Dead Silence (The Body Finder 4)

She stepped back, bumping into him. “I—I don’t . . .” But she wasn’t sure how else to say it. “He doesn’t have an echo.”

She felt her uncle’s hands close around her upper arms and then his voice was at her ear, reminding her that there were others there with them, those who didn’t know what she could do. “Are you sure?”

Half nodding and half shaking her head, so that she looked like some sort of deranged bobble-head, she whispered back, “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

CHAPTER 5

VIOLET LET HER UNCLE LEAD HER AWAY FROM the bodies. She felt staggered by her discovery; she’d never imagined that a body—especially one that had so obviously died at the hands of another—could be missing its echo.

Yet it was true. The silence, the total dead space around the boy, was proof.

The impact of that fact had yet to sink in.

They’d almost reached the kitchen, when something else stopped her. Something that penetrated the near-blinding explosions behind and around her eyes.

She turned toward the wall, which was tall, reaching up two stories, and she marveled at how she’d ever missed this in the first place.

“What is that?” she asked, taking in the strange design as best she could. Taking in, too, the fact that, whatever the pattern was it had been drawn in blood . . . most likely blood taken from the very family who’d lived here. Who’d died here.

She blinked, trying to clear her vision.

The crimson smears were wide, too fat to have been made by any brushstrokes. No, whatever made this was misshapen and soaked in blood, as drops had oozed down the walls, gravity pulling them away from their intended formation.

But the shape itself could still be distinguished, despite the dribbles and streaks and smears.

If she were to describe it, she supposed she might call it a cross of sorts. Like the ones you’d see in church or on the Bible. But that wasn’t right, because it wasn’t a cross exactly. At its base, there was a strange, sideways figure eight, almost like a pedestal that it sat upon. And there was a second line, smaller than the one that generally intersects the cross, just beneath its top . . . perched above the other.

“We don’t know yet,” Uncle Stephen said, drawing her attention as he pulled her away from it.

But Violet kept it in her sight for as long as she could. Her eyesight cleared a little more with each step she took away from the man on the couch . . . and his kaleidoscope echo.

The kitchen was spacious and overly bright, and Violet blinked as she stared at the granite countertops, with their swirled and flecked patterns. They seemed to blend with the swirls and flecks that were gradually receding to her periphery.

“I don’t understand,” he was saying. “I thought all bodies had echoes. Everyone who’s been murdered anyway.”

She nodded hesitantly. “They . . . do . . . at least they always have . . .” she said slowly, but then moved her head side to side, just as uncertainly. “Until now.” She frowned, feeling foolish for asking her next question. “And . . . and you’re sure that he was . . . you know . . . murdered?”

Her uncle’s brows rose and she could feel the are-you-really-asking-me-that look he shot her way. Of course they’d been murdered. All of them, the boy included. Violet knew as much, she’d seen him with her own eyes. Felt his lifeless body even.

“I don’t get it,” she admitted. “There should be . . . something.”

“But the others?” her uncle asked. “The mom and dad . . . ?”

“Yeah. Both of them. Clear ones.”

Violet leaned back, trying to make sense of it herself as she stood propped against the edge of the counter. But she paused as she glanced at the refrigerator, her eyes skimming the array of photos taped to the face of the stainless steel door. They were cluttered and disorderly, lending it a homey feel.

She saw a picture of the boy pinned up there, suited up in his Little League uniform. His smile revealed his two missing front teeth and he held his bat at his shoulder, as if preparing to swing at the next pitch. Beside that was a photo of the couple—the husband and the wife—taken in some tropical locale. Both of them were wearing flowered leis, and he had on a garish Hawaiian shirt—the kind tourists wear. Among the images, there were report cards and colored drawings, and a birthday card that read: Who’s Ready for a Fiesta??? with a Chihuahua wearing a sombrero perched eagerly in front of a birthday cake.

At the top right of the refrigerator, there were twin school photos with the same bland gray backdrops, one was of the boy—taken several years earlier, when he was probably in the first or second grade. The other was a girl, several grades older than the boy. She had braces and freckles and wore a T-shirt with a rainbow emblazoned across the chest.

She’s cute, Violet thought, stepping closer to examine the images. She looked like she could be the boy’s sister.

Her eyes moved over a collection of magnets and a Crock-Pot recipe for chili. And then she froze and her heart hammered against her breastbone like it was trying to punch its way out.

There was a photograph, buried amid the others, almost unnoticeable at first.

She took a step closer, until her nose was practically pressed against the image, and she lifted her fingertips to brush across the stippled surface of the photo paper.

She stared at the couple, all dressed up. He, in his jacket and tie, a boutonniere pinned to his lapel. And she, wearing a short white dress with black ribbon trimming the hemline and tied around her waist. It had a dramatic effect. Her hair was pinned up and tiny curls fell strategically to frame her face. Balloons fashioned together in the shape of a giant heart created a whimsical backdrop to the vignette.