"They were absolutely vile!" Diana Rabe, the wife, covered her nose as she looked at the bed and its ruined sheets. "I made a special trip to Japan to buy these silk sheets, and now they all have to be thrown away."
They really were vile. Nick agreed on that point. If anyone dared do the same thing to his home, he certainly would not let them off easily.
"So you often leave the alarm off when you go out?" Nick looked at the husband, Frank Rabe, who was dressed like a high-powered lawyer.
"In fact, we've only used the security system a handful of times since it was installed. The thing is far too sensitive." The middle-aged man shrugged, not particularly concerned.
Diana Rabe helped explain. "After all, we live so far out of the way. We've never had anything like this happen before."
"Then was this window closed before?" Nick walked over to the bedroom window and asked with apparent casualness.
If he was not mistaken, according to Gilda, she had escaped from this second-floor master bedroom, jumping straight out of the window.
Her boyfriend Rocky, who had been following her, had been attacked by some sort of monster that appeared right afterward and had not managed to jump down with her.
"I think so?" Seeing Nick lean toward the windowsill to examine it closely, Diana Rabe sounded uncertain. "We called the police as soon as we came in and realized something was wrong. We waited until your officers arrived before coming upstairs together."
Nick held his hand against the window frame to compare. The three fresh fingernail scratches on it matched the size of an ordinary adult's hand.
He opened the window and looked down. There were clear signs of trampling in the flower bed below, and