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Simon blinked. Duncan started to smile, got about halfway, and thought better of it.
“Her old man offed himself,” Jay said. “He’s in the basement. You saw where?”
Duncan nodded. “He’s dangling from the rafters down there. It ain’t pretty.”
“Fuck.”
“Where’s the basement door from here?” Simon asked.
“I don’t know,” Jay answered. “I haven’t been here before. I was supposed to meet him tonight.” And Simon was supposed to meet him tomorrow, to talk about living through prison. Which he’d clearly had no intention of doing.
“It’s not around the kitchen,” Duncan said after doing a quick tour of the room. The doors he opened were a broom closet and a large pantry.
Jay went through the opposite doorway. Dining room. Table covered in stacks of papers, folders, a lockbox, and other shit. The old man’s ‘affairs.’
No door in that room, so he went through to the next. Front entry. Coat closet. Living room. Office beyond it, behind uncovered French doors. Hallway—and a door at the nearest end of it, standing wide open. Wood staircase heading downward, warm light rising from below. Basement.
Jay went down.
Two steps down, he smelled the death. Though he hadn’t yet killed anyone, he’d been around plenty of dead bodies during his years wearing the Bull. He’d been a prospect during the Perro years, so he’d buried a lot of bodies. He’d also watched two men die by hanging, and it was not an easy way to go out. He knew precisely what he was smelling: Shit. Piss. And about a day’s worth of decomposition.
The basement was warm and humid. That was not a great way to store a dead body.
“Jesus fuck,” he muttered.
“You okay?” Simon asked, coming down the stairs right behind him.
“I’m fucking pissed at the selfish piece of shit.”
Simon didn’t reply.
Jay landed on the concrete floor and looked around. Big basement, which made sense; the house had a big footprint. About eight feet of head clearance, which was a little unusual, but maybe not for a house like this.
Otherwise, it was a typical unfinished basement: Laundry area, storage, the usual.
Then he saw the dance bar thing bolted to a wall and froze.
Right before his eyes, a juvenile version of Petra blinked into existence. Wearing a little pink leotard and tutu, she set one leg on the bar and bent over it, one arm curved gracefully.
“JJ.” Simon set his hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Back here.”
Giving his head a hard shake to clear whatever that was out of it, he turned. Back behind the stairs was a large area given over to storage. Tall stacks of containers in an array of crayon colors. One stack had fallen over, and one of the bins had come open. Red, gold, silver Christmas garlands spilled from it like sparkly intestines.
As Duncan had reported, Petra’s father dangled from a rafter.
A length of thick white rope wrapped around the beam several times; the noose he’d tied was so short that his head was caught at an awkward angle against the beam. His face was hugely swollen and a purple so livid it was nearly black. His eyes were wide open, solid scarlet, and popped halfway out of their sockets. His tongue jutted from his slack mouth, thick and black.
The open bin of Christmas garlands lay beneath the limp feet in their tasseled loafers, its plastic sides warped. He must have stood on a stack of bins and kicked them over to get the job done.
The corpse was dressed like the world’s most boring man: loafers, khakis, basic blue shirt. The khakis were stained with human waste. The buttons of the shirt strained. Petra had said her father was heavy, but unless he’d wedged himself into a shirt two sizes too small for him, the body was already starting to bloat.
Jay knew the man had been alive at two o’clock yesterday afternoon, because Petra had spoken to him. Less than twenty-four hours was fast for bloat. The thick warmth of the basement was making this even worse. Fuck, he wished she’d done what her father had said and stopped at the dining room.
But he wouldn’t have, either. He’d have had to know. To be sure.
Jay went forward.
As he studied the body of Petra’s father, he saw the worst thing. Long, deep scratches scored the engorged cheeks; dried blood made thin trails over the rope and onto his shirt. It was a bad death, and he’d fought against it in the end.
