She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,117

the skin black and puckered. The grass beneath his head was dark with blood, blood filled with small, white specs.

I turned my head and threw up in the grass.

Fogel looked at the officer standing behind me, but neither woman said anything.

“I didn’t do this,” I finally managed.

Fogel replaced the tarp and stood. “I know that. You want to know how I know that? Because I was following you in the cemetery when this happened. Who is the man in the black GTO?”

“I told you, I don’t know. Why were you following me?”

Ignoring my question, she walked over to the other five bodies and began pulling away their tarps, one at a time, anger brewing in her eyes. “Your friend, the man we have documented coming and going from your apartment for years, he killed not only my partner today but each of these people, and you’re going to help me find him. You’re going to tell me everything you know about him.”

As each tarp leapt into the air by her hand, my eyes fell on the bodies—one-by-one—a woman in a white coat, shotgun blast to the stomach. A man in a white coat, shotgun blast to the chest. Another woman, a small gunshot to the head, like Brier—she was also in a white coat. I nearly threw up again. Then I saw the last two, not shot at all.

Burned but not burned.

Like Andy Olin Flack.

Like Raymond Visconti.

Stella.

I ran then.

I pushed past the female officer who had been following us and raced through the front door of the house, nearly tripping on another body in the foyer—uncovered, black and dry like the others. There were more bodies in the hallway, in the library.

When I shouted Stella’s name, three investigators dressed in white jumpsuits looked up from their work but said nothing. An officer positioned at the end of the long hallway ran toward me.

A wooden barricade blocked the hallway leading toward the basement. The walls were black, charred with smoke. Stella’s paintings hung at odd angles, covered in grime. Two had fallen to the floor. Large floodlights had been placed on either end of the hallway, and body bags filled the space between, at least a dozen of them, sealed and silent.

Another body was on the stairs, partially covered, also dry with death.

I raced past the foyer, jumped the body on the stairs, and took the steps two at a time. At the top, there was yet another body, male, this one dead with a shotgun blast to the abdomen.

I had no idea where I was going.

I heard footsteps on the stairs behind me.

All the doors were opened.

The first two bedrooms were empty. When I entered the third bedroom on the left, I froze just inside the open doorway, unable to turn away from what I saw.

The bedroom was large, a suite, really. Nearly as big as my apartment, with a canopy bed dressed in pink-and-white sheets and draped with sheer cloth from above. A sitting area near a window overlooked the backyard—the pool and gardens. A door to the left led to a private bathroom, the walls and floor covered in white marble. A fireplace of stone occupied the back wall, the hearth filled with the fading glow of neglected embers.

Above the fireplace, above the mantle, hung a painting. A painting of a little girl and boy, both sitting on a black iron bench surrounded by gravestones and trees of fall leaves. The little girl held a book in her lap. The boy’s hand reached for her, hesitant, inches from her, longing for her, even then. The vivid colors and brushstrokes, clearly Stella’s hand. I crossed the room, the voices coming up the stairs lost to me. I reached up and ran my fingers over the paint, felt the ridges and edges, the careful swirl of each stroke, and for the first time in my life, I knew Stella’s touch.

There was nobody else in the room, and I also knew she was gone.

I wanted to hate her for the letter.

Those horrible words.

I wanted to forget everything about her.

But I couldn’t.

I simply couldn’t.

My Stella.

PART 3

“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you just keep living, day after day after terrible day.”

― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

Log 08/09/1993—

Subject “D” within expected parameters. Carl Rozzell appears agitated.

Personal notes – Warren Beeson.

David Pickford is a beautiful man.

David Pickford is a beautiful man.

David Pickford is a beautiful man.

David Pickford is a beautiful man.

David Pickford is a beautiful man.

David Pickford is a beautiful man.

David Pickford