First the Thunder Page 20

  “We better talk about this,” she said. “We’re going to be questioned. Especially you. He was at the bar tonight.”

  “He was,” Will said.

  “Did he say he was going to do anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like anything.”

  Will stared out through the windshield.

  “Did he say anything about going over to the school after he left? I still don’t understand why he went over there.”

  “He did?” Will said.

  “I already told you that.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “What time was it when he came to the bar?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “I can’t remember.”

  “It was just after midnight when I saw him there. And then what—forty minutes or so later he was walking out by the school. And sometime between then and now”—she glanced at the clock on the instrument panel—“two forty-four . . . and now they’re both dead.”

  He turned his head to look at her. Her face was dark. Everything was dark but her hands on the steering wheel, illuminated by the lights from the instrument panel, fingers thin and small and eerily blue.

  “Are they dead for real?” he said. “Is this happening for real?”

  She lifted one blue hand from the steering wheel, laid it atop his thigh. “I’m sorry, babe, but it is.”

  “He said he was going home,” Will told her.

  “You mean when he left the bar?”

  Will nodded.

  “What was so important that he had to walk over to the school in the middle of the night? And then to go home and . . . have this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Will said. “I don’t know.”

  Parked in Harvey’s driveway were the town’s patrol car and the sheriff’s car, their light bars strobing, making shadows jerk and dart. An ambulance at the curb, four-ways blinking. And twenty feet behind it, a black Kia Sportage, dark.

  “The coroner’s here,” she said.

  She pulled up behind the Sportage, powered down all the windows, then turned off the car. As she reached into the back seat for her camera, Will popped open his door.

  “They’re not going to let you in there,” she told him. “Not yet anyway.”

  “He’s my brother,” Will said.

  “You can’t go in. It’s a crime scene.”

  Will shook his head. Now the tears came. Now it was real. Lights shining all through the house. Lights on in the neighbors’ homes. Porch lights burning, vehicle lights stinging his eyes. People standing in their yards. A figure in the doorway of his brother’s house. Police tape across the front of the yard.

  “After they bring the bodies out,” she told him. “Maybe then you can see him. Just sit tight until then, okay?”

  He looked past her out through the windshield. “Everybody’s watching,” he said. “Like it’s some kind of fucking show.”

  He never swore in front of her. Didn’t even seem to realize that he had.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she told him. “Please don’t try to come inside.”

  He turned to look at her then, his face wet. A tear fell off his chin. “He’s my brother,” he said.

  And she started crying too. Allowed it for a few moments as her hand reached for his, squeezed his fingers, squeezed them as tightly as she could.

  54

  The coroner met her at the door, a slight man of medium height, bald, a horseshoe of graying red hair around the sides of his head. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I can probably get somebody else here.”

  She looked up into his eyes. Blue. She had always thought of them as nice eyes, not icy like some blue eyes, but warm, not pale like his complexion, his round soft face, but kind and summery. Baby blues. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “The sheriff doesn’t think you should do this. You being related and all. I had to talk him into it. Told them there’s nobody else half as good.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “It’s not pretty, Laci. Something like this is going to stay with you a good long while.”

  As it should, she told herself. And that was why she could not let somebody else take the pictures. Somebody who would refer to her brother and sister-in-law as the victims. The deceased. Somebody who would go home afterward and shower and sleep for a few hours then wake up feeling nothing. Somebody who would tell his friends about what he had seen, maybe even make a joke about it. Keep copies of the shots on his hard drive. Do who knew what with them.

  “I’m good,” she said. “Where do you want to start?”

  He handed her a pair of paper booties and a surgical mask.

  55

  For a while after Harvey had left the trailer, pink flash drive in hand, Stevie had felt too restless for sleep. He had wanted to do something for Harvey, comfort him somehow, but as always in such moments, he had sat silently, feeling awkward and unsure.

