The Hunt Chronicles: Volume 1 (11 page)

“But your sister
said she had been under medication and didn’t get out of bed, and-”

“And
nothing, Walters!
 
Maddie
lied to you.  She did get up to go to the
bathroom.  Richard was already up by then and helped her down the stairs,
wet feet and all!”  Richard’s eyes shifted quickly around the room. 
“Either one of them could have waited for the other to go back to his or her
room and then kill Wilson.”  I was expecting
Maddie
to punch me, but she didn’t.  I sensed she knew where I was going and I
hoped she knew that I was grateful. 

“Cheryl was up for a
short time making a sandwich before I got up.  She could have done it
then.  We left Nona in the kitchen, alone.  There’s some more of your
precious opportunity.  Thomas was God knows where but he probably didn’t
stay in bed all night after his wife got up.  Either way, it’s
irrelevant.  Your
opportunity
holds even less water than your
motives,
Walters.  I don’t even have to go into the
means
, do I?  I’ve
already told you Donald did stab his father, but I say again that didn’t kill
him.”  Once again, they all had a flashed facial expression of confusion.

“Holy hell,” Walters
muttered, finally catching on.

“What?  What is
it?  Is he right?”  Sills asked.

“Yeah, he is.” 
Walters said
,
staring at me as his eyes turned to
slits.

“Right
about what?”
Richard bawled.

“Donald McCune did
stab your father,” Walters answered, “but he didn’t kill him.”

“What is this, some
kind of game? 
A goddamn brainteaser?”
 
Cheryl exploded.

“Donald stabbed
Wilson but didn’t kill him because…because” Walters was down and out.  He
was too overwhelmed to finish his own sentence.  His brain seemed to shut
down and reboot like a fried computer.  I finished his sentence for him.

“Because,” I added,
“when Donald stabbed Wilson, he was already dead.”

Then we were all on
our feet, though some of them had backed out into the foyer either out of
shock, fear or confusion.  I eventually found my way to the foyer too, and
the stragglers followed me as I laid the mystery to rest.

“I called the
coroner this afternoon.  He gave me some very interesting information.”

“Why would he give
you
information, Hunt?” Walters said, strolling towards me with his hands in his
pockets.  “You don’t have any weight in an official investigation?”

“That’s true,” I
replied, “but you have more than enough weight to go around.”  His eyes
widened and his lips pulled back, exposing his teeth. 
Bullseye
Little Reevan shouted.

“Well?” Cheryl spoke
up, “What did he tell you?”

“He told me that
while Wilson’s body was examined, it was discovered that he suffered
hemorrhages around his eyes.  I’m surprised Walters didn’t put it together
sooner, frankly.”  Sills came up to Walters’ side and looked up at him.

“You mean you knew
about that?”

“Yes,” he said, “but
I didn’t think it amounted to a hill of beans until now.  No one
did.  For god sake the man still had a blade sticking out of his chest
when we found him.”

“Reevan, what do
hemorrhages around the eyes mean?” 
Maddie
questioned, grabbing me on the shoulder.

“Hemorrhages usually
appear when a victim has been suffocated to death.”  Richard’s mouth gaped
open.  “It matches up with what I noticed earlier, when I got a look at
Wilson’s body.”

“When the hell did
you
see his body?”  Walter growled, and I remembered that I should have
never crossed the yellow tape into his Wilson’s bedroom to begin with.  I
pressed on, steamrolling over his question in hopes that he would soon forget
it. 

“Wilson’s body and
bed,” I continued, “were stained with blood, but not very much.  At first,
I thought it had something to do with blood clotting, and I was close. 
Someone suffocated Wilson to death and left him in bed.  Donald went in
afterward and stabbed him, but by then the body’s mechanisms had shut
down.  Wilson’s heart was pumping blood anymore.  He bled, but not
nearly as much as a living man would’ve bled.  Get it now?  Donald
didn’t do anything more than stab a dead body.”

“Oh, he
only
stabbed a dead body?” Cheryl shouted.  “Like it’s no big deal?”

“Someone else
murdered your father,” I said. 
“Someone who’s right
here, right now.”
  The others began making quick glances at each
other.  I saw Walters look at Sills, then back at me.  The room was
so quiet you could practically hear eyelids blinking furiously, hear the
breathing around the room quicken, hear the eyes slosh back and forth in their
sockets.

“Well?  Who was
it?”  Richard finally asked.

“Yes,
who?”
  Cheryl pleaded. 
I looked around the room.  The faces had all turned distraught and the
foreheads were all sweating stone.  As if to signal the beginning of the
end, the ominous grandfather clock began to chime.

“Could have been
anyone here,” I said.  “A money hungry
maid,
or
an enraged butler?  His greedy
cook,
or his
selfish son?”  I turned and stared, and the eyes in the room followed
mine…to Cheryl.  “It was his daughter.”  The words slipped out of my
mouth and struck the silence like a baseball shattering a window.  Then
they hung there, frozen, awkward, and nauseating.

“
Liar!
”
  She screamed.

“Am I,
Cheryl?”  I asked her calmly.  As I spoke, I noticed Walters and
Sills honing in on Cheryl very slowly, flanking her subtly one soft footstep at
a time.  Cheryl took no notice; her eyes were locked on mine.  I
could feel
them
burning holes into my face.

“Damn right you’re a
liar, you nutcase!”

“Cheryl!” 
Maddie
screamed, the way a mother scolds a child.

“It was you,
Cheryl,” I said, approaching her slowly.  “There’s proof; lots of it, if
you know where to look.”

“There’s proof that
everyone in this house killed my father.  No one will believe-”

“They’ll believe it,
Cheryl.  These two men have that responsibility. 
They
will
make twelve citizens believe that last night you were the one who suffocated
your father before Donald stabbed his body.”

