Stuart Kaminsky: Blood On The Sun

Tensions had grown somewhat less strained over the years, but they had not disappeared.

Had they heard that Asher Glick had been crucified? Flack was considering calling in the potential situation when a woman shouted, "Joshua" from the middle of the crowd of one hundred or more people.

The crowd picked up the chant, and the name "Joshua" echoed through the narrow street.

One of the men in the crowd, who was not dressed in black, and who did not pick up the chant, stood with one hand at his side and one in his pocket and watched the door. The hand in his pocket touched a photograph of Stella Bonasera.

"NO SIGN OF THE BOY," Danny said. "No sign of the knife. We did find this."

He held up a thick see-through sealed plastic bag. Inside the bag were dozens of pieces of colored glass. Mac took the bag and held it up to the light.

"I used the spectroscope," Danny went on. "No sign of any blood on the fragments. Not surprising, since they were all killed with a knife, but…"

"I'll take this back to the lab," said Mac.

Danny and Mac were standing outside the bedroom where the dead were lying. Mac looked over the wooden railing and down at the polished wooden floor of the living room. The sofa was a dark green. Two oak, brown leather armchairs with matching hassocks. A solid, dark oak coffee table and standing lamps with glass shades. A large, colorful rug that looked handmade and Native American lay at an angle on the floor. A single, large gold-framed painting on the wall, the Vorhees family, about five or six years old. The girl was no more than twelve, the boy about seven. All were looking directly forward, displaying the same artificial smile that failed to capture anything about what any of them were thinking or feeling.

Danny followed Mac's gaze and looked at the painting. Mac didn't look at him as he said, "When we get back you make an emergency appointment to see a department psychologist about that tremor."

Mac also noticed- but said nothing about- the raw, red bruises on Danny's knuckles.

Danny searched for something to say, but couldn't come up with anything. Besides, Mac was right.

In the parents' bedroom, Mac found a framed nine-by-eleven color photograph of the entire family. The parents were seated and smiling. The children stood behind them, also smiling. All the smiles were those of people who had been told to smile, the same smile Mac and Danny had seen in the painting in the living room.

"Recent," Danny said, looking at the photograph. "The girl looks about the same."

Mac agreed and kept looking at the photograph. "Possible scenarios?"

Danny adjusted his glasses, looked at the photograph.

"The boy killed them and ran," he said.

"But?" asked Mac.

"But, the kid's no more than one hundred pounds, puny," said Danny. "Whoever did this picked up the two women and placed them on the bed. The mother weighs at least 150. The daughter weighs about 120. Blood drops but no drag marks. Whoever did this picked up the women, placed them gently on the bed and folded their arms, which leaves out the boy."

Mac nodded. Danny didn't know what the nod meant.

"Intruder," tried Danny. "Came in to rape the girl, got caught by the mother and father, killed everyone, felt guilty and laid out the women."

"You checked the windows?" asked Mac.

"No sign of forced entry. Windows all locked."

"How did he get in?" asked Mac.

"Don't know yet," answered Danny.

"And the boy?"

"Saw or heard what happened," said Danny. "Ran. Or the killer caught him and decided not to kill him, at least not here."

"Why?" asked Mac.

"Hostage," said Danny. "Or…"

"Pedophilia," said Mac. "Get all the samples to the lab. Tell Jane to get the DNA run as fast as possible."

"I'd better get to the lab," Danny said as they went downstairs.

"Psychologist," Mac reminded him.

Danny didn't speak.

"As soon as you get back," said Mac.

The front door opened and Detective Defenzo stepped in.

"Side door of the garage is wide open," he said from the living room. "Cleaning lady says the boy has a bike. There's no bike in the garage."

"I'll check it before I leave," said Danny, starting down the stairs.

Mac nodded an okay and moved down the hall. They had already gone over the other bedrooms. No blood, everything in place in the parents' room. Clothes neatly hung in the closet, bathroom clean with white towels hung symmetrically on white plastic rods.

The boy's room was small, relatively neat, with a pair of jeans and a shirt slung over a chair that faced a computer on a cluttered desk. The white light on the computer was on, indicating the unit was asleep. The bed was unmade, blankets thrown back, pillow crumpled.

The walls were surprisingly bare except for a large poster of a group of four young men who looked out at the world as if they had a dirty secret. A single word, "Coldplay," was written in script at the top of the poster. A large cluttered metal bookcase stood next to the bed. Mac picked up a book, one of the Harry Potters. A second book was a biography of John Glenn. The third book he picked up was different. The dust jacket of the book said it was The Tick-Tock Man of Oz. Mac opened it. It was definitely not about the Oz the dust jacket promised. It was a book about clinical sexual behavior.

Mac rechecked the boy's room for blood traces and found none. On the way to the boy's closet, he almost missed a small leaf no larger than a baby's fingernail in the threads of a bath mat-sized blue throw rug in the middle of the room. Mac bent, picked up the leaf with tweezers from his kit and deposited it in a plastic bag.

The closet was a mess of clothes piled on the floor and more clothes on hangers, the pants wrinkled, the shirts unbuttoned.

Mac was done here, for now. It was time to talk to the living, listen to the dead and ask questions of the evidence.

In the Gohegan home next to the house of the dead, the young black detective Trent Sylvester was alone in the living room with Maybelle Rose. He spoke to her gently and held her hand.

When Mac entered, the woman looked up fearfully.

"It's all right," said Sylvester. "He's one of us. A police officer."

An untouched glass of water already dancing with dust in the morning sunlight rested on the table next to the sofa on which Maybelle Rose sat.

"Never saw anything like that," she said.

"Almost no one has," said Mac, sitting on the arm of a chair next to the stunned woman. "How long have you worked for the Vorhees family?"

"Two years," she said. "Is he…?"

"We haven't found him yet," said Mac.

"He's a good boy," she said. "They were all good to me, my family."

"Any of the family have enemies?" asked Mac.

"None," she said. "Good people. Not church people, but good people."

"Relatives?" Mac asked.

"None I heard of," said Maybelle.

"They ever fight?" he asked.

"Not much," she said, looking at Sylvester for reassurance.

"What did they fight about?" asked Mac.

"Becky's boyfriend," she said. "Name's Kyle Shelton. Mr. Vorhees thought he was too old for her."

"How old is he?"

"Don't know. Maybe twenty-five. He was always nice to me the few times I saw him."

"Know where he lives?" asked Mac.

"No," she said.

"He have a car?"

"He does," she said. "Some kind of blue pickup truck, you know? Dented fender on the passenger side. Don't know what make."

"Anything else you can tell me about the truck?"

"License number," she said. "Easy to remember. BEAST 1."

"Could you come back to the house with me and tell me if you notice anything missing, particularly a knife?" Mac asked.

"They still in there?" she asked, looking toward the hall, beyond which stood the house of the dead.