Chapter 3
Piper
Present Day
Isit on the stoop of the house numbly, a blanket around my shoulders, as police officers drift back and forth, talking loudly, trading private jokes and joshing each other as my father’s body lies, still warm, on the floor, and my mother’s corpse remains on the toilet.
They don’t even move her. They can’t, yet, they told me.
Not until all the specialists come to the scene and make notes of the entrance wounds, of the blood spatter, and collect all the DNA.
Yeah, right. I can just imagine them all jeering, laughing at the embarrassing way nutty Laura Day found her demise.
Everyone’s always thought Mom was crazy.
Never working, always lying in bed with one made-up ailment after another.
Until their laughter really did make her crazy. A depressed, hysterical mess.
Even behind their medical masks, I recognize each one of the people who come into the house, pretending to act sad in front of me before going back to being their cruel, uncaring selves.
I recognize them, because Astley is a small, insular community, populated by rich assholes, where everyone knows each other.
“Piper,” says a quiet voice, and I raise my head to stare at the Astley police chief. Jeffrey Jones looks down at me with a condescending little smile that makes me want to claw out his eyeballs. “Ready to come with me? I have a few questions to ask you.”
I shrug and force myself up. My entire body feels heavy and numb. I barely know how I manage to keep it moving, following him into his car.
He turns on the engine then drives to the center of Astley, to the police station, and tries to help me out. But I ignore his extended hand, and follow him coldly inside to his office.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks over a cup of coffee and a donut. “When did you find your parents?”
“Couple minutes before I called you,” I manage, my voice thick.
“Right,” he says, making a note. “Noticed anything else when you entered? Anything that seemed off in the house?”
I shake my head.
“Anything missing?”
“No.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“Of course not.”
“But maybe you didn’t find them right away. Can you walk us through it? Walk us through today, okay?”
I sigh. I would rather be anywhere else than here. I would rather be home, in bed, sleeping away this strange numbness. And when I’d wake up, maybe I’d find none of it had happened after all. Just a bad dream. That’s what it is. That’s what it must be. A horrific dream.
But Jones’s eyes are fixed on me expectantly.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks at last. “Sorry, I didn’t think to ask. Coffee? Water? Soda?”
“It’s fine,” I mumble. Of course he didn’t ask. No one offers the janitor’s daughter anything.
“Alright,” he says. “Well, whenever you want. Go ahead.”
I take a deep breath. My voice sounds odd in my ears, distant. There’s this heavy veil all around me that I just can’t seem to pierce. It beats down on the back of my eyes, making them ache. I lean my elbow on the table, and let my head rest on my open hand.
“I took the bus home. I’d been in the bus for more than three days. Before that, I was in college in California. When I got home, I called out to Dad and Mom, and said I was going to go take a shower. They didn’t answer.”
“Right,” he said, making another note. “So you did take a shower. That means you must have touched a few things.”
“Yeah, I guess I forgot about that.”
“But you didn’t see your mom in the bathroom?”
I suck in a breath. “No. Our toilet and shower are separated. The shower is on one end of the house, the toilet on the other. It’s a European thing, I think. At least, that’s what Mrs. Kent said.”
“I see.” He makes another note. “So first, you went straight to the shower. It didn’t strike you as odd that no one answered?”
I shrug again. “I guess I just assumed they hadn’t heard, or that I hadn’t heard their reply, or that they were out in the yard, or whatever. I didn’t think about it, honestly.”
“Sure, sure. And what next?”
“I just dropped my bag in the entrance, and took a shower. Then I got dressed…”
“So you left the shower to get dressed? You went to your room?”
“No, I got dressed in the bathroom.”
“The bathroom with the toilet?”
I frown. “No, the one with the shower.”
“There were clothes there?”
“Well, I got some from my bag.”
“So you didn’t leave your bag in the entrance. You must have brought it into the bathroom with the shower.”
I rub my eyes in confusion, impatience beating at my chest. “What does it matter where I left my bag? What does any of it matter? My parents are dead! Why are you here asking me stupid questions instead of looking for the murderer?”
“I’m just trying to get the facts straight,” he replies.
