Africa! For the first time, it made some sense to her for him to be there. This kind of violence—Africa was where it came from. This warning could only be fully understood in the context of Lagos, Sierra Leone, Darfur.
Certainly, the killers made no pretense of covering their tracks or hiding anything. Patent prints were visible everywhere that there was blood. Hundreds of latents had turned up as well, all over the house—the walls, the beds, the bodies of the dead.
Food had been hastily consumed in the kitchen: the remains of a pork chop dinner, Neapolitan ice cream scooped from a tub, soda pop, and liquor.
Imagine the level of stupidity, or the indifference to being caught, tried, and sentenced to lifetime in prison for these unspeakable murders.
Bree didn’t need results to know that none of these prints would flag in the FBI’s fingerprint ID system. Her best guess was that the killers were young African nationals with no priors in the US and, most likely, no record of having entered the country either. Some of them would probably match prints taken at Eleanor Cox’s home, some would not. They were savage ghosts whom someone older could use to do his dirty work, she thought. Very efficient. And very much fucked up in their heads. God, she hated him—whoever was behind this!
She came full circle and was staring at the children’s beds again when a soft tap-tap sounded at the dormer window behind her.
Bree wheeled around and nearly cried out in surprise. She had always had a fear of getting shot in the back.
A young boy, small and wide-eyed, hung on to the fixed burglar bars outside, and he was looking in at her. When their eyes met he let go of the bars with one arm and beckoned her over.
“I saw the bad murders. I saw everyting,” he said in a quiet voice meant only for her. “I know who the killers are.”
Chapter 64
“PLEASE? I CAN tell you what happened in the house. Everyting.” The boy’s small voice came muted through the glass. Bree was thinking that he couldn’t be more than eleven or twelve.
He was either scared or a good little actor—or maybe he was both.
Sampson was in the bedroom behind her now. Neither of them drew a weapon; not that they trusted the boy for a second.
Bree had a hand on her piece.
“Tell me what you know about this,” she said.
She and Sampson approached the window from opposite angles. Bree moved in first. She had to duck her head to get inside the dormer alcove.
From here, she could see that the boy had his feet on a lip of decorative brickwork outside.
Beneath that was the roof of the back porch, and a small, November-dead garden maybe ten feet below.
“No further,” the boy warned, “or I run away. I can run very fast. You never catch me.”
“Okay. Let me get this out of the way, though.”
The old rope-and-pulley window sash took some coa
xing, but finally Bree forced it up about six inches.
“What are you doing out there?” she asked.
“I know how it happened. They kill the girl and boy in dis very room. The others down de hall.”
His accent was African. Nigerian was Bree’s guess.
“How do you know so much?” she asked. “Why should I believe you?”
“I am the lookout, but soon they will make me go with them to kill others.” He looked past Bree and Sampson to the scene inside. “I do not want to do dis. Please—I am Cat’lie.”
“It’s all right,” Bree told him. “You don’t have to hurt anyone. I’m Catholic too. Why don’t you come down from there, and we can—”
“No!” He took a hand off again, threatening to jump and run. “Don’t try nah tricks on me!”
“Okay, okay.” Bree held up her hands, palms out. Then she knelt down a little closer. “Just talk to me. Tell me more. What’s your name?”