Virgil called Cooper, who didn’t have Andorra’s phone number. “Why are you looking for him?”
Virgil explained, and Cooper said, “Tell you what, I thought about checking on him. I drive by his place every day—I’m about two miles down the road—and there’s been this rug hanging on his clothesline for a couple of weeks now. That’s not like Glen. He’s a fussy guy, and we’ve had some rain coming through, but the rug never moved, so... I thought about checking on him.”
“I’ll check, I guess,” Virgil said. “There’s a Mustang in his garage...”
“Well, that’s his only car. Since you’re the law, I’d go look inside, if I were you.”
—
Virgil walked all the way around the house and wound up climbing the six steps of the front porch and peering through the hand-sized cut-glass windows in the door and the big window on the porch itself.
The only thing he saw that might be useful was a double-hung window on the far side of the house that appeared to be cracked open at the bottom. He walked around to check it, but the windowwas up eight feet. He went to the garage, found the door unlocked, borrowed a stepladder, walked it around to the side of the house, set it under the window, climbed up, looked inside.
The window was open, but only two or three inches. Virgil stared into what was once a dining room but was now being used as a place to watch television. The wide-screen was tuned to a game show, the cheery quizmaster joking with a group of D-list Hollywood celebrities. A man whom he assumed was Glen Andorra was lying back in an easy chair, and he had the withered, rotted look of a genuine zombie.
And Virgil could smell him in the air that wafted out through the window.
“Ah, jeez,” he said aloud. He got on the phone to the sheriff’s office, and Zimmer said he’d send a bunch of cars. “Does it look natural?”
“Hard to tell... He might have been sitting there for two weeks,” Virgil said. “There’s warm air coming out—I think the furnace is turned on.”
“Oh, boy. Sit right there, Virgie, I’ll have you two cars in ten minutes, and I’ll be out in twenty.”
Virgil went to his Tahoe, got a couple of vinyl gloves out of his equipment box, and tried the front and two side doors. The rearmost of the two rattled in its frame, and Virgil went back to his truck, got a butter knife out of his equipment box—stolen from the Holiday Inn for this very purpose—fit it into the space between the door and the jamb, and pushed back the century-old bolt on the door.
He found himself in a mudroom, as he expected. The door opened on the kitchen, and it was unlocked. When he stepped inside, the odor of decomposition was overwhelming. He went backoutside, got his jar of Vicks VapoRub from the equipment box, and jelled up his nostrils.
Back inside, he stepped carefully through the kitchen. A door to the right would lead to a stairway that would go three or four steps down to a landing, then out the other side door and down into the basement. He knew this because most old farmhouses were built like that.
Straight ahead was a narrow door that would lead to the living room; and, to his left, a two-panel door that would lead to the dining room, where Andorra lay back in his chair. A couple of Persian-style carpets were rolled up next to the basement door, and with the carpet hung from the clothesline, it suggested that Andorra may have been doing spring cleaning.
Virgil, watching every footstep, moved into the dining room. Andorra’s face was a combination of dark gray and purple skin, hanging loose. His eyelids, thankfully, hung down over whatever was left of his eyes, which Virgil didn’t want to think about.
Virgil decided that the death was not a natural one, the chief indicator being the large-caliber bullet hole at the side of Andorra’s head. An older-looking 1911 .45 semiautomatic pistol lay on the floor by the side of the chair.
The Vicks was doing its job, but Virgil gagged and stepped away, into the kitchen, got himself together again breathing through his mouth. If he blew his guts all over the place, the crime scene crew would be distinctly unhappy.
As he stood there, head down, he heard movement, and all the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up. He backed away into the mudroom, then jumped off the stoop and jogged to his truck, got his Glock out of the gun safe.
The sound he’d heard had been quiet but distinct, with thefeeling of some weight. But despite a mildly superstitious nature, he didn’t believe that Andorra was about to lurch out of the dining room. There was somebody else here.
He called Zimmer.
“I’m in my car, on the way,” Zimmer said.
“There might be somebody else in the house,” Virgil said. “Something’s moving, didn’t sound like a rat. Something bigger.”
“Oh, boy...”
“I wanted you to know. I’m gonna check... Talk to the cops coming out, tell them to take care.”
“Wait ’til they get there.”
“Ah... I’m too curious. I’m going to take a look.”
“Take your gun with you, Virgil.”
“Got it.”
