at Ben Junior’s little hand. He thought back to a month previous. He had been roughhousing with Ben Junior out on the lawn. Ben Junior had pressed his tiny hand against Jack’s hand and said, “My hand will never be a big as yours, will it, Uncle Jack?” Jack had replied, “Someday. But mine is bigger now!” Then he’d grabbed Ben Junior, who had squealed with delight.
Jack forced himself back to the present. He felt numb as his brain tried to deal with what he saw. Please don’t be sick. Think meat. Maggie and Ben Junior are gone. This is just raw meat. Part of her rib … No! Part of the rib cage blown away … blood splatters … one of her fingers by my feet … but her body is halfway across the room. She was shot while standing behind the door. But her face! … Pieces of skull … she was shot in the face later. Ben Junior … executed from behind. Oh God! I can’t be sick. It’ll ruin evidence…. Maggie and Ben Junior … just meat.
He studied a bloody imprint of someone who had fallen in the bedroom, knocking over a pail of blackberries. A pattern of bloody hand marks with slender fingers extended across the floor from the imprint.
Blood tells a story. It was all too easy for Jack to read. Easy to read; impossible to erase. The tipped pail, the bloody imprint of an adult body with slender hands…
Liz fainted when she saw … and awoke next to the bodies of her children. Red streaks, like small railway tracks, snake their way between red palm prints. Liz was covered in blood. The fingers point into the room. Speckles of blood are partially obliterated by sliding palm prints. She broke her nose when she fainted and was dripping some of her own blood as she got to her knees, before crawling backwards out of the room. The railway streaks from her knees disappear, but red palm prints pepper the floor, along with red scuff marks made by her shoes. She tries to stand … feet slip on the linoleum … falls … gets to her feet.
Jack’s senses become alive. He is conscious that the hot summer sun has turned up the humidity. A musty odour … stifling hot. Rotten wood in the air … my tongue feels thick. Sound of flies. They’re buzzing everywhere. Evil sound.
Tracks from a workboot cover part of Liz’s footprints. Ben’s tracks. First Liz finds the bodies, and then Ben comes to check. Small red globules of blood are embossed between the thick tread marks left by his boots. The boot prints become farther apart. Ben is running, frantic to protect her from what he saw. He is too late. Too late to protect her — or himself.
Long red narrow streaks against the white enamel paint of the doorframe. Liz claws at the doorway as she tries to escape from the house.
A bluebottle fly with a fat hairy body crawled along the sticky blood on the doorjamb.
Jack stepped outside and the fly buzzed around his head, angry at being disturbed. It landed on his lip. He spit and mauled his lips with his fingers. The fly returned to the doorjamb.
I feel like I’ve tasted death. Is that possible? He spit again. The taste remained. It would remain in the fibres of his brain forever.
Jack handed his shoe protectors to CC. Neither spoke while she placed them in a plastic bag and filled out a label.
She looked at Jack. “Formal identification of…?”
“Margaret Anderson and her brother, Ben Anderson Jr. Yes, it’s them.”
CC glanced at her watch and made a notation in her notebook. “How they were shot will be hold-back information.”
Jack nodded silently, then walked back to the main road as an unmarked police car arrived with two more investigators, followed by a van belonging to the dog master. A wild-eyed German shepherd barked furiously from inside the van.
Jack knew that the bodies of Maggie and Ben Junior would haunt him for the rest of his life. It didn’t scare him as much as what he had to do next.
chapter three
Danny O’Reilly looked like he had stepped out of a recruiting poster for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as he stood outside the main entrance to the hotel in downtown Winnipeg. His red tunic was tailored to fit perfectly, and his deep brown leather riding boots equipped with silver spurs gleamed in the afternoon sun. He was shorter than most police officers, but it wasn’t too noticeable when he wore his riding boots.
Danny was looking forward to his transfer to the West Coast. It was no secret that he hated Public Relations. Today he was to open the door of a limousine when it arrived and salute the prime minister as he stepped out. A mannequin could have performed the same function. Any real threat or danger was to be handled by the plainclothes officers. Not that any serious threats had been identified.
He stared at the media and leaned slightly forward on his toes to relieve the pressure points on his heels, then used his brown leather gloves to dab at the perspiration that escaped from under his stetson.
He caught the hand signal of one of the plainclothes members of the VIP Security Detail. Estimated time of arrival for the prime minister was three minutes. About bloody time. He glanced at his watch. The PM’s flight had been delayed, and it was two hours past the time that he had promised Susan he would be home.
Danny thought back four months to when Tiffany was born. He recently bought Susan a gift certificate for a massage and manicure. As a new mom, she really appreciated the idea. She had booked the appointment for this afternoon. She wouldn’t be happy about missing it.
The spurs on Danny’s boots jingled when he snapped to attention as the lead cars in the procession of limousines arrived in front of the hotel.
Danny was unaware that fate would alter his life within seconds, plunging him into a world of rules he didn’t know existed. A world where the strong murdered the weak. A world where he would have to find out which category he was in.
Jack’s footsteps echoed down an empty, antiseptic-smelling hallway as he walked away from the nursing station. Ben and Liz would want answers. He could tell them why. No doubt a drug deal. Whoever did it likely heard a noise and thought it was a ripoff, or maybe the cops.
Jack vowed that one day he would be able to tell Ben and Liz who did it.
But there was something he was afraid to tell them. If it was a dope deal, more than one person was involved. Defense lawyers would insinuate that the other lawyer’s client did it, making any conviction tenuous. They would argue the murders weren’t preplanned so any conviction would probably be the result of a plea bargain with the condition of an early release.
He wouldn’t tell Ben and Liz that today. Let them go through their disbelief and shock. For them, anger would come later.
He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled as he stepped into the room. Promise not to cry. They will need me. Must stay strong.
Ben’s and Liz’s eyes were windows to their terror. Jack saw their pain. Pain that gripped their throats and made talking or breathing difficult. Pain that no words could cure.
Jack broke his promise to stay strong.
It was a day that would be locked forever in their souls.
Damien squinted at one of the closed-circuit television monitors and saw Wizard looking up at the camera from his car.
Damien’s voice was curt and to the point.
