Stella stepped into the foyer, and I grabbed her shoulder.
“We need the gun,” I said softly.
She nodded and waited as I ran back to the car and retrieved the shotgun and my jacket from the trunk. I held the gun lengthwise against my body as I ran back, concealing it as best I could beneath the coat from the eyes of nosy neighbors.
At the door, I stepped past Stella into the house, leveling the weapon.
Between the moon and the streetlights, the interior slept in muted gloom. From the sparse furniture in the living room and adjoining kitchen, long, veiled shadows stretched across the floor.
A small wooden dining table filled a breakfast nook in the back. Three of the chairs were pushed under. The fourth was lying on its back on the floor. The kitchen counters were bare. About half the cabinet doors stood open, drawers too. Most looked empty.
In the living room, a battered old couch with threadbare cushions hugged the wall. It had a musty smell, unused, a place for dust to gather as life happened somewhere else. No television in the room, no other chairs or tables, no pictures on the walls.
Beyond the living room was a narrow hallway, darker than the rest of the house, the light from outside pausing at the threshold, unwilling to go further.
Stella followed close behind me as I stepped into the hallway, the barrel of the shotgun leading us.
On our left, we found a small bedroom painted a cheery pink. A ruffled Disney princess blanket and pillow sat rumpled in a heap in the far corner. There was no furniture. Several empty hangers hung in the closet, no clothes.
“Look,” Stella said quietly. A barbie doll watched us from a shelf at the top of the closet, one arm outstretched, the other at her side, her blond hair flayed about.
I reached up and took it down. I expected it to be covered in dust, but it wasn’t. It hadn’t been up there long.
Stella took the doll from me, and we returned to the hallway.
The bedroom across the hall was a little larger than the first but just as empty. A couple scraps of discarded paper were on the floor. I knelt down and studied the carpet, looking for the telltale indents of a former bed, maybe a dresser, but found nothing. If someone had slept here, they did so without a bed.
Stella was back in the hallway, her eyes fixed on the closed door at the end.
It had to be a bathroom.
My mind brought back the image of Cammie Brotherton’s lifeless body.
So many things could go wrong in a bathroom.
16
Former detective Terrance Stack, just Terry now, kept his old service pistol under the center cushion of the green velour couch in his living room, the one he bought back in 1973. The couch was so uncomfortable, he didn’t have to worry about anyone sitting on the ratty mess and discovering the gun. Children weren’t a worry, either. The last child who set foot in his house was now married with three kids of his own. He had no reason to store the gun out of reach and always felt there were many reasons to store the weapon within reach. At eighty-two years old,within reachbecame a theme in Stack’s life. He reached under the cushion and plucked out the gun.
The magnum in hand, he went back to the window.
The white van hadn’t moved.
“What the hell are you up to,” he muttered aloud.
Stack slid the gun into the front of his pants under his belt—he didn’t give a damn who saw it—and went out his front door and down the steps. He was halfway to the van when it started up and rolled down the street just fast enough to remain out of reach.
17
Stella remained still as I stepped past her, my grip tightening on the shotgun as I reached for the bathroom doorknob. I counted down from three, mouthing the words for my benefit as much as Stella’s, before twisting the handle and slamming the door open into the room.
The walls of the small bathroom were pink tile. The toilet, sink, and bathtub were pink, too. Probably original to the house back in the sixties. Like the kitchen, the drawers and two doors of the vanity were open and empty. One drawer held several elastic hair ties and a half-empty tube of toothpaste. The shower curtain slid to the side, the room empty.
I lowered the shotgun, pointing the barrel at the floor. “I can’t tell if someone left here in a hurry or never really moved in. I’ve squatted in abandoned houses before. They looked just like this. But this place feels like someone just left, like we just missed them.”
When Stella didn’t answer me, I turned.
She was no longer there.
