Jordan Delreese walked down to the kitchen after slashing his wife’s throat and changing out of his blood-soaked pajamas and into a maroon polo shirt and khaki chinos. He clapped his hands and told Davenport and Darchelle to finish up their Cap’n Crunch quick like bunnies. Darchelle said she thought she heard Mommy screaming before, but then it stopped.
Jordan said, You did, dumpling. Mommy and Daddy were playing Multiply and Replenish again.
In the morning? she said. That’s silly.
Jordan asked the kids if they wanted to play a game too. They sure would. Okay, then you have to clean up your mess, put the bowls in the sink and the spoons in the dishwasher, handles up. Davenport wanted to know what the game was called. Just Rewards, Jordan said.
The kids giggled when Jordan blindfolded them. He told Darchelle to wait in her room and to count to two hundred. One Mississippi, she said. He locked her door and led Davenport to the children’s bathroom. The tub was full. He asked Davenport to lie on his back on the floor. Yes, I know the tile is cold, but it won’t be for long. Jordan took the hammer from the ledge of the tub, raised it above his shoulder, and brought it down on his son’s right eye, and then the left eye, the mouth, the forehead, the forehead again. He wiped the slick face of the hammerhead on an aqua hand towel and walked to Darchelle’s room. One hundred and eleven Mississippi, she said. Darchelle lay on the floor like her daddy asked her to. Jordan said, I saved you for last, dumpling, because you are my special angel. She did not get to say, Goody! or, Thank you, Daddy.
And then, to be extra certain that his buddy and his dumpling did not wake up in pain, Jordan laid the children face down in the bathtub. He washed his hands with antibacterial soap, singing “Happy Birthday” twice while he did. Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN said that’s how long it takes to wash your hands properly. Jordan went downstairs and made himself breakfast. Scrambled eggs on a blueberry Pop-Tart, sausage links, a box of grape Juicy Juice. While he ate and read the Sun-Sentinel, he called his mother and asked her if she and Dad would be home this afternoon. He’d like to pay a visit. Do I have to have a reason? His mom told him she’d make gingerbread and whipped cream. Jordan said, I’ll be there one-ish.
Jordan lifted the children out of the tub and dried them off. He noticed a small mole on Darchelle’s left hip, examined it, touched it, figured it was probably nothing. He tucked them both into Davenport’s bed, pulled the sheets to their chins, covered their faces with the lace doilies from Darchelle’s vanity. He nestled cuddly toys next to their bodies and read them the Bible story about Abraham and Isaac. He sang their favorite lullaby. Sweetest little baby, everybody knows. Don’t know what to call her, but she’s mighty like a rose. He choked back tears. Jordan decided to drive to North Beach in Hollywood, stare at the ocean, clear his head. And then maybe surprise his parents by showing up early. He’d drive by Whole Foods and pick up lunch. Some of that tabouli he likes so much. And the grilled portobellos. He cleared the table, started the dishwasher, went up to the master bath, and hopped in the shower.
I told Dad I was still Wylie, the same old Wylie.
“Well, you look a little like my boy Winston.”
“Winston was your bulldog.”
“Like Cameron, I mean.”
“Cameron’s dead. I’m all you got.”
“Where’s Birute?”
“Mom’s dead.”
“I know she’s dead. That’s not what I asked you.”
Dr. Hamburger had Dad take off his shirt — easier said than done — and climb up on the examining table. I turned my script toward the window light and read Willis’s next speech. It’s like you’re in ninth grade, and you die and go into high school. That’s all death is. I was playing Willis Harris in the Gold Coast Theatre’s production of Trailerville. Willis is a true believer. I’m not. It was one week till dress rehearsal. Or maybe you’re humming along in a big rig, and you see a long straightaway up ahead and you shift gears and jam that pedal, and just like that the hum of the engine’s an octave higher. Dying’s like that, like shifting into a higher gear. My cell phone vibrated. I excused myself and stepped out into the hall. Dr. Hamburger was trying to unknot Dad’s T-shirt from around his neck.
The call was from my friend, Detective Carlos O’Brien of the Hollywood Police Department, requesting my immediate services. He had a situation in the Lakes. Three bodies, two weapons, one missing suspect, much blood. “I need you here, Coyote. Now.”
“I’ll have to take my dad.”
“How’s he doing?”
“He’s not himself.”
“Ten minutes.”
I couldn’t leave Dad in the car with the keys in the ignition, so I opened the windows and gave him a Fifteen Puzzle, told him to slide the numbers around until they were all in order.
“In order of importance?” he said.
“In numerical order.”
I’m not a police officer. That morning I was a forensic consultant. Sometimes I work for lawyers who are trying to empanel the appropriate jury for their clients. Sometimes I sit in my office and help my own clients shape their lives into stories, so the lives finally make some sense. A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety. And that’s when I call myself a therapist. And that’s what it says on my business card: Wylie Melville, MSW, Family and Individual Counseling. Carlos uses me, however, because I read minds, even if those minds aren’t present. I say I read minds, but that’s not it really. I read faces and furniture. I look at a person, at his expressions, his gestures, his clothing, his home, and his possessions, and I can tell you what he’s thinking. I’ve always been able to do it. Carlos calls me an intuitionist. Dr. Cabrera at UM’s Cognitive Thinking Lab tells me I have robust mirror neurons. I just look, I stare, I gaze, and I pay attention to what I see.
Carlos showed me the framed wedding photo they’d found on the slain wife’s body. No, I said, I’d prefer not to see the victims. The photographer had posed the couple with Jordan’s cheek on — “applied” might be a better word — with Jordan’s cheek applied to Caroldean’s temple, and he’d canted the shot at a thirty-degree angle. I wondered what he saw that suggested the pressure and the slant. Jordan’s smile was thin, yet wide, as wide as he knew was appropriate to the occasion and pleasing to the photographer. Adequate but unfelt. His eyes were eager, yet slightly squinted. I guessed that the obvious accompanying brow lines had been Photoshopped out. You can’t trust photos to tell you the truth anymore. Caroldean wore a diamond stud in her left ear and a thin silver necklace. She had a dimple on her right cheek, like she was used to smiling out one side of her face. This ingrained unevenness suggested a lifetime of feigned emotion.
Jordan River Delreese was a thirty-five-year-old graduate of FIU’s College of Business Administration and the CEO of, and the creative force behind, Succeedingly Wealthy, Inc., a company that produced and sold motivational artwork. Like there’s this photo of crashing waves on a rocky, forested coast, and beneath it, in case you think this is just an empty, if dramatic landscape, are Jordan’s words: Sometimes amidst the waves of change, we find our true direction. Or maybe there’s a lighthouse, its beacon shining above a roiling sea, and Jordan has printed: The savage sea can pull our customers in many directions. Our duty is to light their way to safety — before the competition does. Above his desk in his office at the back of the house hung his company’s best-selling framed photo, a shot of a golf green in the brilliant light of early morning, dew still on the grass. The photo is titled Success and beneath the photo, Jordan’s inspiring words: Some people only dream of success... other folks wake up early and work at it.