While They Slept: An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family by Kathryn Harrison

Author:Kathryn Harrison [Harrison, Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, Nonfiction, General
ISBN: 9781588367150
Google: yb6aBv6z-w0C
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-06-10T21:13:05+00:00

Downstairs, Becky’s body lay in the shadows. At first, Jody didn’t see her. All she heard was a snoring noise coming from the couch where her father was sleeping, as he had been every night for months. For a moment she thought he wasn’t dead but asleep. It wasn’t blood on Billy, it was ketchup, and the whole thing was a joke, a horrible, stupid, sick joke. She couldn’t wait to tell her mother what Billy had tried to pull this time. Yes, Billy was crazy, really crazy, and now they’d have to admit it, they’d have to do something about it. Except—

—it wasn’t a trick. She’d only thought it was; for a second she did. But that was before she really listened to the noises from the couch, like snoring but not snoring. Wetter. Bubbly. Air moving through coagulating blood in her father’s throat. So it wasn’t a trick he was playing, and it really was blood all over him. Billy was running water in the bathroom sink, rubbing at his arms and chest with a wet washrag. He pulled off the stained shorts and pulled on a pair of jeans.

“He…he’s not…” Jody gestured toward the couch. “He’s…I can hear him.”

Billy was pulling a shirt over his head. “That’s just nerves or something,” he said. “It isn’t breathing.” He walked around where Becky was on the floor. “Come on,” he said. There were three ways out of the house, three doors, but to get to any of them you had to walk past where Becky was. And now that Jody could see Becky, she heard her as well. Becky was alive; she was moaning.

“Billy—” Jody said, and stopped herself. If she told him Becky wasn’t dead, he might hit her again, hit her until she was quiet.

“What?”

She didn’t answer. He jerked his head toward the kitchen door, and she went out after him.

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