Free the 13th Hour by Richard Doetsch

what he would see.
    M ARCUS SAT ON his front steps, his heart breaking, as he stared over at Nick's home. He watched his friend walk up and down his driveway after spending over a half hour in the house. Seeming to wander aimlessly, looking about the neighborhood as if he would happen upon Julia's killer, Nick looked to be chasing ghosts.
There had been an odd look to Nick's eyes when he had rejoined him on the front steps after calling the police. While they looked sad and troubled, they were not filled with the agony he had first seen when he found him sitting with her. There was such heart-rending grief in his face, such an inhuman cry of pain in his voice when he found Nick huddled with Julia's body. It was a sight that Marcus would never shake, a sight that would invade his thoughts till he passed from this earth.
But as Nick walked away from Marcus, heading toward his house, insisting on investigating a murder he could not possibly solve, Marcus's concern for his friend shifted.
There was something in Nick's eyes, something he couldn't identify, it almost appeared to be hope, an emotion completely contrary to a moment in which one's future had been lost, in which the woman one loved had been so violently snatched from among the living.
To Marcus there was only one explanation, only one thing that would cause all the agony to vanish from his eyes.
As he watched Nick step through his garage, on a course to see Julia's shattered body, he knew Nick was no longer in possession of his judgment.
Nick's mind had retreated to a false reality,
Nick's sanity had slipped away.
    N ICK WALKED THROUGH the door from the garage and entered the mudroom. Whitewashed wainscoting covered the walls, and the floor was of earth-toned Spanish terra-cotta tile. The room was designed with nooks for shoes, racks for coats, and storage closets, all in wait for their family yet to come. They had debated family size since the day they fell in love: Nick wanted two boys and girl, Julia preferred a Brady Bunch mix of three boys, three girls.
As part of their life-planning playbook, they had both gone to the doctor a year earlier to confirm there would be no unseen hurdles to Julia's getting pregnant when the time came. The doctor had actually laughed at the preciseness of their approach to life, telling them not to worry, that their reproductive systems wouldn't fail them. He assured them that when they were ready, if they knew what they were doing, and practiced enough, they would be pregnant in no time.
As Nick stepped around the corner, he saw Julia's Tory Burch shoe protruding at the bottom of the rear stairs. Slowly approaching, he ran his eyes up along her long, lithe leg, up past the black skirt she had worn to work that morning. As he moved closer, his eyes continued their slow travel up her body along the white shirt that was no longer white. The front was flecked with red, as if she had been caught in a rainstorm of blood, the shoulders were crimson, the silk blouse having wicked blood from the puddle of blood she was lying in. Nick stared at the red halo that circled Julia. He had never imagined there was that much blood in a body.
But his eyes halted at her shoulders, his vision mercifully obscured by the lowest step. Nick avoided her face; he couldn't bear to look at what was left of his wife, of the person that was his better half. As shallow as it sounded, he couldn't help thinking that when you destroyed the face you destroyed the person, robbing her of her identity, of her true self. He kept his head tilted down, averting his eyes as he scanned the ground looking for something, anything that would provide a clue to who committed this violation, this act of horror.
He was fighting his emotions, trying desperately to dissociate himself from the moment, trying to keep his mind from collapsing, trying to look at the room, at "the body," with an analytical eye.
Julia's purse lay wide open on the floor next to her, its contents strewn about