Chapter 13 #2
There’s only one decoration on the thick wooden mantel.
A photograph of the family—father, mother, and two children.
The third hadn’t been born yet, if I had to guess.
The father, a man with large, sunken eyes and a surprisingly wide mouth that gave his face a baleful, toadish quality, gazes outward.
Perhaps because they had to hold the position too long, the mother has her eyes downcast, and the children’s faces are slightly blurry and indistinct.
It has the effect of making the father seem more real than anyone else in the image.
I move on. The floors are light wood. They’d show bloodstains.
I don’t see any. There’s a rug in the center of the room, but a glance under the sofa makes it clear this rug hasn’t been repositioned in years.
The line of sun damage matches perfectly with the sofa placement, and there are no rug indentations that indicate it’s been shifted recently.
I breathe in deeply. There’s a hint of sweet rot in the air, but no chemicals.
This rug is the rug that’s always been here.
It hasn’t been replaced or cleaned. Whatever violence happened in the house, it didn’t happen in this room.
Eyes sweeping back and forth, I move into the kitchen. It, too, is ruthlessly tidy, as though the people who lived here wanted there to be no evidence of habitation.
“The wife and the third child?” I ask.
“Accounted for. They were visiting her brother.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re at the police headquarters. She won’t leave. It’s becoming a problem.”
“Demanding answers?” I move into the hallway. The smell of death is stronger here, though not as strong as it should be, given how tightly shuttered the house was. “How soon did you move the bodies?”
“Not demanding answers. She’s terrified. She thinks he’s coming for them next.”
“He?”
“Her husband.”
“The man who died ten days ago?”
Goldstein sighs and nods again. “As for the bodies, they were in the house for about twenty-four hours from time of death until we moved them to the morgue.”
“Who discovered them?”
“The wife.”
“So, the bodies were here all day, in the August heat, with all the windows closed? Or did you close the windows after?”
“The windows were closed.”
I pause on the threshold of a room with two small beds. “Perhaps I’m coming down with a cold. The smell isn’t very strong.”
“No. It wasn’t when the bodies were in here, either.”
The evidence that they were killed elsewhere and moved here is growing.
But the beds immediately contradict that theory.
There aren’t bloodstains, only a few dark droplets.
But there are clear urine stains. And from the lingering scent, they were recent.
I know children can have issues with wetting the bed, but this looks as though a full bladder was emptied onto each mattress.
“They were still damp when we came in,” Goldstein says, following my eyes.
“Whose room was this?”
“The daughter,” he says. “She shared it with the aunt.”
How likely is it that both the daughter, age ten, and the aunt, age thirty, wet the bed on the same night before being taken elsewhere, murdered, and returned?
“Did the mother take anything after the deaths?” I ask. The room is startlingly spare. There are some clothes hanging in a wardrobe, along with two pairs of shoes. The family wasn’t destitute, but there’s so little evidence of life here.
“Nothing.”
“It’s a strange house,” I remark as we visit the next bedroom.
There’s one larger bed here. It’s in much the same state—a few drops of blood.
Less urine than the other mattresses, but still enough to make it clear a bladder was emptied.
Nothing but the bed and a wardrobe. Everything in its place.
The wardrobe surprises me, as it contains clothes for the oldest child, a boy of twelve, and the youngest, a four-year-old. They shared this room. “No toys.”
“No,” he says, mildly surprised. He hadn’t noticed. This isn’t a house that made children feel welcome. It isn’t a house that made anyone feel welcome, as far as I can tell.
I move into the main bedroom. Goldstein stays in the doorway and gestures dismissively. “No one died in here. If any of them did die in the house.”
There’s an oppressive atmosphere to this room, not lightened by Berend’s throwing the shutters open with a bang and waving cheerily to me through the glass.
One side of the bed has been disturbed. On the top corner of the quilt, next to the pillow, there’s a stain.
Not dark like blood, but it looks damp, like something soaked in there and spread slowly out.
