Mitch and Tammy lived in a rustic log cabin that his grandmother had given to Mitch in her will. Mitch’s grandfather had been a well-known lumberman back in the fifties, and he’d built many cabins along the coast. Theirs sat back behind a wall of tall cedars and seemed to be in perpetual shade, yet the house was always cozy with its large fireplace made of smoothed beach cobble and flickering candles set next to the windows. Ann had been inside many times when her mother had stopped to pay the old woman a visit and bring her some blackberry jam. She remembered going inside on hot August afternoons and feeling instantly cooled by the sweet smelling cedar. She often thought about the old woman when she drove by the house, sometimes forgetting that she was now buried next to her husband, thinking for a moment that she needed to stop in and say hello.
When she pulled off the road, she noticed that someone had left the wooden gate open beneath the dripping cedars. She grabbed the sack of cinnamon rolls and got out. The grass was slick underfoot, and she was careful to avoid trampling the crimson toadstools that had sprung up after recent rains. The gate squealed as she swung it aside and headed up the path toward the porch where she heard a steady knocking. She was surprised not to smell smoke coming from the chimney, thinking to herself that a night like this would be perfect for reading a good book next to a blazing fire. Then she saw that the front door was open and swinging back and forth in the wind.
“Tammy?”
As she walked up the porch her pulse began to hum in her throat. This doesn’t feel right, she thought. Mitch and Tammy wouldn’t have been this careless. Some lights were on inside the cabin, but she saw no signs of Tammy. Ann stuck her head through the doorway and called again.
“Tammy?”
She waited to see if she might hear a shower running or someone coming down the stairs. Nothing happened, and after a few minutes she tried to decide what she should do. If she’d had a cell phone, she might have called Mitch and waited until he showed up. Then again, Tammy could be somewhere inside the house. She could be hurt and in need help.
Ann took a couple of steps inside. She set the bag of cinnamon rolls on a table next to the door and bunched up her keys in a fist. Scanning the room on overdrive, she had no idea what signs to be looking for-until she saw the overturned chair lying against the cold hearth of the fireplace, far from its vacant spot next to the redwood dining table Mitch’s grandfather had once carved as a wedding gift. She imagined the chair had been thrown or kicked across the room-unless somebody had carried it over to use as firewood, which made no sense at all.
She checked the kitchen last. There was a pot on the stove with burnt soup in it. Ann touched the pot and it was still warm. She heard water and glanced at the sink. The faucet was still running a thin stream and she instinctively reached out to turn it off when her hand froze just before touching the handle. A large sponge rested on the edge of the white ceramic sink; shiny threads of red had crept out from under it and stretched down to the drain below in a root-like pattern.
Blood…