Page 38 of Go Under

Police cars crowded the front of the property. Thankfully, the media hadn’t caught wind of this yet. That was one extremely small stroke of luck they’d enjoyed so far. The media, despite its coverage of Donna Frick’s death, didn’t seem to have made the leap to recognizing this as the work of a serial killer.

At the moment, the news was the least of Kate’s worries.

“I guess he changed his name,” Darnell said, his ordinary strength and stoicism vanished, replaced by a deep weariness. “That’s why we couldn’t find him. After the conviction was overturned, he changed his name to Ronald Orton. I guess he saw this revenge coming.”

For what little it had helped him. Nora had found him at last, cornering him in the home he’d inhabited under another name, reminding him, as she herself had been reminded over and over again, that changing one’s name didn’t remove one’s past.

“Jesus,” Marcus exclaimed when they entered the home.

He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to say anything else. The responding officers had opened the doors and windows, but the temperature was still sweltering inside the home. According to the thermostat on the wall, it was one hundred six degrees. The officers reported a temperature of one hundred twenty-three when they arrived forty-five minutes earlier.

The odor was more stifling than the temperature. Intense, fruity, insistent, the smell of rancid meat on a bed of moldy berries. Kate’s stomach fluttered, and bile lent an acidic tang to the rot. She put a hand on the door jamb and hesitated in the foyer, swallowing repeatedly to keep from vomiting.

“Neighbors called in the smell,” Darnell informed them, his voice strained. “Considering the distance between the houses in this neighborhood, it’s safe to say he was dead for some time before they discovered him.”

“Fuck me,” Marcus said. “God, that never gets easier.”

Kate looked at Marcus and saw the same nausea they all felt, but a different emotion behind it. Marcus never talked about his time with the Navy SEALs, but Kate knew he'd endured all of the horrors war provided. She hated to think what memories this odor might bring up.

“Marcus, I want you to talk to the neighbors,” she said. “Find out if they noticed anyone suspicious. Give them Nora Avery’s descriptions—all three of them—and see if they recognize her.”

He nodded and shot her a grateful look on his way out of the house. Darnell raised an eyebrow, but Kate stepped past him, ignoring the look. He’d shown enough curiosity about her own personal life. He could stay the hell away from Marcus’s. “Darnell, see what you can find from security footage. Even if the killer destroyed the cameras here, there must be street cameras.”

Darnell nodded and moved on to do that.

The interior of the home was as resplendent as the exterior. Heated granite tile floors supported carved mahogany furniture arranged around a massive stone fireplace. The kitchen—visible through an open entryway—sported professional-grade appliances and polished marble countertops with more mahogany forming the façades and doors of the cabinetry. An enormous chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling, its sconces bearing LED lights rather than candles but looking no less regal for their modernity. At the opposite end of the living room, across from the kitchen, a spiral staircase carpeted in plush velvet twisted to the miniature castle's upper levels.

Stuart Pelham had enriched the life of Ronald Orton, surrounding himself with the trappings of success, no doubt comforting himself with the thought of how much better he was now that he’d done away with that troublesome liar Pelham.

All for nothing. All a waste.

Like Gerald Mace and Donna Frick, Stuart was sitting at the table, though in his house, the dining room was separate from the kitchen and accessed through a doorway. Unlike the others, he had been killed during his meal, his roast chicken and mashed potatoes left to rot with him.

And rot they had. A carpet of mold covered the potatoes, and orderly rows of white bacteria coated the chicken. Stuart had sagged in his chair, his body bloated, his joints swollen and misshapen as the muscles loosened and microbes broke down the connective tissue. His skin—a handsome chocolate brown in life—was a pallid gray now, purple streaks radiating from his eyes, nose, and the sutures still holding his swollen lips together.

He’d clearly been dead for several days. Kate had given Marcus a chance to escape painful memories, but he wouldn’t find anything useful. She was willing to bet that Stuart was the first victim, murdered even before Gerald Mace.

She heard footsteps and turned to see Darnell approaching, the set of his jaw telling Kate that he’d discovered nothing. “No dice on the cameras. The system underwent a periodic maintenance shutdown last night.”

“A periodic maintenance shutdown?”

“Now that everything’s digitized, the system has to decompile, defragment, and reboot every now and then.”

“Is that information released to the public?”

“No, but it’s publicly accessible, and according to the gentleman with whom I spoke, one thousand, one hundred and fifteen people accessed the system last night.”

“Why the hell is it publicly accessible?”

Darnell smiled thinly. “So, residents have the option to know when they’re unprotected.”

Kate sighed and rubbed her eyes. "God. Call them back and see if one of the eleven hundred people who accessed it is Nora Avery or Nora Smith."

“Will do.”

Kate moved to the living room while Darnell made the phone call. The cipher was written on the wall, carved into the wood where a painting had once hung. The painting now rested against the fireplace. What it might have depicted was anyone’s guess now. The heat had caused the oil to run, streaking oranges, purples, and blacks across the canvas and pooling in small, round puddles on the floor.

Kate snapped pictures of the cipher, noting right away the ninth commandment at the top of the code. The handwriting here was just as forceful as the others, but more controlled. The cipher was larger too, not longer but bolder, taking up more space. Nora had likely carved it riding a wave of exultation at finally achieving some measure of revenge for her brother.