Alex Discovers Zoghbie and Haiselden's Bodies

Alex Delaware’s visit to Alice Zoghbie’s home in Glendale becomes the discovery of two bodies: Alice and Roy Haiselden are tied to a tree in her backyard. The quiet, carefully tended property gives way to a scene of concealed violence, and Alex’s retreat leaves him not only with the knowledge of the killings but with his fingerprints on the gate. Later investigative movement toward a remote cabin gives the discovery a further, unsettling resonance: the investigators notice a resemblance between its trees and the tree where the bodies were displayed, while treating the suggestion of deliberate symmetry as an inference rather than proof.

The Visit to Alice Zoghbie’s Home

Alex reaches the house in the morning after a thirty-five-minute drive to Glendale. In the daylight, it appears even more charming than before: bright flower beds, a copper rooster weather vane, and the same white Audi in the cobblestone driveway, its windshield dusty. The street has a little more life than the near-silence around the property; an old man sweeps his porch, and a young couple pulls out of a carport. These ordinary signs of neighborhood activity do not, however, produce an answer from the house.

Alex knocks first with the goat’s-head knocker, then tries again with more force. When nobody responds, he passes the Audi and tests a green wooden gate. Bees and butterflies move among the flowers, but calling out brings no reply. The gate is latched, not locked, and he opens it to follow a cobblestone path beneath an old sycamore to the kitchen door. Through its four panes he sees lights on, dishes in the sink, milk, and half an orange on the counter; the fruit is slightly withered. The house looks inhabited in its details yet offers no sign of anyone present. He knocks again, then moves along the side of the house, looking through windows and listening. Only the buzz outside answers him.

Discovery in the Backyard

The backyard is small and landscaped for privacy. Italian cypress hedges screen two sides from the neighbors, a tall wooden fence closes the rear, and Victorian lawn furniture stands among flower beds suited to shade. A second, larger sycamore darkens the yard, its stout branches supporting a macramé hammock. Against its trunk, Alex sees two people propped upright.

The sound he had taken for bees is now louder, and he recognizes it as a storm of flies. Alice Zoghbie and Roy Haiselden are tied to the tree with thick rope, fastened tightly at chest level and around the waist. The hemp is crusted maroon, brown, and black. The placement makes the bodies impossible to mistake for people merely resting beneath the tree: they have been secured there and left in view within the screened backyard. The scene gives no account, in these details, of how either person died or who bound them. Its visible facts are stark enough: two people, the same tree, and rope marked by dark stains.

A bluebottle fly lands on Alice’s left breast, crawls over it, pauses, and lifts away toward Alex. He backs off. The small movement turns his attention from the bodies to his own position in the scene: he knows his prints are on the gate handle and expects that someone will soon want to speak with him. He leaves the gate open, retraces his path past the Audi, and reaches the curb. The old man has gone inside; the street has returned to stillness. In the Seville, Alex breathes. His immediate response is not to investigate further in the yard but to withdraw from it, aware that his visit has made him a potential witness whose contact with the gate is already part of the evidence.

From Discovery to Investigation

The later investigation carries the consequences of the discovery beyond Alice’s property. Milo Sturgis meets Alex below the earlier murder site, and they drive east before turning north into the Valley. Milo explains that he obtained an address through the DMV: no vehicle is listed to Ulrich, but Tanya Stratton owns a two-year-old Saturn and has an address in Sherman Oaks. The address is two blocks farther east than expected. This information leads the investigators toward a remote cabin, not to an immediate explanation of the killings.

At the cabin approach, they find an empty mailbox and continue on foot along a dirt track winding through dense vegetation. Milo advises against announcing their arrival and suggests watching the cabin first. They walk about a thousand feet before the gray clapboard building becomes visible through pine, gum, and sycamore trees. Alex notices that the old, twisted sycamores resemble the one at which Alice and Roy were propped. He considers whether Ulrich, also known as Burke, noticed the resemblance and would have valued its symmetry and irony. That thought links the discovery to the next stage of the inquiry as a possible pattern in the killer’s staging, but the scene presents it as Alex’s suspicion, not a confirmed finding.

Significance of the Discovery

The event changes the visit from an unsuccessful attempt to reach Alice into a direct encounter with the consequences of violence. The house’s lights, dishes, milk, and partly eaten orange give the empty interior the texture of interrupted ordinary life; outside, the privacy of the landscaped yard has helped conceal the bodies from the neighboring street. The contrast is sharpened by Alex’s measured search: he knocks, looks through the kitchen door, checks the side of the house, and only then enters the backyard. The discovery emerges through a sequence of ordinary approaches and unanswered signals rather than an announced confrontation.

The scene also establishes a physical connection between Alice and Roy without explaining their deaths or proving who killed them. Their shared position against one tree is an observable fact; the later resemblance between that tree and the cabin’s sycamores invites comparison but remains interpretation. Alex’s fingerprints on the gate supply a separate consequence: even as he leaves the scene, the circumstances of his discovery may draw police scrutiny. The paired bodies, the fly, and the open gate make the moment both a revelation and a threshold, sending the investigation onward while leaving the central questions of motive and responsibility unresolved.