on the other hand, were public knowledge, just an Internet search away if anyone needed a refresher on the fact pattern. Hell, not only was there a Wikipedia page that had recently been updated with all those “decade later” reports, but there were a good dozen or so amateur podcasts and YouTube videos about that night.
At this point, she was just praying no one made a Netflix documentary about it all. The last thing she wanted when she was busy not sleeping was to find herself and her family on the “Trending Now” lineup. And the reality that so many strangers had seen the dead bodies and mortal wounds of her mother and her father and her brother made her nauseated all over again every time she thought about it—
Erika pushed her chair back and yanked the wastepaper basket out from under her desk. As she tucked her ponytail into her suit collar and leaned over, she remembered doing the same thing at the Primrose house.
When she’d gotten overwhelmed in the doorway of that pink bedroom, she’d tried to make it downstairs and outside for some fresh air before she threw up. Halfway to the first floor, it had been clear that she wouldn’t make it, so she’d rerouted herself into the powder room off the kitchen. As she’d fallen onto her knees in front of the bowl, she’d discovered that the family had one of those floor mats that went around the base of the toilet. It had been pale blue to coordinate with the wallpaper, and part of a matched set that included a little rug in front of the pedestal sink.
While she’d wondered why anybody would insulate the soles of their shoes, given that it was unlikely there would be bare feet in that particular loo, her knees had been grateful as she’d vomited up bile.
“Shit…” she groaned aloud.
Trying to get out of her past, she straightened, kicked the wastebasket back into place, and decided that at least she knew she wasn’t pregnant. You had to have sex for that—you know, sometime in the last year, year and a half.
Or had it been more like two for her?
Whatever, like she had time or the inclination to worry about her nonexistent love life.
Focusing on the glowing computer screen in front of her, she was a little surprised to find an open email window front and center. Nobody was in the To: part and the Subject: was likewise vacant. She sure could have used a clue as to what she’d been on the verge of composing. Putting her fingertips on her keyboard, like that would jump-start her brain, she waited for it all to come back to her.