Page 76 of Kill Your Darlings

“What time of year was it?”

“Spring.April.”Just about the same time of year as now.

“And what time—at what hour—did Milo phone you?”

The questions seemed so random.

I said, “It was after one.I don’t remember the exact time.I’d been sound asleep.”

“Was it a school night?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Was your father home?”

I said dryly, “He was rarely home at night.”

“And it took you how long to get to the cemetery?”

“Maybe five minutes?I drove my pickup truck over.”

“How carefully did you examine Dominic’s body?”

I began to wish I hadn’t had those scrambled eggs.

I said shortly, “I didn’t conduct a forensic examination.”

He’d been warm.

That was the first thing.

I hadn’t expected it.

The second thing was the weight—not just the heft of Dominic’s limbs, but the way they folded and flopped with no resistance, boneless and loose, like something was broken inside.He was limp all over, and that, more than anything else, had made it horrifically real.

Crouched beside him, my knees digging into the soft grass, two trembling fingers pressed to his neck.Like I’d seen in movies.But I already knew.The skin beneath my fingertips was soft, sticky with blood.There was no beat, no pulse.Just a dreadful unreal silence.

His blue eyes were open.I dreamed about that for a long time.Not all the way open, not dramatically, just half-slits, unfocused, glassy, gazing somewhere past my shoulder.There was no light left in them, but they hadn’t gone dull yet.That came later.

I pulled myself together and said, “He hadn’t been dead for long.His skin was warm.But there was no pulse.No breath.I checked.I checked again at the preserve.Before I…”

I quickly talked myself away from the memory.“There was a faint purple blush forming along the side of his neck, and his head lolled, so at first I thought maybe his neck was broken, but later I realized it was the blood settling.”

“Lividity,” Finn agreed.“Did he have a weapon?”

“Who?Dom?”

Finn assented.

“No.Not that I saw.I didn’t go through his pockets or anything.I didn’t touch him any more than I had to.”Granted, at the preserve it had taken a lot of touching, a lot of dragging and hauling and heaving to get him into the water.

“Were there cuts on his hands?Bruises on his face?”

I swallowed.“I’m not sure.”

“Was the injury to his head on the front or the back?”

“It was on the right—no, I was facing him.It was on his left side.The left side of his head.”

---