  After a while he had dragged himself to bed and listened to the last hour of a late-night talk show on his laptop, something about a Planet X that was going to enter the solar system, cause a pole shift and earthquakes and floods, fulfill the prophecy in Revelations of global chaos and destruction.

  For him the destruction seemed to have already begun, and he wondered if maybe he had had a role in it. If they had not broken into the school, Harvey might never have learned what his wife had been doing. Was not knowing a good thing or a bad thing? Ignorance is bliss, his mother used to say, especially after she started drinking too much. Then she found a man who liked to drink as much as she did, and off they went to Florida. That was the beginning of the destruction. Or maybe jumping off the porch roof was the beginning. In any case, the pictures on that flash drive weren’t going to do Harvey a damn bit of good. The marriage was surely over now. What would Harvey do? Would he quit his job and move away too? Stevie thought he should call Harvey later in the day, offer to take him in. You can have the bed, he’d tell him. I don’t mind sleeping on the couch.

  He drank a beer and swallowed an extra ten-milligram tablet of melatonin and finally drifted off to the fading but frantic voice of the radio show’s guest. He had been asleep less than an hour when the ringtone on his cell phone woke him, accompanied by the female voice saying Call from Will. He rolled over quickly, grabbed the phone, and said, “Hey. What’s up?”

  And Will, sobbing, told him. “She killed him with his own shotgun, Stevie. The lying bitch shot him.”

  He jerked away from the phone. Looked at it. Put it back to his ear. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m outside his house right now,” Will said. “Laci’s inside taking pictures.”

  “Of what?”

  “I just told you. Jennalee shot Harvey. Killed him. And then she shot herself.”

  And for the next few minutes Stevie had no idea where he was, whether in a dream or somewhere else. The darkness and confusion was just like when he had landed on his back in the yard, head banging down hard. A strangely deep and vast and confounding darkness in which he felt both light and heavy, both there and not there.

  Time passed but he had no idea how much. And at some point he realized that Will was still talking. “. . . that you don’t say anything to anyone about the school thing. Don’t even answer your phone unless it’s from me . . . must’ve told her or something . . . went to sleep and then she did it . . . just can’t believe it, Stevie. Just can’t get my head around it.”

  Stevie was still confused when the conversation ended. Still uncertain. He knew the word that seemed to apply, though. Hypnagogia. He wasn’t really awake, nor wholly asleep. Caught in the interstice between the two. Or maybe only dreaming that he was. He laid the phone aside and reminded himself to check the call log in the morning. If it included this call from Will, the call was real. Except that it wasn’t. Couldn’t be.

  Ignorance is bliss, he heard his mother say.

  56

  To sit and do nothing was excruciat
ing. Every time Will’s thoughts turned to what was inside that house, what Laci must be looking at, photographing, he wanted to tear at his skin. He had always been jealous of that house, its spaciousness and stolidity. A normal house on a normal street. Two floors, an attic, a basement, a garage. Two people who loved each other.

  Except that Harvey was always angry. Always simmering just under the surface.

  Will leaned forward and thudded his forehead against the dash. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.”

  He must have known, Will thought. Must have known. But didn’t want to know. Wouldn’t let himself.

  It would have been like a cancer in the brain. A tumor. You know it’s there but you ignore it. You have to live, have to go to work, have to sleep at night. Have to find some way to keep from tearing your skin off and clawing out your veins.

  Will was torn between wanting to rush inside the house and needing to run off into the darkness. To just keep running until he collapsed.

  When he sat up and leaned back, he saw Deputy Chris Landers coming down off the porch. Without thinking he was going to do it, Will found himself climbing out of the car and hurrying toward the deputy. Landers saw him coming and paused, ready to block Will’s path.

  Eight long strides and Will was standing in front of him. “Jesus, Chris,” Will said. “What’s going on in there? Why haven’t they brought him out? Get him to the hospital or somewhere. Wherever they’re going to take him.”

