Chapter 2 Jake
Jake
There was a bloody handprint on the doorframe between the bathroom and the dressing hall.
Jake Redden stopped and stared at the mark, then slowly pivoted to the right and the left, trying to make sense of the item.
The dressing hall split left and right into massive His and Her closets.
Rachel’s closet was full, every inch a color-coordinated display of wealth and fashion, her collection of purses in lit cubbyholes, accessories on clear display racks, dresses hidden behind frosted-glass doors.
On the opposite side, Jake used only three of the fifteen dressing cabinets.
A pair of dusty work boots was lined up beside a few pairs of running shoes.
Beside those was a pair of dress shoes that hurt his pinkie toes on the rare occasions Rachel forced him into them.
The bloody handprint was on the left side of the doorframe, as if someone had clung to it but been pulled out of the bathroom and toward the closet.
Jake could relate. He’d been present when the rooms had been designed, had all but ordered that the carpenters only give him a few drawers and one hanging bar.
His wife had ignored the directive and built a closet that was bigger than the RV Jake had lived in when he met her.
He leaned forward and studied the clear and distinct smear of five tiny fingers.
Rachel’s. He did a slow swivel, looking at the room, and noticed for the first time the state of his wife’s vanity.
A row of her expensive creams and lotions was knocked over and scattered across the white-and-gold polished surface.
There was a large spiderweb crack in the mirror, as if someone had punched the glass.
By the heated towel drawer, an earring on the floor.
This didn’t make sense, and his brain short-fired as he tried to make order out of the scene.
His wife was a woman who sorted her medicine bottles alphabetically and insisted that used Q-tips go into a ziplock bag before going into the can, so they didn’t “contaminate” the rest of the trash. She would never leave the bathroom in this condition.
Not willingly. Which meant that something had happened. His chest grew tight, and he wasn’t sure whether it was out of excitement or fear. He took a few steps back and ducked into Rachel’s side of the closet, verifying that the three suitcases were still in their spot, which they were.
Okay, so time hadn’t magically jumped forward, making this the weekend that she would be killed. No, it was still mid-November, which means that Rachel should still be alive and well, her bathroom in perfect order, her blood all still pumping through her veins.
He reached into his jeans’ front pocket and dug out his cell phone.
He checked the app first, making sure that he didn’t have any unexpected messages, then scrolled through two days’ worth of activity to find his wife’s name.
Tapping on it, he held the phone to his ear and waited, half hoping she would answer the phone, cheerful and peppy, with some long-winded story about cutting her hand and rushing off to the doctor.
He wasn’t really ready for her to die. He hadn’t mentally prepared for this, had thought he had two more weeks left with her.
Rachel’s ringtone, a delicate series of wind chimes, sounded, and he spun on one well-worn Nike toward the sound.
Her cell phone, with its bright-yellow protective case, was halfway underneath the stool tucked against her makeup table.
He had to crouch on one knee to reach the device, and it was still buzzing when he retrieved it.
On the screen was his photo, a two-year-old one that she’d cropped from their wedding.
He silenced the call and the image of him—the goofy smile that stretched from ear to ear—faded from the screen.
The guy in that photo had been so happy.
He’d thought he was hitting the jackpot.
Rachel was a quiet girl, one who didn’t get trashed and post selfies on the internet with ridiculous duck lips.
One who had a book tucked in her bag and who blushed when he told her she was pretty.
One without a mountain of credit card debt or two kids and a baby daddy who wreaked havoc for entertainment.
But Rachel hadn’t just been debt-free, she’d been rich. In another tax bracket, as his sister had said. A tax bracket that Jake was now a part of, and that transition had come with a lot of new problems. Ones that were getting bigger.
The display on her phone changed, showing that there were four missed calls, his being the latest.
Something was wrong, and this phone was an even bigger indicator than the blood or the mess. His wife didn’t know how to function without it, would never go anywhere without it in hand.
Concern, a foreign emotion where Rachel was involved, grew. Blood in the bathroom. A mess left behind. Rachel missing. Her phone at the scene.
Rachel missing.
Rachel missing.
Rachel missing.
The thought grew bolder and louder, until he placed his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to block it out.
He couldn’t call the police, yet that was what a concerned husband would do, right? Call the police. Stay out of the crime scene. Have an alibi, one better than sitting at the bar for the last three hours, nursing Coronas in the middle of the day.
Ray had promised him that he was a professional. The guy had seemed so organized. Had been so strict in his rules about where and when and how. It doesn’t make sense that he would jump the gun and kill Rachel here, not when it had already been planned for Palm Springs.
But it also made sense that, with everything else Jake managed to screw up, he’d flub this too.