“Tell me,” I said softly. She grabbed tissues out of a box and pressed them to her eyes.
“I was going to pick up the boys at school,” she said. “I stopped off at Jake and Alice’s house first to see if they needed milk or juice. Jake was naked, lying dead in the foyer. Alice was on the stairs.”
I stared at Agnes, urging her on with my eyes.
“I cleaned up the blood,” Agnes said with a sigh. She looked at me as if she expected to be whipped herself. “I dressed them. I didn’t want anyone to see them that way.”
“You destroyed the crime scene,” I said.
“I didn’t want the boys to see all that blood.”
Chapter 57
I WOULDN’T HAVE DONE this a month ago. I would’ve been too busy thinking about the job I had to do. I stood and I opened my arms to Agnes Daltry.
She put her head against my shoulder and cried as though she would never stop. I understood now. Agnes wasn’t getting the comfort she needed from her husband. Her shoulders shook so hard, I could feel her pain as if I knew her, as if I had loved her family as much as she did.
Agnes’s grief moved me so much that I was thrown back into the loneliness of losing people I had loved: my mom, Chris, Jill.
I heard the distant sound of the doorbell. I was still holding Agnes when her husband came back into the kitchen.
“Someone’s here to see you,” he said, his anger coming off his body like a sour smell.
“To see me?”
The man waiting in the living room was a study in dung brown: brown sport jacket and pants, brown-striped tie. He had brown hair, a thick brown mustache, and hard brown eyes.
But his face was red. He looked furious.
“Lieutenant Boxer? I’m Peter Stark, chief of police, Half Moon Bay. You need to come with me.”
Chapter 58
I PARKED THE EXPLORER in the “guest” spot outside the gray-shingled barracks-style police station. Chief Stark got out of his vehicle and crunched across the gravel toward the building without once looking back to see if I was following him.
So much for professional courtesy.
The first thing I noticed inside the chief’s office was the framed motto behind his desk: Do the right thing and do it well. Then I took in the mess: piles of papers over every surface, old fax and copy machines, cockeyed, dusty photos on the wall of Stark posing with dead animals. Half a cheese sandwich on a file cabinet.
The chief took off his jacket, exposing a massive chest and monster-size arms. He hung the jacket on a hook behind the door.
“Sit down, Lieutenant. I keep hearing about you,” said the chief, riffling through a stack of phone messages. He hadn’t given me eye contact since the Daltry house. I took a motorcycle helmet off a side chair, put it on the floor, and sat down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Sorry?”
“What the hell gives you the right to come into my backyard and start poking around?” he said, drilling me with his eyes. “You’re on restricted duty, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“With all due respect, Chief, I don’t get your point.”
“Don’t screw with me, Boxer. Your rep as a loose cannon precedes you. Maybe you shot those kids without cause —”
“Hey, look —”
“Maybe you got scared, lost your nerve, whatever. And that would make you a dangerous cop. Get that?”
I got the message, all right. The guy outranked me, and a report from him that I had violated police procedures or disobeyed direct orders could hurt me. Still, I kept my expression neutral.