Grim and Darling

CHAPTER FOUR

I don’t know much about Alice’s disappearance, but I do know a few things:

One.

I know that the lock on the front door had been tampered with, was basically demolished, and there was a shitty rusted screwdriver found underneath the porch.

The police tried to lift prints.

They got nothing.

Two.

I know that there was a size 11½ men’s shoe print in the mud at the edge of the yard, facing the house. It was from a Carolina brand boot, the tread worn down more on the outside of the sole than the arch, like someone bearing their weight wrong.

Maybe a back problem. Maybe a bad case of sciatica. Maybe a limp.

Three.

I know that the blood in the kitchen was type B.

Four.

I know that there was a big knife missing from the kitchen. The one with the smooth birchwood handle. The one that my dad liked to descale fish with.

Five.

I know that there was a trail of blood that led from the back door into the forest at the north side of the yard. They brought in dogs. They brought in metal detectors. They did grid searches and even summoned in a lady who claimed she could speak with the dead, but nothing. No knife. No Alice.

Nothing.

Six.

I know that Rose didn’t die of blood loss or blunt trauma. There was a bruise an inch thick all around her throat in the shape of two big hands. Her death certificate declared her cause of death as asphyxiation.

Seven.

I know that there wasn’t a single trace of Alice. No sign of a struggle. No blood or hair or fingernails popped off in a fight to escape.

Eight.

I know that her body still hasn’t been found.

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I am going to solve this shit if it kills me.

It’s not that the police aren’t doing their job, but they aren’t. They aren’t doing it well, or at all. It might be because of my dad. They don’t want to disappoint their boss or have to break bad news themselves. So they avoid it altogether. It might be because of me, the dead-eyed daughter who watches their every move and asks too many questions they don’t have answers for. It might be because of the day my mother drank half a bottle of vodka before she drove down to the station and pitched a screaming, spitting fit at the front desk, then charged the back rooms. She accused all of them of being lazy, worthless assholes who were content to leave her baby girl dead in a ditch somewhere before she stumbled back to the car and hightailed it out of town, never to be seen again.

So, fuck the police.

If it comes down to me, it comes down to me.

I’ve done a lot of research, most of it in the middle of the night, huddled underneath my covers. It’s one thing to wonder about the old lady down the street who sat in her recliner for six days before the postman bothered to look through the front window. Or that tourist from Germany who drove his car off the highway and sat submerged in the Bogachiel River for almost two weeks before the prison crew picking trashing up off the highway spotted the underside of his fancy rented cadillac. But it’s a whole other thing when it’s Alice. Death is not pretty, and actually is really fucking ugly when you’ve got your little sister in the back of your mind. The human body is a miraculous machine, and it breaks down in a very specific way. It depends on the temperature and the humidity and the exposure to sunlight, wind, and rain, but decomposition starts exactly four minutes after you die. One: Your body acclimates to external temperatures: algor mortis. Two: Your blood settles and discolors your skin: livor mortis. Three: Your cytoplasm turns gummy and stiff: rigor mortis.

Your fat literally turns into soap.

Soap.

The soap thing really got to me. That was the night I made a promise. I made lots of promises, actually. A promise to my dad that I’d find whoever did this so that he could stop killing himself trying to track down a mirage. A promise to my mom that I’d prove to her it wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t hers for letting me be in charge that night. A promise to myself that I'd finally clear my name.

A promise to Alice.

Because no one wants to be soap.

Next

AN:

1) All hail Hadley Hemingway because that girl is GOLD STANDARD.

2) Do you need a warning? Because this is your warning.

No one wants to be soap, and I don't want to write fluff.