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I drag my gaze along that arm and…
And I was not imagining things. I was not letting the past shape the present. I am looking at a chest sliced open, intestines spilling, and a bloodied hunting knife clutched in the corpse’s hand as if…
As if what? They sliced themself open and crawled into the fucking furnace?
That’s when I finally look at the face. It’s a young man, and Mrs. Kilmer’s words come back.
He’s five foot ten and a hundred and sixty pounds. Short light brown hair and blue eyes.
“Brodie,” I whisper.
We’ve found Brodie Kilmer.
THIRTY
The moment I see the body—and realize who it is—I run for the door. Cirillo leaps into my way.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he says.
I stare at him. “To call the cops, obviously.”
“You can place the call from the basement, Nicola.”
“I could if I had my damn phone.” I go to pat my pockets for emphasis and then remember the speakers and steak knife and stop.
“Fine,” I say. “You call them.”
Cirillo only eyes me, and there’s a moment where I feel like I must be dreaming because none of this makes sense. There’s a body lying a few feet from us. Amutilated corpse.The obvious next step is to call the police. Yet Cirillo stands there, eyes narrowing, as if I’ve suggested we stuff poor Brodie back into the furnace.
He must be in shock.
“We need to call the police,” I say slowly.
“You were running from a crime scene,” he says.
“What?”
“You don’t think thisisa crime scene?” He steps toward me. “Are you going to tell me the boy did that to himself?”
“No, obviously it’s murder. That’s why we need to contact the police.”
He only watches me with those narrowed eyes, and a chill creeps up my spine. Over the last few days, I’ve wondered whether I’m losing my mind. But now I’m the one doing the sane thing, and if Cirillo is stopping me, then either he’s lost it… or he’s responsible for…
I look toward Brodie’s body, and carefully inch my hand toward the steak knife in my back pocket.
“That’s how you found Heather and Patrice, too.”
I freeze, following the voice as if it comes from nowhere. As if I’ve forgotten there’s someone else down here with us.
“I looked up the story, Nic,” Shania whispers. “That’s what I was doing upstairs. You gave me enough to look it up, and I had to know.” She looks at me. “You found Heather, nearly dead, with her… her stomach ripped open. And you found Patrice lying on the forest floor, injured and holding a hunting knife. Right, Nicola? Or it’s Janica, isn’t it? Your real name is Janica.”
“Real name?” Cirillo wheels on me. “What the hell is going on?”
“What’s going on is we have a dead body,” I say as calmly as I can, enunciating each word. “One of you needs to call the police. I am not trying to leave. I will stay right here until they arrive and answer all their questions. Just—”
“I want to know what Shania is talking about,” Cirillo snaps.
Seriously? There is a mutilated corpse so close I cansmellit, and you’re worried about—