“Why?” I ask again. “What does it matter? Unless…” A sudden suspicion rises in my throat. “Are you trying to pin this on me?”
“Of course not.” He gives me a smooth smile that doesn’t make me any less suspicious.
“It’s my job to get to the bottom of things.
Right now, I don’t suspect anyone. But everything for the moment points to a murderer that your parents knew well.
There was no sign of forced entry. Your mother was clearly not hiding, and your father doesn’t seem to have been either.
Plus, the time of death corresponds more or less to the time of your arrival. ”
My eyes widen. “How is that possible?”
“Times of death are approximative,” he clarifies. “There’s a twenty-minute window of time where it could have happened. Between about 3 p.m. and 3:20. Which means…”
He trails off, his voice thick with subtext.
And I suppose I have enough of a bad reputation that suspicions might naturally point to me.
The cheerful bookworm who came to Astley in the summer before fifth grade changed pretty drastically in high school.
I became sarcastic and harsh. I guess it was my defense for being bullied so relentlessly.
But no one remembers the bullies. Just angry, mean Piper.
Pissed-off Piper, they got into the habit of calling me.
So I can understand why he’s more than a little suspicious of me. He doesn’t get it. None of them do.
I don’t care, though. The one thing I do care about is what his words mean. Between 3 and 3:20.
I came home before 3.
What the fuck?
That means they died while I was in the shower.
I guess, between showering, using the bathroom, getting dressed, brushing my teeth, and generally just getting every inch of Greyhound grime off of me… I was probably in the freaking bathroom for more than an hour, given that I called the police at nearly 4.
My parents died while I was in the house.
The thought makes me sick to my stomach. If only I had arrived just a little before. Taken an Uber from the bus station instead of walked. If only I hadn’t showered. Maybe they’d still be alive now.
Or maybe, I’d be dead too.
I swallow, my throat dry. “Do you… do you think they could have died while I was showering?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
He stares straight at me, and his eyes seem to bore into me, searching for some sign of guilt, maybe.
Instead of answering, he says, “Your Greyhound bus arrived at 2.” He looks at me sharply with his beady eyes.
“Even if you walked from the station, you would have gotten home before 3.” He pauses a moment, and my stomach roils, but not because I’m nervous about being under suspicion.
The only thing I care about is that I was there when it happened.
“Did you hear any loud noises?” asks Jones at last, apparently deciding against asking any questions that might make me realize I’m now officially a person of interest.
Maybe even a suspect.
I’m not an idiot, though.
I shake my head.
“How about a softer noise?” he insists. “Like something more muted? The killer might have used a silencer.”
I shake my head again. “But I was listening to music. Pretty loud music.”
“What music?”
His eyes searching mine unsettle me. I gulp. “The Beatles. It was on pretty loud, I guess. The White Album.”
“Nice taste,” he smiles, but I glare at him.
He clears his throat, probably remembering that I just lost both my parents, which to him makes me either a victim, or a murderer, or both. In any case, it makes me someone who is in no mood to talk. For once.
Because in spite of all the bullying over the past ten years, I’ve never quite shaken my chatterbox tendencies.
Officer Jones resumes his questioning. “So, when you walked through the front door, did you lock it after you?”
I hesitate. “I… I don’t remember. Maybe I didn’t. I often forget to.”
He nods, making another note. “If that’s true, it might open up the field of suspects.
Maybe it’s not a friend or a family member after all.
Someone could have taken advantage of that unlocked door and taken your parents by surprise.
” He speaks smoothly, as though trying to trick me into thinking I’m safe.
But his beady eyes glued on me tell me the truth.
“Did you lock the door to the bathroom?”
“Uh… I don’t think so. I closed it, but I didn’t lock it. I knew my parents wouldn’t come in.”
“So, whoever it was, if they came while you were showering, didn’t even try to kill you.
Yet the shower must have made noise. They would have known you were there, but they didn’t open the door.
They went straight for your dad and your mom.
Can you think of someone who would want to kill them, and spare you? ”
The first name that jumps to my mind makes absolutely no sense.
Quill Nelson.
It makes no sense because if he decided to go on a murder spree, I’d be the first on his hit list.
Stupid, I think to myself, so viciously that Jones looks a little startled at the change in my expression.