James Patterson: Murder House

I slide between the gates without breaking the seal. I start up the driveway, but it curves off to some kind of carriage house up a hill. So I take the stone path that will eventually lead me to the front door.

In the center of the wide expanse of grass, just before it slopes dramatically upward, there is a small stone fountain, with a monument jutting up that bears a crest and an inscription. I lean over the fountain to take a closer look. The small tablet of stone features a bird in the center, with a hooked beak and a long tail feather, encircled by little symbols, each of which appears to be the letter X, but which upon closer inspection is a series of crisscrossing daggers.

And then, ka-boom .

It hits me, the rush, the pressure in my chest, the stranglehold to my throat, I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I’m weightless. Help me, somebody please help me—

I stagger backward, almost losing my balance, and suck in a deep, delicious breath of air.

“Wow,” I say into the warm breeze. Easy, girl. Take it easy. I wipe greasy sweat from my forehead and inhale and exhale a few more times to slow my pulse.

Beneath the monument’s crest, carved into the stone in a thick Gothic font, are these words:

Cecilia, O Cecilia

Life was death disguised

Okay, that’s pretty creepy. I take a photo of the monument with my smartphone. Now front and center before the house, I take my first good look.

The mansion peering down at me from atop the hill is a Gothic structure of faded multicolored limestone. It has a Victorian look to it, with multiple rooflines, all of them steeply pitched, fancy turrets, chimneys grouped at each end. There are elaborate medieval-style accents on the facade. Every peak is topped with an ornament that ends in a sharp point, like spears aimed at the gods. The windows are long and narrow, clover-shaped, with stained glass. The house is like one gigantic, imperious frown.

I’ve heard some things about this house, read some things, even passed by it many times, but seeing it up close like this sends a chill through me.

It is part cathedral and part castle. It is a scowling, menacing, imposing structure, both regal and haunting, almost romantic in its gloom.

All it’s missing is a drawbridge and a moat filled with crocodiles.

This is 7 Ocean Drive. This is what they call the Murder House.

This isn’t your case, I remind myself. This isn’t your problem.

This could cost you your badge, girl.

I start up the hill toward the front door.

I’m transported back hundreds of years, to a time when you rode by horseback or carriage, when you lived by candlelight and torches, when you treated infections with leeches.

When I close the front door of the house at 7 Ocean Drive, the sound echoes up to the impossibly high, rounded ceiling, decorated with an ornate fresco of winged angels and naked women and bearded men in flowing robes, all of them appearing to reach toward something, or maybe toward one another.

The second anteroom is as chilling and dated as the first, with patterned tile floors and more of the arched, Old Testament ceilings, antique furniture, gold-framed portraits on the walls of men dressed in ruffled shirts and long coats, wigs of wavy white hair and sharply angled hats — formalwear, circa 1700.

The guy who built this place, the patriarch of the family, a guy named Winston Dahlquist, apparently didn’t have a sense of humor.

My heels echo on the hardwood floor as I enter the airy foyer rising up three stories to the roof. Every step I take elicits a reaction from this house, fleeting coughs and groans.

“Hello,” I say, like a child might, the sound returning to me faintly.

The stairs up to the second floor are winding and predictably creaky. The house continues to call out from parts unseen, aches and hiccups and wheezes, a centuries-old creature drawing long, labored breaths.

When I reach the landing, it seizes me again, stealing the air from my lungs, pressing against my chest, blinding me, No, please! Please, please, stop—

— high-pitched childlike squeals, uncontrollable laughter—

Please don’t, please don’t do this to me .

I grasp the banister so I don’t fall back down the stairs. I open my eyes and raise my face, panting for air, until my heartbeat finally decelerates.

“Get a grip, Murphy.” I pass through ornate double doors to the second-floor hallway, where the smell greets me immediately, the coppery odor of spilled blood, the overpowering, putrid scent of decay. I walk along a thick red carpet, the walls papered with red and gold, as I approach the bedroom where Zach Stern and Melanie Phillips took their last breaths.

I step onto the dark hardwood floor and look around the room. Gold wallpaper is everywhere. Against one wall is a king-sized canopy bed with thick purple curtains and sturdy bedposts. The bed is dressed in a purple comforter and ruffle with velvet pillows, some of which are still on the bed, some of which lie on the floor. The dark wood dresser holds two pewter statuettes that were probably bookends for the thick volumes of short stories that also now lie on the floor. The statuettes, as well as an antique brass alarm clock, are knocked to the side on the dresser.

Opposite the bed, made of wood that matches the dresser, is a giant armoire. And in the far corner of the room, south of the armoire and west of the dresser, is the bathroom.

I remove copies of the crime-scene photos I xeroxed from the file. Zachary Stern was found lying facedown on the floor, his head turned to the right toward the door, his feet pointed toward the bed. Beneath him was a pool of blood and other bodily excrement from the horrific stab wound to his midsection. Several of his fingers were crushed as well. Melanie Phillips was found by the armoire opposite the bed, the back of her right hand touching the armoire’s leg; she was lying on her stomach like Zach, her head to the left, her eyes open and her mouth frozen in a tiny o. She was stabbed more than a dozen times, in the breasts and torso and then in the face, neck, back, arms, and legs.

Now back to the scene. The comforter on the bed has been pulled back on the left side, showing a large blood pool where Zach was first stabbed while lying in bed. There is blood spatter on the wall behind the bed, and a thick sea of blood embedded in the floor where he died. There is blood spatter on the armoire and all over the nearby floor where Melanie lay as she died.

Two more facts: Judging from the fresh semen found inside Melanie and on Zach’s genitalia, it seems clear that the two of them had had sexual intercourse not long before they were killed. And as of now, barring DNA testing that is still pending, there is no physical evidence putting Noah Walker in this house — no fingerprints, no carpet fibers, no shoe or boot prints.

And now the theory the STPD and the district attorney are running with: Noah was obsessed with Melanie. He somehow learned of her affair with Zach and followed her here. We don’t know how he got in. The front door should have been locked, and no damage was done to it. In any event, he lay in wait until they had completed their sexual intercourse, when they were relaxed, when their guard was down, to spring into the room.

Noah surprised Zach in bed, plunging his knife into Zach’s chest and dragging the blade downward, causing a vertical cut of roughly five inches, tearing open the esophagus and stomach. At this point, Melanie, who was in the bathroom cleaning up, came out. Noah subdued her by the dresser, knocking over the books and alarm clock and stabbing her multiple times in the breasts and torso before throwing her to the floor by the armoire, where he continued to stab her from behind, slicing her cheek and ear and neck and then her back, arms, and legs. He then returned to Zach and threw him out of the bed and onto the floor, stomping on and crushing some of Zach’s fingers in a blind rage.