Twenty

"Yes but Detective Jones will find the killer and bring them to justice. Right, Detective?" I ask.
Clara lifts her face to Detective Jones'. A look of pure dread spreads across his face. He looks at his hands while his weight shifts from foot to foot. "I'll find whoever is responsible."
Clara gets up and walks towards the chunks of Papa's body. She gags. She touches his foot with the tips of her shaking fingers (someone must've gloved them so she wouldn't temper with the evidence) and lifts up his big toe, officer Reed is about to take her away when Jones shakes his head.
A frown sets in Clara's forehead and she turns a puzzled but suspicious look in my direction. I follow her gaze back to the toes. Now I understand her confusion, her distrust. Papa's nails are purple, like mine.
Papa hated nail polish. He hated the colour purple even more.
She goes to his closet and paws through it.
She says: "Papa was wearing black socks this morning. He never walks barefoot, so I know he didn't take them off himself."
Jones pulls a small, red notebook out of his shirt pocket, borrows an extra pen from Reed, and begins scribbling notes. “How can you be so sure?"
"Papa only wears black socks," she says. She opens a drawer filled with socks. All black as she said. Jones nods encouragingly at her. "See? See?"
"And his nails?" Reed asks.
Clara looks at me once and I freeze. I feel my face grow cold. Desperate, I turn my face to the left wall and then towards my right to look out the door into the hallway. To anyone I seem like a boy looking through his father's bedroom. I hope Clara knows I'm begging her not to tell anyone.
"I painted them in last night while he slept," she says. "It was a stupid thing I did to him. I knew he hated purple. I do it to my twin as well." She looks at me and a faint, fake smile parts her lips. "Show them, Dan."
I do. Clara never lies. It's not something she's comfortable doing. If the police knew what to search for they'd notice the left leg shaking, the nails digging into her palm, the teeth closing in on her bottom lip. She's not comfortable.
She steps closer to the body. The eyes that have been ripped out of their sockets, the skin that has lost its dark rich colour. Instead of black as dark coffee beans, my father's lighter, like a dead autumn leaf.
“He’s cold,” she blurts out. "Pass me his sweater, Dan. You know Papa doesn't have much tolerance for the cold."
We all share puzzled looks.
“The temperature has dropped. Papa must be freezing. He needs his sweater.”
The ugly lieutenant with her large teeth, straw face, shape eyes and fake nose looks at Clara as though she's deformed. Jeffersons steatopygous.
“Clara,” I say cautiously. “Papa can’t feel anything now. He’s not in any pain. He is gone.”
With these words, she throws herself over his body and screams into the sheets. Officer Bud reaches down and tries to pull her away but she snatches her arms back violently.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she screams at him and her eyes sweep the room. She's not just telling Bud but sending a message to anyone who might be thinking of intervening.
Bud throws his hands up in the universal sign of surrender and backs away.
The room falls silent as she sobs. I don't know what to do with myself. I don't want her to scream at me, or worst yet, blurt out the truth about the nail polish with all these law enforcement here, and so I stand firmly on the spot and watch my sister fall apart.
Suddenly she looks at Jones. "His ring... Where is it?"
Reed looks at me and scribbles frantically on his notepad. The look on his face screams 'lottery'. He must've hit a jackpot. He's fighting a smile, which, if I'm being honest, is kinda creepy. There's a dead body in the bed for fucks sake!
“What ring?” Jones asks the young officers, his voice accusing.
"His toe ring. He never took it off, like ever, but he's not wearing it now." She looks at the finger and throws up on the floor. After she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, she says: "OMG, what kind of sick bustard would cut a ring off? Oh my God! Oh my God!"
“We’ll make a note of it,” Jones says. “But Clara, sweety, it’s really time to let forensics do their job.”
A few seconds later, Jones wraps his arms around her and pulls gently. This time, she lets go. Tears and snot runs down her face and she wipes it all away with the hem of her niqab.
“We need to let them do their jobs, now, Clara,” I mutter to her when Jones places her in my arms.
She turns to Jones. “How did he die?”
Hmm, his head got cut off…why would she even ask?
He looks uncomfortable, but answers after a brief hesitation. “We won’t know for sure until the ME issues his report, but it appears to be manual strangulation. I think he got shot after he was dead.”
“So he suffered, then?”
“Clara, please, please…” I say.
"How long does it take for someone to die through strangulation?"
"Daniel..." Jones says to me and indicate towards the door with his head. He's telling me I should take Clara with me. I do. She closes her eyes the second her head hits the pillow but I know she won't be getting much sleep tonight.
Back in the upstairs hallways, they spend the next two hours taking my statement, asking me to repeat the same things, over and again. I am fatigued out. Famished.
"Okay..." Bud begins but his voice catches, he clears his throat. "I think that's all for now. Thanks for your time and cooperation. Get some rest now kids, we'll see you tomorrow."
"Here's my card," Jefferson hedges "Call me, whether day or night, if you remember anything that might help with this investigation."
I nod and watch Reed fold the notepad he'd been scribbling on and walk with his partner and lieutenant out of the door.
"Kids, do you have some place else to stay in the meantime? Someone to call?"
"Yes, Aunt Dunah is just across the street. We'll go there."
***
It's 3:00am and I haven't slept a wink. I keep refreshing my news feed until the article I've been waiting for surfaces.
A business mogul’s chilling final phone call before he was murdered – allegedly by someone very close.
A man has been brutally murdered. A family is devastated. One of their own is responsible. And Detective Jones, in a heated quest for justice, is tying the noose to hang the guilty party.
SAPS spokesperson, Kim Powell (46) says the suspect is very close to the individual and will face one count of aggravated first degree murder in the death of the "Tall-Man", Zayed Addas (58).
According to sources, the father of two made a chilling call before the murder.
"Zayed called one of his (close) friends just an hour and a half before the murder and said someone (whose identity the police hope to uncover soon) had unexpectedly walked into his bedroom and that she should call emergency services if she didn't hear back in 15 minutes," Kim said. She's one of the leading detectives assigned to the Addas' grueling case.
A close family friend reports that Zayed was shot, stabbed and butchered.
According to reports, Zayed knew he wasn't safe and he "feared for his life", he told a close friend on the phone just minutes before the estimated time of death.
" He said he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, and reassured the friend that it was someone he "knew" and he wasn't in danger after all. "
He then dropped the phone with a promise to call back later. He never did.
"This is a crime of passion and he (Zayed Addas) was shot and stabbed more than ten times. The ME has confirmed the cause of death," deputy prosecutor Pamela West wrote in the findings for determination of probable cause.
The cops pronounced Zayed dead at the scene.
The Margate Police Department issued a statement in the national media that when they arrived at the crime scene it was clear the victim's body had been transfered there (Zayed's house). The crime scene yielded little (but enough) forensic evidence to compile a suspect list.
"The scene looked like a gruesome horror trailer. There was blood everywhere. The work of a psychopath."
The detectives are confident they'll make arrests soon. The twins are left in the custody of their Aunt Dahab, the world famous restauranteur.
Once the arrest has been made, detective Jones will order the killer to be held without bail. "(He) is a danger to society. Who else knows what he's capable of?"
It’s likely that the prosecutors will push for the death penalty in the case,