Steven James - The Queen

“When you eye up the angles against the layout of the room, you can see that the last bullet must’ve been fired from somewhere on the landing at the top of the stairs. The other two were fired from the ground floor.”

I headed for the steps.

“What is it?” Jake asked me.

“I need to see the bodies,” I replied softly.

Jake said nothing but joined me at the base of the stairs.

Ardis lay sprawled awkwardly a few steps above us, facedown, her head turned sideways toward the railing, her left arm extended above her head in a way that looked like she was reaching forward, almost like someone trying to win a race, lunging toward the finish line. Reaching for eternity.

She’d been descending the stairs when she was killed.

Seeing her corpse brought the harsh reality of death home again.

Right here, lying before me was a woman who, earlier today, had been breathing, thinking, existing-alive-and now she was gone. That quickly.

It struck me that one day I’ll die in the midst of something just as she did-a dream, a hope, a doubt, a relationship. And that’ll be it. Such a simple truth, such an undeniable truth, yet one we desperately avoid addressing in our lives. As one of the mathematicians I’ve studied, the seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal, bluntly put it, “The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever.”

The last act is bloody.

However fine the rest of the play.

I knelt beside Ardis’s body.

Late forties. Slightly overweight. Blonde hair, now splayed sadly across the steps. She had gentle-looking features, wore jeans, wool socks, no shoes. Earlier, I’d found no phone in her purse. I felt her pockets. Nothing.

The pattern of blood spatter on the carpet confirmed that her body hadn’t been moved. Based on the angle of the blood droplets on the wall and railing, the shooter would have been positioned directly behind her near the top of the stairs when he-or she-fired.

She was fleeing when she was killed.

Her flannel shirt was a mess of blood from the fatal gunshot wound to her back, centered almost directly between her shoulder blades.

From the police reports I knew that Donnie was forty-eight, and, with the age of the couple, I wondered briefly if Lizzie might have been adopted. Something to check on later.

I inspected Ardis’s hands. She had short unpolished fingernails that might contain the DNA of her attacker if she’d been able to scratch him. We’ll see.

No visible defensive wounds on her hands or forearms.

Behind me I heard Jake asking Ellory if they’d moved anything. The deputy said no.

“This is how you found her.”

“That’s right.”

I looked into her unblinking eyes.

Ardis.

Her name was Ardis Pickron.

Anger tightened like a knot in my chest and I was glad. Forget objectivity. I like it when things get personal. I want to feel grief and want it to be like a hot knife inside of me. It keeps me focused on why I do what I do.

I’d been dreading this next part of the investigation ever since Margaret had told me about the crimes.

Viewing the body of the four-year-old girl.

Carefully, I stepped over Ardis. It wasn’t easy because of the narrow staircase and the position in which her body had fallen. Crossing over her like this felt uncomfortably intrusive, and I had the sense that I should apologize, even though there was no one to apologize to.

Still, in my thoughts, I did.

At the top of the stairs I noted the two bedrooms to my left. The door down the hall would be the master bedroom. I would check on that in a minute. The room closest to me was obviously Lizzie’s and looked just as you’d expect a four-year-old girl’s room to look-a pile of stuffed animals on the bed, posters of horses covering the walls, a Dora the Explorer play set in the corner, a stack of Dr. Seuss books on a shelf near the window. A small pile of little girl’s shirts lay folded neatly on the bedcovers, a dresser drawer still sat open.

Lizzie’s body lay in the doorway to the bathroom on my right.

She had blonde hair like her mother’s and wore pink tights and a flowery red dress that didn’t seem quite appropriate, considering the season. Lizzie lay face up, and the front of her dress was stained with blood.

I closed my eyes.

It’s always hardest when it’s children.

Over the years I’ve known more than one street-hardened cop who was assigned to a child homicide case and was never the same again. Some quit. Some ask for transfers to desk jobs. One FBI agent I knew took his own life. It affects you deeply and forever and you’re never the same again.

I took a breath, opened my eyes again, then forced myself to examine the position of Lizzie’s body. Based on the location of the doorway in relation to the stairs and the adjoining walls, the killer would have been on the far side of the landing when he shot her. He hadn’t posed or repositioned her.

The cold, calculated nature of the crime appalled me.

Did your father do this to you, Lizzie? Did he kill you?

Seeing the young girl’s body like this hurt so badly that I had to fight hard to keep from losing it.

A girl. A four-year-old girl.

Could a father really do that to his daughter?

You know he could. You know how often this happens all over the country.

I tried to shake that troubling thought, found it nearly impossible. Finally, I turned away from the girl and went to the far door, the master bedroom.

Staying in the hall, I peered inside.

The bed was neatly made, covered with a checkered quilt. Light purple walls brought a calm mood to the room. The closet door stood slightly ajar. On the bed stand: a Thomas H. Cook novel, and a cell phone charging beside a small lamp.

Closing my eyes again I tried to picture how things might have played out, but I was interrupted by Jake, who’d joined me on the landing. “So that’s the girl.” He spoke softly, with a reverence I wouldn’t have expected.

I opened my eyes. “Yes.”

He was looking at Lizzie. “I hate it when it’s kids.”

For the second time today we agreed about something.

“So do I.”

A small moment passed between us, and I sensed that neither of us could think of the right thing to say.

“All right,” I said at last. “Let’s reconstruct this, try to figure out what happened here at 1:48 this afternoon.”

Jake’s gaze moved toward the staircase. “Well, it’s pretty obvious Lizzie was leaving the bathroom and Ardis was on her way down the stairs. Probably fleeing.”

I nodded. “The killer was back here near the master bedroom when he shot Lizzie. I think Ardis was in Lizzie’s bedroom when he did. Probably putting the laundry away.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The shirt drawer is still open, there are folded shirts on the bed. Someone was interrupted putting them away. And if Ardis had been in the master bedroom and tried to flee, she would’ve had to get past the shooter and most likely would’ve been killed on the landing.”

“Hmm,” Jake reflected. “So the killer ascends the stairs, positions himself where you are, and the bathroom door opens. Lizzie appears. He shoots her.”

“That alerts Ardis”-I was thinking aloud-“who leaves Lizzie’s bedroom, sees her daughter lying in the bathroom doorway.”

It was possible that Ardis had been descending the stairs and the killer shot her first before Lizzie left the bathroom, but it seemed more likely that a child would be frightened by the sound of a gunshot and stay in the bathroom, hoping that her mother would come to check on her. For now, I proceeded as if the order of events was along the lines of what we were thinking. “What’s the first thing you do,” I said, “if you hear a gunshot and then find the body of your daughter?”