  “As soon as the coroner’s finished, Will. It takes time to process the scene.”

  “He’s not going to cut him up, is he? Harvey would hate that. He would absolutely hate it.”

  “Cause of death is pretty much cut-and-dried,” Landers said. “An autopsy shouldn’t be necessary. He’s just getting some pictures with Laci, is all. The sheriff has to write up a report.”

  Will nodded, but remained agitated. He held both hands tight against his sternum, fingers hooked together, arms tense and shaking, as if he wanted to pull his hands apart but couldn’t.

  And then he had a thought. Looked around, peered up and down the street. “Where’s Kenny?” he said. “Where’s that sonofabitch at?”

  “They’re not answering the phone,” Landers told him. “I’m headed over there now. See if I can shake them out of bed.”

  And Will stopped pulling at his hands. His hands relaxed, fell limp at his sides. Because he knew. Not specifically. But sufficiently. They’re not answering the phone. He knew what his brother had done. And had to ask himself, Wouldn’t you do the same?

  57

  The coroner, wearing white latex gloves, booties and a surgical mask, picked Harvey’s hand out of his lap, turned it over, and studied the palm. His movements were delicate, never abrupt. He was always reverent when handling a body, and seemed especially so tonight. Laci was reminded of the first time she had worked with him, and his soft-spoken admonition, Always remember, Laci. Don’t let yourself forget. This is a human being.

  He had been in attendance at Harvey’s and Jennalee’s reception, both he and his wife. They had shoved their dollar bills into the money bag and thrown back their shots of Jack and schnapps and danced with the happy bride and groom.

  And that, Laci told herself, is one of the problems with small-town life. You grow up with people, get to know them and like them, have to watch them suffer and mourn, see some of them turn into drunks or druggies, people who beat their children, cheat on their spouses. You have to handle their bodies sometimes, put those bodies into the ground.

  The coroner pressed his fingers atop Harvey’s to flatten the palm. “Close-ups of both hands,” he said.

  She spread her feet to straddle Harvey’s outstretched leg. Leaned in close. Focused. Five quick shots of the right hand, each shot at a slightly different angle. Five quick shots of the left.

  They had the same hands, Harvey and Will. Big hands. Strong. Always working, those four hands. Lifting, pulling, toting hands. Fingernails clipped short. Sturdy, comforting, loving hands. They could have been her husband’s except for the abrasions down each palm. The blood like a rash of scarlet freckles all over the top of his fingers, but none on his palms.

  She had already taken dozens of shots of the room, the open door of the gun cabinet, the position of the shotgun at Harvey’s feet, Jennalee’s body lying on its side as if she had drifted to sleep and fallen off the chair. Every splatter of blood, every angle and object that might add context to the scene. Entrance and exit wounds for both bodies, front, back and profile. Medium-range two-person shots to establish their positions and proximity to one another. She didn’t focus on the faces, kept her eye on the center of the frame.

  The coroner spoke softly into his cell phone’s recorder as Laci photographed the bodies, as he moved and positioned the bodies so that Laci could do her work. “Male victim shot in the chest, point blank. Exit wound several inches lower. Approximately forty-five-degree angle. Victim sitting, possibly sleeping, shooter probably standing . . . Bruise on female victim’s shoulder compatible with shotgun recoil. Female victim shot in the chest, again point blank. Exit wound . . . approximately twenty, twenty-five degrees higher. Might have used male victim’s body to stabilize the weapon. Female victim was originally seated, as indicated by damage to chair, then toppled by the force of the blast. Position might be confirmed by examining male victim for recoil bruising of thighs and genitals.”

