“Because twenty-three people don’t vanish from thin air. Something really fucked up happened and there is no logical explanation for it. So the illogical is all that remains. There’s something else.”
“What?”
“It’s something I shouldn’t mention. I heard it from a buddy of mine, who heard it from a detective. Keep this to yourself, will you?”
“Yes,” she said impatiently, “now tell me.”
“On the bed. The comforter. Where was the body you saw? Was in centered on the bed?”
“No, it was on the side of it. The left side.”
I nodded knowingly. “There was only one piece of evidence found of foul play, that being a single drop of blood. A single drop of blood. What you described would hint at pints of blood, not a single drop, but a drop is something. It was on the comforter. On the edge of the bed, left side.”
“Did they test it?”
“Oh for sure. Well I don’t know that to be a fact, but of course forensics would run a DNA test on it. I doubt they have the results from it so soon. It could be Paul’s, we’ll see. It’s a coincidence that it was in the same place you saw a butchered body, though, isn’t it?”
“I suppose.” Inwardly she said, “But a single drop? It’s just so absurd. Nonsensical.”
“I know it is. We’ll get this sorted out. We need to be patient.”
“Do you really believe that?”
I didn’t answer because I didn’t believe it.
Back to Valentine’s Day. I had asked her what she saw and she wouldn’t answer me. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, so I didn’t press her for an answer. A moment later Fred re-entered the house saying, “Come check this out,” to me.
I followed him outside, the narrow beam of his flash light leading the way down the path of now two sets of tracks in the snow. Fifteen steps or so later we were between the trunks of two large Pine trees. We stopped side-by-side, six feet away from the final pair of footsteps. They ended, no trace of where the man or woman went from there. By the size of the imprints it was likely a male. Just past the final set of tracks was a pair of impressions. I thought they may have been knee prints.
“Odd,” I said. “He must have back-stepped in his own tracks.”
“Yes, but why would he do that?”
“No idea.” I looked back at the now-several footprints in the snow. “It hints at something bad, though, wouldn’t you agree? If he was deliberately trying to throw us off, he’s hiding a truth from us. Did you find tracks leading from the patio toward the sides of the house?”
“There are tracks on that side.” He pointed to the side of the house the guests had used to reach the basement from the street. “But it was mostly a single line of tracks, as if the guests of the party had come one or two at a time. If there was a mass exodus, there would be tracks wider than what there is. People don’t haul ass in a single-ranked file. They spread out.”
Norrah was in the doorway. I said to her, “Ma’am does anyone live here with you?”
“Yes. There is a young man who lives down here. He was upstairs when it happened, in the bathroom. He left before you guys got here. I’m not sure why. Afraid, I guess. He heard the screaming too, had to have.”
I called dispatch, requested additional units. I wanted to ask for homicide but didn’t. Not yet I didn’t. I asked Norrah where this tenant may have gone and she had no idea.
It was an hour later when he arrived back at her house, that Paul kid. By then there were better than fifteen cops on location, and a couple of detectives had just arrived. Paul was questioned in private, so I don’t know exactly what he was asked or how he replied. All I know is he was believed to be innocent of any wrong-doing. I surmise he was considered to be a chicken-shit and fled the scene before he ended up dead. He was told not leave the region in the coming days, and he’d be questioned a few more times before it was all said and done. Being a lowly cop I didn’t get to be in on the interrogations, nor discoursed of the outcome of them. I concluded that Paul was lucky to have been upstairs when it happened, or he’d be the twenty-fourth missing person. It’s not like he killed twenty-three people in the span of a few minutes and hid their bodies so well that they couldn’t be found. That’s impossible. And the guy isn’t very big. I doubt he could transport a body very far. And besides, he was upstairs when it happened. What a cluster-fuck it was. So utterly perplexing.
By the following day there were news-vans lining both sides of the street (partier’s vehicles had been towed and impounded, considered evidence—at least for now) and by that evening the feds were involved. Twenty-three people missing, vanished without a trace. Well, there was that one drop of blood.
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