Chapter 6 - Someone Outside
I called Nora before I finished reading the message.
“Get Lily away from the windows.”
“What?”
“Now.”
I heard movement, Nora calling Lily’s name, a door slamming.
Rachel was already radioing patrol units.
We drove to Nora’s house in silence except for the siren.
Two officers were searching the backyard when we arrived.
One found a fresh shoe print beneath the guest-room window.
The second found a cigarette still burning behind the fence.
Nora didn’t smoke.
Neither did Claire.
Daniel did.
I knew because Anna used to complain that his jackets smelled like an ashtray.
“Could be coincidence,” Rachel said.
“Nothing feels like coincidence anymore.”
Inside, Lily sat at the kitchen table eating dry cereal from a mug.
I knelt beside her.
“Did you see anyone outside?”
She shook her head.
Then she whispered, “The whistling man.”
Nora and I looked at each other.
“What whistling man?”
“The man who comes when Claire gets mad.”
Rachel crouched across from her. “Can you tell me what he looks like?”
Lily frowned with the serious concentration only a child can have.
“Old. Gray here.” She touched her temples. “He smells bad.”
“Like smoke?”
She nodded.
“When did you see him?”
“At our house.”
My skin prickled.
“Inside?”
Lily nodded again.
“He went downstairs.”
Daniel had been in my house dozens of times.
But never, as far as I knew, when I wasn’t there.
Rachel asked, “What did Claire call him?”
Lily looked at the cereal.
“Uncle Danny.”
That name hit like a fist.
Daniel Mercer wasn’t just my attorney.
He had been Anna’s cousin.
Family.
The man who sat beside me at her funeral.
The man who helped lower her coffin into the ground.
Rachel stood. “I’m going to get a warrant for his office and financial records.”
My phone rang again.
This time it was Daniel.
I answered on speaker.
He sounded terrified.
“Ethan, Claire is not the one you need to be afraid of.”
“Then who is?”
A sound cracked through the phone.
May you like
Daniel gasped.
Then the line went dead.