“Fine!”
  She sniped. 
“When?
 
How?”

“Your argument with
your father last night is what woke me up in the first place, remember? Then I
started thinking about it, and realized that I never heard your father’s voice
during that argument.  I only heard a woman’s voice, and that woman was
you.  By then your father was already dead.  You had already killed
him and were screaming at his dead body.”  The feeling of nausea grew.

“Why the hell would
anyone do that?”  She argued.

“Two reasons. 
First, to cover your tracks.
  I thought Wilson was
still alive, but I was wrong.  Your father was already dead long before
your brother ever came home.”

“And
the second reason?”
Asked Richard.
  I turned to him awkwardly.

“Your father would
have to be dead to lose an argument.”

“After it was over,
you headed out here to the foyer,” I went on, “and you were probably passing by
the kitchen when you heard me coming, so you ducked inside, and pretended to
make a sandwich.  That’s when I joined you.” Sills and Walters had stopped
moving forward as Cheryl just stood in place, smiling.

“That’s your
proof? 
A phony sandwich?”
  She asked with a
laugh.

“Is it still
there?”  I asked abruptly, looking up towards her door at the top of the
stairs.

“Is what still
there?”  She asked.

“The
sandwich?”

“What?”

“The
sandwich, Cheryl.
  You never
did eat it, did you?  I saw it when I was in your room, uneaten, on your
nightstand.  Kind of odd to make a sandwich and then not eat it at some
point, isn’t it?”  Cheryl’s smile slowly dissipated.  “Well, isn’t
it?  I think it is.  I think murdering your father probably
preoccupies your mind for a long while.  You probably never thought about
it after you made it and carried it upstairs.  I bet if we checked right
now, not only would we find the uneaten sandwich, but somewhere up there we‘d
find all of the missing things from your father‘s room, the things you took to
make it look like a robbery.  You never planned on getting stuck in this
house, under police surveillance, did you?  No,” I said, gazing up to her
door again.  “They’re still up there, and they will all prove I’m right.”

“That’s still not
enough to convince me!”  Richard bellowed, finally finding his breath and
defending his sister.  “What if you’re wrong?  You’ve got nothing
that ties her to my father’s room at all besides and argument!”

“Besides,” Walters
interjected.  “Why didn’t Wilson just fight back?  Use his
hands?  Scream?”

“He probably did
scream, Detective,” I said, “but obviously no one could hear him with something
over his mouth.  He did use his arms however, of that I am sure.  He
could barely lift up his own fork at dinner, so he never would have been able
to fight off his murderer.  He flailed his arms anyway.  I’m sure he
tried to push her away and couldn’t.  He inevitably knocked over the
medicine tray Thomas had brought in earlier.”

“How do you
know?”  Thomas asked.

“When I went into
his room, I felt a wet spot on the carpet and found this little beauty on the
floor.”  I pulled out the
OXIZALE
pill and held it up to
Cheryl. 

“What the hell?”
Walters’ shouted.  “Is this evidence?  Were you withholding
evidence?  And did you just say
again
that you were in McCune’s
room?  You still haven’t explained-“

“Tell me something, Thomas,”
I said, regretting my choice of words for the second time during this show,
“did Wilson take his medication while you were in his room last night?”

“Well, no,” he
replied.  “Sometimes he took it right away.  Other times he just said
to leave it and he would take it after he was done reading.  Some mornings
I’d find him with a book on his chest and the pill and water still on the
tray. 
Drove me crazy.
  I thought for sure
one morning I would walk in and find him de…sorry.”

“Just as I thought,”
I said.  “Last night, Wilson did not take his medication.  While
struggling for his life, he knocked over his tray, spilling everything onto the
floor.  Once he was dead, Cheryl panicked.  She picked up the empty
glass and tray dashed out into the hall.”

 “How did you
get this?” Walters’ persisted.

“I found it in
Wilson’s room this morning before you left.” I admitted.

“Why were you in his
room?” He asked calmly, clearly trying to restrain himself, which was very
unsettling, like stumbling on a bomb that didn’t go off when you thought it
would.

“I was looking for
my contact
lense
,” I replied nonchalantly, attempting
to bat away the question.  “The point is it was still there in the carpet
the next morning.”

“That’s still all
circumstantial!”  Sills yelled.  “It’s just another theory. 
It’s not proof, Hunt!  None of this is actual proof of anything.”

“Well then, I’ll
give you the proof.”

“When I walked in on
Cheryl making her jelly sandwich, I accidentally scared her, causing her to
jump and cut herself with the knife she was using.  That’s why she is
wearing that bandage right now.”  I pointed to her right hand and she
quickly covered it with her left.  “At least that’s what she wanted me to
think.  You’re probably asking yourself what she used to kill her
father.  Well, it wasn’t a pillow or a plastic bag.  She used her
bare hands, literally.  She stood over her father, covered his mouth and
his nose shut.  Considering his condition she may have been able to do it
all one-handed.  That’s when he started to struggle.  She held on
tight.  It didn’t take long.”

“What does this have
to do with the cut on her hand?” 
Maddie
implored.

“Oh, it isn’t a cut
she’s got under there,” I said, jerking a thumb in Cheryl’s direction. 
“It’s a bite wound.  I remembered watching Wilson eat the night
before.  His arms were so weak but his mouth and teeth were just
fine.  I think Cheryl covered his nose and mouth, and at some point got
bitten in the process, between the thumb and forefinger.  She held on
tight and he was eventually gone.  That drip of jelly I saw running down
your hand last night wasn’t jelly at all.  It was blood.  I remember
seeing it
just before
you cut yourself.  Care to explain that?”