The Slaughter Man Read Online Free

casings,’ Whitestone said, and she was silent as we thought about that.
    Taking the time to collect the casings was impressive.
    ‘What happened to his legs?’ Gane said. ‘Looks like somebody hit him with a sledgehammer.’
    ‘Or a car,’ said Edie Wren, peering closer at the boy. ‘I think he could have been outside. Looks like gravel on his arms and hands.’
    There was a dog basket in one corner. It was for a big dog and on the back of it was stitched, MY NAME IS BUDDY.
    ‘What happened to the dog?’ I said.
    Gane erupted.
    ‘The dog?’ he said. ‘You’re worried about the dog? Up to our knees in a Charles Manson bloodbath and you’re worried about
the dog
?’
    I couldn’t explain it to Gane. The dog was part of this family too.
    ‘Anybody check on the goldfish?’ Gane said. ‘How’s the hamster doing? Get Hammy’s pulse, will you, Wolfe? And somebody check the budgie.’
    ‘All right,’ Whitestone said, silencing him. ‘Let’s go upstairs and see the rest of it.’
    The giant glass wall suddenly burst into light.
    The SOCOs had turned on their arc lights out the back.
    Outside was a stone garden, swirls of pebbles around rocks, like a lake made of gravel. A Japanese garden. There was a temple bell in the centre of it all, a green bell stained with the weather of centuries, and it tolled as it moved with the breeze.
    I did not move for a moment, stilled by the presence of all that unexpected beauty. There was a dog, a Golden Retriever, in one corner of the garden. He looked as though he was sleeping. But I knew he wasn’t sleeping.
    When I turned away Whitestone, Gane and Wren had already gone upstairs.
    As I followed them I saw that there were photographs all over the wall of the staircase. Tasteful black-and-white photos mounted inside slim black frames. They were photographs of the family that had lived in this beautiful house.
    And I saw that they had been the perfect family.
    I felt I could tell their story from the photographs. The mother and father looked as though they had married young and been fit and happy and in love for all their lives.
    The man was big, athletic with a look of mild amusement. A youthful mid-forties. The woman, perhaps ten years younger, was stunning, and vaguely familiar. She looked like Grace Kelly – she had exactly the kind of beauty that looks like a freak of nature.
    If they had problems, then they were beyond my imagination. They had health, money and each other. And they had two children, a boy and a girl, and I watched them grow as I ascended the staircase.
    They were good-looking, sporty kids. There was a shot of the girl on a hockey field aged maybe twelve, her gumshield showing orange in her serious face. And the boy, her brother, joyously holding up a cup with his football team. It was hard to equate that smiling child with the corpse downstairs.
    Near the top of the stairs the boy and the girl were in their middle teens, almost a young man and a young woman, and I saw that the boy was slightly older than the girl but not by much more than a year. There was a photograph of the family together under a Christmas tree. Another photograph at a restaurant on a beach. In the later pictures there was a Golden Retriever who looked like he was laughing at his good fortune to find himself with this perfect family. The dog who now lay in the Japanese garden. And in the final photograph the woman who looked like Grace Kelly was holding a child.
    A boy. About four. I guessed that his arrival had been unexpected. Their lives were full. The photograph wall was full. You could imagine that they did not think they would have any more children. Then the boy had come along and put a seal on all their happiness. Yes, he looked about four.
    A year younger than Scout, I thought.
    The Crime Scene Photographer came down the stairs.
    I touched his arm.
    ‘You absolutely sure there’s nobody left alive?’ I said.
    ‘The Divisional Surgeon hasn’t arrived yet so death