I twisted the wheel to the left, maneuvered the Mercedes into the opposite lane, and floored the accelerator. I stayed in the wrong lane long after we passed the semi. It wasn’t until a oncoming car approached us that I finally swerved back, the speedometer buried at that point.
14
Former detective Terrance Stack, just Terry now, went back to the living room window overlooking his front stoop and yard.
The white van was still sitting there.
He wasn’t exactly sure when it first arrived, but it had been out there for the better part of the day.
Just sitting there.
If anybody got out, he hadn’t seen them. Nobody got in, either. No movement at all.
Just sitting there.
15
The sky had grown dark by the time we finally pulled into Carmel, California, the stillness in the night sky rivaled only by the silence between Stella and me. Not a single word had been uttered between the two of us in more than an hour. Every time I looked over at her, I found myself checking the color of her skin, searching for a tremble in one of her hands or arms, waiting for that sheen of sweat to return. Thankfully, none of those things happened, but a voice in the back of my head reminded me that they would, in time all those things would happen again. Time could only be borrowed. Stella continued to stare out the window, lost in her own thoughts, her gaze fixed on some far-off object. Several times, she returned to the book, but even the words of Charles Dickens proved unable to soothe her. She had closed the cover and returned to her window, to that distant nothingness that so captured her attention.
Located on California’s Monterey Peninsula, the city of Carmel wasn’t large. TheWelcome to Carmel!sign posted off CA-1 boasted a population of a little over three thousand residents.
At the last gas stop, I had consulted a map and written down directions.
CA-1 made way for Ocean Avenue. We followed it along the coast for about two miles before taking a series of side roads that brought us deeper inland. We found Windmore Road with little trouble and followed it around a series of winding bends in search of 803. Most of the houses were small two or three-bedroom Spanish bungalows with carefully manicured lawns and gardens. Colorful bougainvillea bushes edged sidewalks and driveways. Well-aged Monterey pines, cypresses, and live oaks soared overhead, creating a canopy over the road.
“This is a beautiful street,” Stella said softly, the first to break the silence.
“There it is,” I said. “Up on the right.”
The house was humble—two bedrooms, maybe three. A brick bungalow with a gray asphalt shingle roof and neatly kept flower beds below the front windows. No car in the driveway, no lights on inside.
“It doesn’t look like anybody is home.”
“Or they prefer sitting in the dark,” Stella said.
I pulled the Mercedes to a stop in front of the neatly manicured lawn and switched off the ignition. “Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll check it out.”
Stella opened her door, got out, and started up the short sidewalk.
“Or we both go,” I muttered, snapping off my seat belt and following after her.
The temperature had dropped with the sun, the air taking on a crisp, cool feel. I thought about my jacket in the trunk of the Mercedes. I thought about the shotgun I had wrapped in that jacket.
Stella was at the front door, peering into a side window. “I don’t see anything.”
I knocked.
No answer.
I knocked again, louder this time.
When there was still no answer, Stella reached for the doorknob. The front door wasn’t locked. She twisted the knob and gave it a gentle push. The door swung inward over the tile floor of a small foyer. “Hello?”
Something about the way her single word echoed through the rooms told me the house was empty. Then I had a second thought. My mind conjured the image of Cammie Brotherton, dead in the bathroom or the kitchen or the bedroom of some horrible self-inflicted wound, her eyes blank, her lips permanently fixed in some grotesque smile.
Welcome to my home!
The house not empty at all, but a tomb.
