Page 386 of A Matter of Time

“I’ll go with you,” I rushed out, not wanting us to get separated.

The yard was an overgrown mess with grass that hit my knees. There was a fenced-off garden, now dormant in fall, and a barren oak tree. It didn’t look like Greg had made it to Schaumburg to help his mother with the upkeep of her place. I thought about Sam and his brother cleaning out their mom’s rain gutters, mowing the lawn, painting, raking leaves—it was so different. I wondered what Joyce Fain had done not to receive the same treatment that Regina Kage did.

“God, could it be more grim back here?” Caleb shook his head.

I followed him up the four stairs to the back door, and when he turned the knob, the door opened.

“Oh shit,” I groaned, stopping Caleb from going inside.

“What?”

“We can’t just go in there. She could be taking a shower or something. She’d totally freak if we just showed up in her living room and, you know, breaking and entering is illegal.”

“No one’s home, J,” he assured me. “I just called, remember?”

“Again, this goes with my shower hypothesis.”

“Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll call again, and if she doesn’t answer, we’ll go in, all right?”

“What about the breaking and entering?”

“You broke into Greg’s home last night.”

“Yeah, but he’s dead.”

“I don’t know if that makes it less illegal or not. Call Sam and ask.”

“You’re hilarious,” I told him.

He just shrugged and then scrolled to recently dialed numbers and hit send. I stood beside him as he put the phone on speaker, and it rang. We heard it ring inside the house from where we were outside, as well as the message click on before he hung up his phone.

“Now can we go in?”

The second I agreed, he opened one screen door and then another that led into what looked like an enclosed back porch. It was all glass on four sides, but I hadn’t noticed from the outside because the blinds were drawn. The reason became instantly clear, as we found a woman lying face down in a pool of blood in the middle of the floor. I felt my stomach heave.

“Oh shit,” Caleb moaned, taking a step back.

There was no question that she was dead. It was a lot of blood, and there was a smell. I squatted down and leaned back against the door. “Jesus.”

“Look at this.”

When I lifted my head, I saw him holding a bloody kitchen knife. “I think this might be the murder weapon.”

“Why is that in your hand?” I moaned.

“Oh.” His eyes got huge as he stared at me. “Shit.”

Unlike me, who religiously watched CSI, the man had never even seen one episode. Forensics 101: never touch stuff without plastic gloves on.

When he dropped the chef’s knife, it bounced and landed close to the dead woman. I made it outside in time so I wasn’t sick on the carpet.

I sat at the table across from Hefron and Moore, my head in my hands as I explained for the fifth time what had happened at Joyce Fain’s house. I had been fingerprinted, they had taken my hiking boots and clothes, and I was now in an orange jumpsuit that was definitely not made out of cotton and did nothing for my complexion. Even though I knew they didn’t think I’d killed anyone, I was still nervous and sick to my stomach. I had thrown up my entire breakfast and had resorted to dry heaving soon after. Even though I’d seen two men shot to death at different times three years ago, it was different somehow, seeing a dead woman. The fact that she was a mother was hard for me, so I was trying to think about anything else but her. The jumpsuit, for example. I told myself it shouldn’t have mattered—woman or man, my feelings should have been the same—but it did and I couldn’t help it. I was cold and shaking and the light was hurting my eyes.

“Tell me one more time, Jory,” Neal Moore prodded me.

“When can I see Caleb?”

“We’ll bring him in here before we take you guys back to the hotel to pick up your things.”