An hour after discovering the body Drew and Aaron Lindsey were standing shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk out in the front of their comfortable two-story beautifully restored Victorian home. Boo, their small white and furry Terrier with pointed ears and a wagging tail, was tethered by a leash to the left hand of Drew and sat obediantly beside his master. Police cars were aplenty on the street and the neighbors were out to see what the commotion was about. The two men seemed to handle the situation well with Aaron describing his morning then repeating several times that he had not seen the body earlier even though he had been in and about the garden since seven a.m.. "Did the dog go near the body?" Detective Ryan asked using his pen to point to the dog sitting happily at Drew's feet. Aaron shook his head no. "When we came out on the porch..." he began. "Who is we?" asked the Detective. "Sorry. I came out the back door to the porch area with the dog.." corrected Aaron. "Ok. And?" "Well, when we first came out on the porch Boo did bark in the direction of the Oak Tree. I glanced in that direction but I did not see the body but then, I wasn't looking for a body either. I don't even recall if I really looked directly at the three willow lounge chairs, because I've seen them so often and they are a fixture of the garden. I just assumed they were there and empty. And Boo did venture off the porch and continued to bark in that direction but I assumed he was fascinated with a bird or squirrel. Now though, he must have noticed the body but I didn't and when I did nothing about it, he probably lost interest ..." Drew casually wrapped an arm around Aaron's shoulder while the Detective wrote down the information. "And you Mr. Lindsey," said the Detective speaking to Drew, "did you happen to look out in the direction of the body?" Drew shook his head no. "The first I was aware of the situation was when Aaron called out to me and that was..." he looked down at his watch which now said twelve-fifty-five, "oh, eleven thirty or so."
"And what did you do?" "I came out on the porch and the two of us stood there looking, wondering if it really was a body, then we stepped down to the lawn and walked out toward the willow chairs. Aaron stopped a few feet before we got to the chair and the man but I went ahead and walked all the way around the lounge chair. The guy was dead all right. There was a long knife sticking out of the middle of his chest. His eyes were black, I mean the pupil part and his upper torso was covered in brown blood and he was bloated, of course, and grape purple. Oddly he looked like a Thanksgiving Day parade balloon and he looked like he was ready to burst. There were some bugs crawling on him so we hurried back into the house and called 911. They didn't believe us at first but a police car arrived and then you guys," provided Drew.
Just as Drew finished another officer joined the Detective. He had been standing within listening distance a few feet away. "Did you touch him?" asked the officer. The Detective shot the officer a scowl and the man took a step back. "No. No. Neither one of us touched him. We didn't have to. He was dead. That was obvious. And, of course, there was the knife and all that blood. It was brown," offered Aaron trying to be helpful.
"And you didn't hear anything either earlier this morning or during the night?" the Detective asked both men. They said no in unison. "Nothing," added Aaron. "It couldn't have been suicide?" asked Aaron shaking his own head no. The Detective continued writing and finally looked up. "Suicide? Could you plunge a knife like that into your chest, deep like that? No. This is obviouusly a homocide." Drew squeezed his arm tighter around Aaron's shoulder and the two men looked at each other. "Seriously Detective, we had nothing to do with the murder of anyone. I don't know where the guy came from - maybe down the back alley - there's an alley way back there, at the end of the property. Did you see it?" "Oh yeah, we've been all around the property. No blood stains or noticeable footprints. Looks like the victim was stabbed right there and either fell back into the chair or sat down in the chair and died. From the decomposition of the body, and this is just a guess, I'd think he died a good twenty-four to thirty-six hours ago," said the Detective matter-of-factly. "Jesus! That means the guy was out there yesterday. You were out there Aaron. You didn't see anything?" Aaron had a look of panic on his face. "No really. Nothing ..." he said, shrugging his shoulders and looking at Drew oddly.
"Well, whether you two knew it or not you've had a dead man, a purple corpse, in your back yard since yesterday, maybe longer. We'll wait for the coronor to give us a better date and time" Drew dropped his arm from around Aaron's shoulder and slipped his fingers into Aarons. "God. This is grissley," issued Drew perplexed at how a dead body lay in their back yard all that time.
