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There’s a second body behind. His face is mutilated beyond recognition, but from his hair and clothes Jess assumes it’s a man.
“Multiple blunt force trauma to the head, plus what we think are more stab wounds but could be a shooting—we had reports of gunfire,” he mutters. “Looks like he was trying to run. Poor guy.”
They don’t stop.
Alan leads them back out into the darkness. He points toward the house.
They walk up the large stone steps and go inside. It’s an incredible place. Jess’s eyes slowly adapt to the brightness, and she takes in the sweeping staircase, the stone floors, photographs of a smiling couple on the wall.
The stepping plates slide on the marble as they walk across them; the floor is covered with smears and smudges of blood and mud. Alan points to it as they walk.
“Mess from first responders,” he mutters. “We won’t get any useable footwear marks from that.”
The hallway leads to double wooden doors, left ajar. Alan pushes them open with a gloved finger, and Jess stops in her tracks.
The living room is a double-height extension, rain starting to tap on the skylights in the roof. Jess can see it would have been tasteful, understated, minimally decorated in beiges and creams, but right now, the room is utter chaos. The coffee table has been tipped over, the sofa pushed to one side, every other item of furniture in disarray.
And every surface is covered in blood. Spatter runs down the walls. The cream chairs are smeared and streaked. A large pool has settled in the middle of the room, where the bodies slump.
The smell is alien and disturbing. Ferrous and metal, it sticks to the inside of Jess’s nose. Even with the mask, she can almost taste it, and she gags, putting her hand over her mouth.
There are two bodies. A space has been cleared in the center of the room, and they rest against each other, wet and bloody. Jess can see a white rope has been slung over one of the ceiling beams above them, then wrapped around their necks. The man’s hands are tied.
“Have they … Were they …” Jess begins, pointing to the rope, but Alan shakes his head.
“We found them like this. And there are none of the obvious ligature marks around their necks that you’d expect if they’d been hung.”
It looks like a woman and a man. It looks like—Jess takes a step forward to look more closely. Griffin puts his arm out to stop her.
“Is she …” she starts. She can barely bring herself to say it.
He nods slowly, his eyes narrow.
The woman’s hands are tied behind her back, her body coated in blood. She’s slumped forward awkwardly, but Jess can just make out the curve of her stomach.
She had been pregnant.
Jess feels nauseous. She feels her hot breath inside the crime scene mask. The blood, the frenzied nature of the attack is one thing, but to tie up and murder a pregnant woman? It was barbaric. Insane. She remembers how she felt when she was pregnant with Alice. She would have done anything to protect her unborn child. She wonders what went through this woman’s mind. Whether she begged, whether she pleaded for her baby’s life. Jess chokes back tears and starts to back away from the bodies.
“Could have been worse,” Alan says, and Jess looks to him quickly. How? she thinks. How exactly could this be worse? Alan carries on: “There were supposed to be two others here yesterday evening, but they changed their minds at the last minute. They came around to apologize this afternoon and found the bodies on the lawn. And a kid, about nineteen, staying in their granny annex at the back.”
“A witness?” Griffin asks, but Alan shakes his head.
“High as a kite. Slept in. Says he didn’t hear a thing.”
“What’s with the flag?”
A large American flag has been draped over the sofa just behind the dead woman. It’s bright and gaudy. To Jess it seems deliberately placed—its edges are straight and precise. It’s the only thing in the room not covered in blood.
Alan looks at it. “We don’t know for sure. We have a few theories.”
But before they can ask, they hear a commotion behind them. People move aside as another figure enters the room. He looks the same as everyone else, but he obviously has authority over the scene. Griffin pulls Jess backward.
“Has anyone touched them?” the man shouts.
“No one, no,” Alan replies.
The man nods with satisfaction and crouches next to the corpses. His shoulders slump when he sees the woman. Jess hears him mutter a string of profanities.
