Still, I ducked into one of the alcoves across from a door to calm my nerves, the cranny itself a form of ghost, marking a basement to a home that had never been built. What a grand design it would have been, above and below, if Pandolfo’s dream had come to pass. But it wasn’t meant to be. Saint Cloud was a granite city, earthbound, heavy. It wasn’t built for flying too high.
I counted to one hundred in that alcove as my heartbeat calmed.
The laughter didn’t return. Pantown was asleep.
I started again, stopping at two different doors, Ant’s and the Pitts’, nestling my ear against them, reassuring myself no one would pop out. Then I kept toward the basement that I was sure belonged to Sheriff Nillson. The air was thicker on that end, muddier. The darkness swallowed my light, gulping its way toward me, so I dropped the yellow circle to the ground, concentrating it, and counted doors until I reached the one Junie had opened.
Pandora’s door.
But that wasn’t fair. Pandora had released evils into the world. We hadn’t set anything free. We’d just accidentally witnessed what was already there. My hand went to my chest, patting where the patch readingTAFThad been. I could almost see the strobe lights cutting across it, spotlighting the name.
But Sheriff Nillson hadn’t come for Brenda Taft.
Only for Maureen.
I rested my head below the signaturePinlaid in the heavy wood door and heard silence so deep it had its own sound, ancient like the ocean. Was I really going to do this? Break into someone’s home? I moved the flashlight to my left hand so I could grip the skeleton key with my right. I’d let it decide. If it opened the door, I’d walk in. If it didn’t, well, I’d find another way to get inside. Beg Dad to bring me to another party, or drop by with cookies and ask to use the bathroom, or crawl through a window, or ...
It worked.
The key slid in, turned, released the lock with asnick.
It worked.
I twisted the knob, the back of my neck dancing, my arm hairs standing on end.
When the door opened, a smell of a home washed over me. Liver and onions, coffee, acrid cigars, human musk. Everything inside me went still and my focus narrowed to a point. I stepped into the paneled basement. I closed the door behind me and leaned against it. My eyes adjusted to the gloom and objects came into focus: a sofa, a gun cabinet, a floor-model television crouching like a massive bulldog, a record player with a stack of albums next to it. The far wall, where the men had been lined up, held shelves that had been hidden by their bodies.
My throat tightened. They’d used Maureen up.
For the first time, I considered that it might have been suicide, but even if it was, the owner of this house bore some responsibility. Maureen had been a girl. I homed in on a framed photo, eight by ten, resting on top of the crouching television. I flicked on my flashlight, praying it was a personal photo, not art.
I found myself staring at a grim Jerome Nillson.
CHAPTER 33
It was his official sheriff’s photo, the same one that hung inside the courthouse. Had it been displayed that night, or did he have the decency to put it away before he molested my friend? I shook with the shame and anger of it because that’s what it had been: molesting. Maureen was—was—only sixteen.
I drew in deep breaths to steady myself and flashed my light around the room. My dad had taught me that there were types of criminals, and that’s exactly what Sheriff Nillson was. A criminal. He was the kind with an ego, that’s what my dad would have said if he knew that the sheriff displayed his own photo. Criminals with egos were easiest to catch because they thought they were unstoppable.
So they made lazy mistakes.
I would discover Nillson’s, and I would bring it to my dad, evidence of what Nillson had done to Maureen, or at least proof she’d been here.
Then my dad would have to believe me.
One ear cocked to the floor above, I began to comb every inch of the den. I searched inside record sleeves, peeked in the corners of shelves, lifted the couch cushions and jammed my hands in the cracks, even opened up Sheriff Nillson’s picture frame to see if he’d hidden something behind the matting.
Nothing.
I checked the basement door to make sure it hadn’t locked behind me in case I needed to make a quick getaway, then tiptoed to the utility room. It was that or go upstairs, something I wasn’t willing to do, not when Nillson was home, which I assumed he was.
His utility room contained a water softener, a water heater, and a furnace, just like ours. It also held two stacks of bankers boxes, a dozen total. None of them were labeled. Glancing at the door I’d left open and then toward the dark stairs—I could reach the tunnel in three seconds, had my escape route mapped out from there—I slid the top one off.
Christmas decorations.
Made me wonder why Sheriff Nillson wasn’t married. Had he been? Was he divorced or widowed? Beneath that box was another containing mailing supplies. The next four held files, the kind Dad brought directly to his home office, the one place in our house that Junie and I were forbidden to enter. I flipped through the files, didn’t recognize any names, and stacked their boxes back the way I’d found them.
A scratch overhead turned my bones to gravy. I strained to listen, eyes flashing between the door and the stairs, the door and the stairs, the door and the stairs.