I lean close and smell, expecting more urine.
Instead, it’s slightly sour. Like…saliva.
Would it be possible to drool this much?
“Who slept here last?” I ask.
“The wife, I assume.”
“No.” I point to the messy side. A pair of men’s slippers is tucked under it. The undisturbed side has a smaller pair. “This was the side the husband slept on.”
“Maybe she laid there because she missed him. Or maybe she didn’t fix it up after he died because she was in mourning.”
“Hmm.” I move on and check the rest of the house. It’s spotless. No blood. No evidence. Normally I’d stay inside to point out what I saw, but I need air. I step outside and take a deep breath, then turn to Goldstein.
“Your working theory is that they were killed elsewhere. Someone cut open their abdomens, removed the livers, and then obscured the wounds to make them look like bites before transporting the bodies back here and placing them on the beds.”
“It makes sense.”
It was my theory on the way here, too. But it doesn’t add up. “Even if they were killed at a second location, dragging or carrying the bodies inside would have left marks. Droplets of blood on the floor.”
“The killer could have cleaned up afterward.”
“Were there lingering scents of bleach? I haven’t caught any, and you said the windows were shut tight.”
Goldstein shakes his head.
“Was there blood pooled inside the bodies from lying on their backs?”
Goldstein doesn’t look happy. “Yes.”
“It would have spilled. They couldn’t have moved three bodies inside without any mistakes. And then there’s the matter of the urine.” I don’t have to tell him that bodies loose their bladders and bowels upon death.
“The killer could have done that himself, after.”
I don’t like imagining someone standing over these dead bodies, urinating.
It feels more profane than anything else here.
But it is possible. “True. And if the killer was very careful and had a partner, they might have figured out a way to transport the bodies without jostling them. But why? Why stage it so elaborately? It rules out a crime of passion. And they weren’t robbed, so there’s no financial incentive.
I’m assuming the inheritance isn’t noteworthy. ”
“Not particularly.”
“The wife’s brother is accounted for that night? The one she stayed with?”
“Yes.”
“He’d be my top suspect, right after the husband, who is unfortunately dead and therefore has a perfect alibi.
” I rub the back of my neck. I can’t shake the unease this house triggered in me.
It’s not the remnants of death—those, I’m used to—but the lack of any evidence of life.
This was not a happy home. This was not a place where anyone felt comfortable or safe.
“What do you know about him? The dead husband?” I ask.
“Neighbors won’t say much, but they didn’t like him. Lots of old layers of bruising on the kids. The coroner said they were regularly hit with a belt or something like it.”
“Does the wife look like a neat person?”
He frowns. “Please elaborate.”
“Tidy. Put together. Nothing out of place.”
“No.”
It fits with the picture I’ve built of this family.
Everyone living as quietly and invisibly as they could so as not to upset the looming figure watching over it all from his chair.
It really is disappointing that Kurt Schauerhammer is dead.
He’s exactly the type to decide it was time to destroy his family for good, rather than slowly draining their lives.
Which reminds me of Goldstein’s earlier comment. “These nachzehrers. Let me guess. They don’t drink blood, they eat livers?”
Goldstein nods with a long-suffering sigh.
“What purpose does it serve to stage the scene to match up with a regional superstition?”
He gives me a flat look. He’s had all these same questions, and brought me in hoping I’d present easy answers.
But it’s not an idle comment on my part. “It’s the question this entire investigation hinges on. Not where they were killed, or how, but why they were presented this way. Is there something going on in the city politically? Class tensions? Would someone be motivated to—”
My eyes snag on another figure across the street. This one is standing in the shade between houses, a cloth held up to his face as though to ward off a scent. Something is wrong with him.
“Motivated to what?” Goldstein prompts.
Before I can step off the porch to question the man, Berend lopes in front of me, cutting off my view. “What else do you need?”
“Motivated to what?” Goldstein asks again.
“Motivated to scare people.” I lean to see past Berend, but the man across the street is gone.