Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [93]
After catching my breath, I scoop up the phone. I’m worried that he was trying to signal someone, because my guess is that this was no random event. It was too professional. The thing in my hand, though, isn’t a phone but looks more like a pager. Yet if it has a display, it’s too dark for me to see it. All that’s evident is a single button on one end, which glows green. With a shrug, I set the thing on the floor and then start running my hands over the dead man’s clothes. There’s nothing on him that yields a clue as to his identity. This tells me he’s neither a petty thief nor someone with a grudge. The professional theory looks stronger.
It’s that last thought that forces me to move. If this is an operative, he might not be alone. I quickly retrieve the gun and stand on two shaky legs.
I almost resist the necessity of turning on the light in the master bedroom, but my eyes still cannot make out anything beyond a few feet. I shift the gun to my other hand and feel along the wall.
There are moments one wishes he could have back, and touching the light switch will forever be one of mine. After the light’s brilliance forces my irises to snap shut and then reopen, I see Meredith caught in a grotesque pose between the bed and floor. Her nightgown is riddled with small, red-rimmed holes, and lines of blood have traced their way to the floor. And I see Jim lying in the bathroom doorway. His body has come to rest facing the opposite direction so that my eyes focus on his thinning white hair. A line of holes has splintered the wood along the wall and punctured the doorjamb.
I think time becomes something else in situations like this. It can either speed up, with everything seeming to occur in rapid-fire, or it can slow down to something approximating the dripping of a faucet. It’s the latter that I find myself trudging through as I cross the room and go to Jim’s side, where I kneel and put my hand on his shoulder. I turn him around and settle his head gently on the floor.
In the single moment I spare myself, I ponder a list of things with which I could regale an audience at his funeral, and yet it’s enough for me that he was a mentor and a friend. I smooth a piece of his hair and then push myself to my feet, and go to move Meredith’s body so it’s fully on the bed. With the gun clenched in my hand, I exit the room as if the hallway can offer some salvation from what I’ve witnessed, except that there’s another body out here. A flash of anger makes me want to kick the dead man for what he’s done, but I resist the impulse.
My only thought is Espy, and I’m about to head up the stairs when, from my peripheral vision, I see a red luminance coming from the direction of the front door. It’s like the blinking of an alarm clock after a power outage, only I remember no clock in that part of the house. The curious side of me wages war with the part that wants to rush upstairs, wake up Espy and get her to the Mustang, but the blinking light wins out.
I pad down the hallway, giving the dead man as wide a berth as I can, and pass the living room before flattening myself against the wall and peering around the doorjamb. On the ceramic tile, near the shoes that form a neat row against the wall, is an object the size of a toaster—the large sort that can handle eight slices of bread. I see most of it in shadow, except for the rectangular display that’s flashing a series of numbers in a lazy pattern, which alternately casts an eerie glow in the small space and