As he approached the defaced door, he noticed that it was slightly ajar. That, even more than the scratched symbol, was disturbing.
He called out, “Mrs. Mason!”
A flock of yellow finches took flight from a large viburnum at the corner of the house. He called out her name two more times.
Silence.
He stepped up to the door and rapped on it sharply, calling out her name one more time.
Silence.
Clicking off the Beretta’s safety, he pushed the door open with his foot.
Silence.
He stepped inside and found himself at the front end of a center hall that ran back to a glass-paneled rear door. Through the rear door he could see a stretch of bright green lawn and the corner of the red barn. On his right was a small dining room; on his left a living room.
From an abundance of caution, he announced his presence loudly one more time. “Larchfield police! Anyone in the house, show yourself now!”
Silence.
He stepped into the living room.
The interior wasn’t disorderly. It just wasn’t compulsively orderly. A small plate with crumbs on it had been left on an end table along with an empty glass. A copy of The New Yorker was open on the floor next to one of the armchairs. A tilting pile of books stood in the middle of the coffee table. A bunched-up lap blanket was hanging off one arm of the sofa.
Gurney continued along the hall to the modest kitchen. This, too, showed the signs of normal use. Several dishes were propped in a drying rack on the countertop. A few others remained in the sink, along with a used tea bag and some yet-to-be-washed silverware. Several kitchen drawers were not quite closed. There was a small breakfast table by a side widow, and the afternoon sun flooding over it magnified a scattering of crumbs.
He was about to take a look upstairs when something caught his eye.
In the middle of a small oval rug beside the breakfast table, there was a nickel-sized stain that looked like day-old blood.
He got down on his knees and gently raised the side of the rug nearest the stain. Peering under it, he could see that it had penetrated the rug fibers and was visible on the underside. Using the flashlight on his phone, he saw that the spot where the seepage had occurred had not completely dried. He lowered the rug back in place and began an examination of the rest of the floor.
He soon found what appeared to be long scuff marks, of the sort that might be made by dragging something heavy across the floor. He followed the marks out of the kitchen and down the hall to the rear door. Rather than opening and passing through it, risking further contamination of the scene, he retreated back along the hall and out the front door. From there he walked around to the back door to see if the trail continued outside it.
It did—taking the form of a body-wide depression in the grass, continuing across the lawn in the direction of the barn.
He followed it, discovering that it led around the corner of the barn and stopped at the barn’s sliding door. The concavity in the grass was more obvious there, as though the dragged body had rested there. A brown bloodstain in the grass a few inches from the door seemed to confirm this.
To avoid interfering with possible prints on the steel handle, Gurney instead gripped the edge of the heavy door and pulled it sideways along the top-rollers that supported it. As it slid open, the buzzing whine of flies grew louder. The sound was a warning of what he was likely to find, but it hardly prepared him for the sight.
A farm tractor was facing the open doorway. It was fitted with the sort of front-loader that might be used to move large amounts of gravel or manure. The loading bucket was positioned about four feet above the barn floor. It was supporting a woman’s body at a downward angle—her legs and feet higher than her torso, her head hanging down to within a foot of the concrete floor. Her hair was pulled back into a single long braid. The end of the braid was just touching the floor. Flies were swarming around her eyes and a gaping wound in her throat.
The tilt of the body was reminiscent of the photos Gurney had seen of Angus’s body. But there was a significant difference.
The floor under Angus’s throat had been soaked with blood. But there was no blood on the barn floor. Not a single drop.
Gurney took out his phone and called headquarters.
20
Within half an hour of his call, all the key individuals had arrived—two patrol officers to secure the area and maintain an entry and exit log; Kyra Barstow with her crime-scene processing team; Dr. Fallow with his gaunt assistant; the rotund crime-scene photographer who earlier that morning had been documenting Mary Kane’s body in the drainage swale; and, with his facial tic more noticeable than usual, Mike Morgan.
The patrol officers set up a yellow-tape perimeter, enclosing a rectangular acre or so, with the house and its parking area at one end and the barn at the other. Everyone whose functions required them to be within the perimeter donned the standard protective clothing.
Gurney gave Morgan and Barstow a detailed description of his movements and observations at the scene. He also reported what Slovak had told him about the local stoner and his girlfriend seeing Billy Tate in his Jeep passing in the direction of the Mason house the previous evening. He concluded by explaining to the photographer the areas of the house, lawn, and barn that required documentation—in addition to the standard shots of the body in situ.
He then accompanied Fallow across the lawn to the barn, giving him an abbreviated summary of the facts he’d just shared with Morgan and Barstow.
Fallow’s only response was a tight-lipped nod.
At the open barn door, after gazing for a long moment at the body, he asked Gurney if it was in the exact position in which he’d found it.
Gurney assured him that it was, and Fallow began his examination.
“David?”
Barstow had followed him. “I’m thinking we should start our site processing inside the house, then work our way out here. That okay with you?”
He nodded his assent. “The blood spot on the kitchen rug suggests the killer made initial contact with the victim inside the house, knocked her unconscious, then dragged her out here. So it would make sense to start there.”
“You just referred to ‘the killer.’ Does that mean you’re not sure it was Billy Tate?”
“I’m not sure of anything. I’ve discovered that being sure this early in a murder case is a sure way of being wrong.”
Gurney then heard sharply raised voices and noticed men jostling out by the opening in the perimeter tape. Heading that way, he could see that the two patrol officers charged with securing the restricted area were struggling to restrain a man trying to enter. He got a clear line of sight to the man’s face.
Greg Mason, eyes wide and voice ragged, demanded to be allowed onto his property. Behind him on the lawn, alongside the official vehicles, was the car Gurney assumed he’d arrived in—a blue Prius, with its driver’s-side door hanging open.
One of the cops barring Mason’s entry was repeating, like an automatic tape loop, “Just calm down, sir. Just calm down, sir. Everything will be explained. Just calm down.”
“Mr. Mason,” said Gurney, walking up to him.
Mason blinked several times and stared at him. “You said you’d call me as soon as you got here. That was a goddamn hour ago. What the hell is going on here?”
“Can we sit down?”
“What?”
“Let’s go sit in your car.”
Apparently content to let Gurney deal with the problem, the two cops backed away.
Gurney led Mason toward the Prius. Gurney directed him to the car’s passenger side and took the driver’s seat himself. This seemed to confuse Mason, but he made no objection.