Padilla drew his gun. His heart was suddenly so loud he had difficulty hearing. He felt sick to his stomach and scared that Bigelow was going to shoot him. He was more afraid of Bigelow than the murderer.
"Don't shoot me, goddamnit. You watch what you shoot."
Bigelow said, "Jesus, look at the walls."
"Watch the goddamned doors and where you point that gun. The walls can't kill you."
The woman was wearing frayed cutoff jean shorts and a Frank Zappa T-shirt torn at the neck. Her shirt and legs were streaked with crusted blood. The back of her head was crushed, leaving her hair spiked with red gel. Another body lay between the living room and the dining room, this one a man. His head, like the woman's, was misshapen, and his blood had pooled in an irregular pattern reminding Padilla of a birthmark on his youngest daughter's foot. The floor was smudged as if they had tried to escape their attacker and splatter patterns ribboned the walls and ceiling. The weapon used to kill these people rose and fell many times, the blood it picked up splashing the walls. The smell of voided bowels was strong.
Padilla waved his pistol toward the hall leading to the bedrooms, then toward the kitchen.
"I'll clear the kitchen. You wait here watching the hall, then we'll do the rooms back there together."
"I ain't moving."
Padilla said it all louder than necessary, hoping if someone heard him they'd jump out the window and run. He moved past the man's body, then into the kitchen. The body of a twelve-year-old boy was on the kitchen floor, partially beneath a small dinette table as if he had been trying to escape. Padilla forced himself to look away. All he thought about now was securing the damned house so they could call in the dicks.
Bigelow called from the living room, "Hey, Frank-"
Padilla stepped back through the door. The rooms were bright now because Bigelow had turned on the lights.
"Frank, look at this."
Bigelow pointed to the floor.
In the light, Padilla saw little hourglass smears pressed into the carpet; tiny shapes that Padilla studied until he realized they were footprints. These footprints circled the bodies, tracking from the woman to the man, then into the kitchen and out again, around and around each body. The prints led into the hall toward the bedrooms.
Padilla stepped past Bigelow along the hall. The footprints faded, grew dim, and then vanished at the final door. Padilla stepped into the dark room, his mouth dry, and Hashed the room with his flashlight before turning on the lights.
"My name is Frank Padilla. I'm a policeman. I'm here to help."
The little girl sat on the floor at the foot of her bed with her back to the wall. She held a soiled pillowcase to her nose as she sucked her index finger. Padilla would always remember that-she sucked the index finger, not the thumb. She stared straight ahead, her mouth working as she sucked. Dried blood crusted her feet. She could not have been more than four years old.
"Honey?"
Bigelow came up behind him, stepping past to see the girl.
"Jesus, you want me to call?"
"We need an ambulance and Social Services and the detectives. Tell them we have a multiple homicide, and a little girl."
"Is she okay?"
"Call. Don't let the people outside near the house, and don't let them hear you. Don't answer their questions. Close the front door on your way out so they can't see."
Bigelow hurried away.
Frank Padilla holstered his weapon and stepped into the room. He smiled at the little girl, but she didn't look at him. She was a very small girl with knobby knees and wide black eyes and blood smudges on her face. Padilla wanted to go to her and hold her the way he would hold his own daughter, but he didn't want to scare her, so he did not approach. She was calm. Better for her to remain calm.
"It's okay, honey. It's going to be okay. You're safe now."
He didn't know if she heard him or not.
Frank Padilla stood looking at the tiny child in the bloody house with the miniature footprints she made as she walked from her mother to her father to her brother, unable to wake them, going from one to the other, circling through red shallows like a child lost at the shores of a lake until she finally returned