Dark Homecoming by William Patterson Page A

thought about it again.
    Could there be a connection between these three deaths?
    Joe took a few steps closer to the dead man encased in that glaze of dried blood. A retaliation killing? Revenge for something? Whoever slit this kid’s throat was known to him. The door was locked from the outside. And Jamison’s key was still on his ring. So whoever killed him had a key to his apartment. And only a friend would have a key.
    It appeared Joe would need to drive out to Huntington House again.
    Joe noticed something on the floor beside the bed. He stooped down, looking at it closely.
    It was the tiny charred remnant of a marijuana cigarette, if he wasn’t mistaken.
    And he wasn’t likely to be mistaken. Joe knew very well what a joint looked like. He’d smoked more than a few in his day. When he was a teenager, growing up outside Greensboro, North Carolina, he had been a bit of a rebel, driving around a beat-up old Camaro with a Confederate flag on its license plate, smoking pot and swilling Jack Daniel’s. But he’d never been a bad kid, really. Drove too fast, partied too much, but never broke any real laws. He knew he wanted to be a cop since the age of ten, when he got hooked watching America’s Most Wanted on television. More than anything else, even more than smoking weed with Maribeth Sinclair in the back of his Camaro, Joe had wanted to catch killers.
    No doubt that was because no one had ever caught the killer who’d ended Joe’s mother’s life that terrible day in August when Joe was eight.
    But Joe didn’t like to think about that much. Instead, he concentrated on the dead body in front of him. Solving the murders of other people had to suffice, since neither Joe nor anyone else had ever been able to solve the murder of his mother.
    He went over the details of Jamison’s death in his mind.
    The kid may have been high when he was killed. Or he had smoked the joint before falling asleep, then his friend had slipped inside the apartment and slit his throat.
    Or perhaps the friend had been in bed beside him.
    The coroner and the forensics team were arriving. “Hey, boys,” Joe said, “snap some pictures of this roach on the floor, then see what you can find on it. Also, I’ll want to know if the kid was smoking pot shortly before he died.”
    Aggie drew close to him, speaking softly. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about Huntington House?”
    â€œI am indeed,” Joe told her. “Shall we take a ride out there together?”
    â€œLet’s,” she said.
    They exited the apartment to the sound of snapping cameras.

13
    â€œM rs. Huntington?”
    Liz opened her eyes. Glancing around the room, she saw that it was late. The drapes were still pulled, but enough bright sunlight was making its way into the room that she could tell it was getting close to noon. And now someone was softly rapping at her door.
    â€œMrs. Huntington?”
    It was Mrs. Hoffman. Liz pushed aside the white satin covers of her bed, swung her legs over the side, and placed her bare feet on the floor.
    â€œJust a moment,” she called. “I overslept.”
    â€œI’m sorry to bother you,” the housekeeper replied through the door. “I just wondered if you wanted some breakfast sent up to your room.”
    â€œNo, that’s all right,” Liz told her, getting up, finding herself a little dizzy and steadying herself against one of the posters of the bed. “I’ll come down.”
    â€œVery well,” said Mrs. Hoffman.
    Liz tried to wake up. She had slept so soundly. She felt as if she had gone far, far away during the night . . . She had been back home in her dreams, in her mother’s house, and her father was standing outside on the sidewalk, refusing to come in, despite Liz pleading with him to do so. Then her dream had shifted, becoming vague and unclear, except that it was David standing there, beckoning to