  Every now and then a brief dizziness would assail Laci, and she would feel on the verge of weakening, dropping to her knees. She tried to breathe without taking in any scents, and the mask helped, muted but did not cancel out the scents of two exploded bodies. She could hear the soft whimper that emanated from behind her mask now and then, was aware that the coroner looked up at her each time it happened. His name was Ted but she never thought of him as that, always as “coroner,” or sometimes as “Donaldson.” Always wanted to keep her distance from him when he was working. Separate herself from the grisly intimacy that was part of his job, not hers. But now when he heard the whimper and his voice paused and he looked her way, she saw in his baby blues an understanding, a kinship, and suddenly felt close to him, grateful for his soft voice and kind eyes.

  The smell was what she had a hard time with. Even with a surgical mask, the smell always got to her. That same dirty penny smell, and the stink of an unflushed toilet, and the dry, sulfurous scent of gunpowder. She hoped she would not associate that scent with her brother-in-law from now on. Would not see this scene in her mind’s eye for a month or more of nights to come.

  She breathed shallowly through her mouth, concentrated on the click click click, did her best to ignore the nausea and the tightening of her throat.

  And then the coroner stepped away from Harvey’s chair and peeled off a glove, slipped the cell phone into a pocket. “You know the rest,” he told her. “I’m going to grab a smoke outside. Compare notes with the sheriff.”

  She was finishing up with a few more midrange shots from the front wall of the house, squatting low, Harvey on the left side of the frame, Jennalee on the right, when she noticed, through the camera, a spot of pink beneath Jennalee’s naked calf. Jennalee’s toenails were red. The blood was a darker red. But pink?

  M&M’S were scattered everywhere. But pink? Were M&M’S sometimes pink?

  Yes, she remembered now. It had been at a wedding, or maybe a baby shower. No, a 5K. Somebody was handing them out at the finish line. Bags of pink and white M&M’S. A 5K walk for breast cancer research.

  What about that thing? Harvey had said at the bar. That pink thing.

  She zoomed in on it. Just a short line of pink, maybe two inches in length. Half-buried in the carpet beneath Jennalee’s leg. Definitely not an M&M.

  What in the world? she thought. Whatever the thing was, it didn’t belong there. Wasn’t natural to this scene. Unless it was. Unless it was integral to it. Unless it explained this scene.

  What about that pink thing?

  A cell phone rang not far outs
ide the front door. Then a mumbling of voices. Deputy Walters stepped closer to the door but remained in the room with her.

  She stared at the sliver of pink. Had anybody else seen it? The EMTs? The sheriff and his deputies? The coroner hadn’t pointed it out to her, hadn’t lifted Jennalee’s leg for a photograph.

  She lowered the camera and looked around the room. The sheriff’s broad back was filling the front doorway now, his voice a rumble as he talked on the phone. Ronnie Walters stood just behind the sheriff, listening in on the conversation.

  Quickly she reviewed her previous photos, paused to squint at every shot of Jennalee. No pink visible.

  She blinked, cleared her eyes. Peered again through the camera. Still there.

  Stevie has it, Will had said. And Harvey said, I want it.

  What did Will know about this? Was he involved somehow? Oh God, she thought. Oh God.

  She moved closer to Jennalee, clicking continuously, head and shoulders only. Kept an eye on Deputy Walters, who, though his face was half-turned toward her, head cocked, ear toward the door, could see her only peripherally at best, a photographer doing her job.

  She squatted close to the body, kept clicking, clicking. Then used her left hand to push at the flesh of Jennalee’s calf, expose the thing in the carpet. A USB drive. The pink thing. She didn’t even know she was going to pick it up until her fingers covered it, pulled it into her palm, tucked it into her fist.

  She stood, shaky, thinking she might stumble and fall. Clicked a few more shots of Jennalee. Turned and took a few more of Harvey. Then stood there breathing through the mask, sucking in the scent of cotton, the taste of blood in her mouth.

  When she thought she could move in a straight line, she crossed to the door. “Excuse me,” she said, and squeezed past the deputy, who gave her a quick glance and then a smile, and pushed himself against the wall. The sheriff looked back from the porch, saw her and stepped aside.