Knife Edge (A Dead Cold Mystery Book 27) by Blake Banner (most inspirational books of all time .TXT) 📗

was a large, wooden toolshed. Flanking the lawn on both sides were rosebushes and tall, redbrick walls.

Inside the kitchen, beneath the window, there were two sinks and a marble work surface. To the left of that there was a door to the backyard. It stood closed. In the middle of the floor was a solid pine table, and up against the walls were a vast fridge, a sofa, a couple of scruffy armchairs and a coffee table. Here too there were bookcases.

Emma Mitchell gestured with both hands at the table.

“That is where we were sitting.”

Dehan stood and looked from the table to the window and back again. She moved to it, pulled out a chair and sat down, looking over at the window again.

“This is where you were sitting.”

“I said so.”

“The table is in the same position it was in that day?”

Emma Mitchell sighed. “I told you, that is where we were sitting that morning.”

Dehan glanced at me. “You can’t see the lawn or the shed from here.”

I jerked my head at the kitchen door. “That door was open?”

Emma sighed again, a little louder. “Yes, the door and the windows were open. I was sitting there,” she pointed at Dehan, “and Brad was sitting at the other end. We were reading the papers. I suppose the sounds of the children playing had become a kind of background noise, and we didn’t really notice when it stopped.”

She paused, leaned against the fridge and stared down at the floor.

“Ours has always been a very peaceful, quiet home. Happy. We all got along very well. If there was ever any noise it was usually laughter. Lea and Marcus used to laugh a lot. Nothing…” She looked up at me and frowned. “Nothing ever happened. Brad and I had the whole thing sorted.” She smiled. “Our life was like a well-oiled machine. Everything happened as it should, according to what we had planned. That day should not have been different to any other. The silence that fell over the garden that morning, while we were sitting here reading, drinking coffee, should not have meant anything. It should not have presaged anything.”

I rested my ass against the sink and we waited. She looked down at the terracotta floor again and seemed to shrug with her eyebrows.

“It did, though,” she said quietly, simply. “The first we knew was a terrible, shrill screaming. I remember it constantly, every day, at every moment, and every time I do, it seems to me that we sat there interminably, staring at each other without moving. And all the while poor Lea was in terror, being killed. And I was just sitting there.

“I ask myself, every day, if I had reacted sooner, if I had done something sooner, might we have saved Lea’s…” She stopped and closed her eyes. “Might we have saved Lee and Lea’s lives?”

“What were they screaming? Were there words? Were they calling to you?”

“No.” She gave her head a brief shake. “It was incoherent, like hysteria, shrieking noises.”

I asked, “What happened next?”

She shook her head again. It was a gesture of bewilderment, still, after all those years. “I sat, like a moron, and watched Brad walk to the window and look out. Then there was another shrill scream. This time the hysteria was unmistakable. I recall it as though it were in slow motion. Brad turned and frowned at me. And I just frowned back.” She raised her hands to her head. “I wish I could go back in time and kick us both, scream at us to get out into the yard and do something. But it wasn’t till the third scream that Brad reacted and suddenly ran.”

“What did you do?”

She looked surprised by the question. “Well, I went after him, of course.”

Dehan leaned her elbows on the table. “At what point did you realize the screaming was coming from the shed?”

Emma Mitchell looked at her for the first time. She didn’t answer straight away.

“I suppose, when I went out into the yard. Brad was running for the shed.”

“Was the screaming still going on?”

“No, it had stopped.”

Dehan glanced at me. I gave her a small frown, but she went on. “So, you went for the shed because your husband was running that way?”

“Yes, I don’t know what you’re driving at.”

I answered for her. “We’re not driving at anything, Dr. Mitchell. We are just trying to get a clear understanding of what happened that day. What we would like to know is how your husband knew to run for the shed.”

She blinked a few times, gave her head a small shake. “I have no idea. What a bizarre thing to focus on. Perhaps he saw that there was nothing happening anywhere else in the garden and decided it had to come from the shed. Or when he was at the window…” She shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him.”

I nodded. “I know this must be painful, Dr. Mitchell, but it would be very helpful if you could walk us through what happened next.”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. After a second or two she released it, like she was blowing smoke from a cigarette. She crossed the floor to the kitchen door and unlocked it. Dehan stood and we followed Emma Mitchell out onto the patio. The sun was dropping toward the horizon behind the house and the breeze had turned icy. I shuddered and Dehan thrust her hands deep into her pockets. Dr. Mitchell hugged herself and stamped her feet, looking everywhere in the backyard except at the shed. I said:

“You followed your husband across the lawn.”

She nodded. “Yes.”

She made her way across the lawn to the shed and we followed after her. The door was closed. She reached for the handle but withdrew her hand before touching it.

“The door was open,” she said. “A couple of inches. Brad grabbed it and yanked it. I remember he just stood there, immobile, staring down at the floor. I began to shout at him, asking him