“Stella?”
I went back down the hallway and found her in the kitchen again, peering into the refrigerator. “We have a package of hot dogs, half a bottle of Patron tequila, about a third of a loaf of bread, white, and three cans of Diet Coke. There is no mold on the bread. It looks fresh, and the hot dogs expire next week. Considering the power is on, I would have to assume they left quickly, and they left recently. In fact, I am absolutely certain they left yesterday.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
She closed the refrigerator and pointed to the calendar attached to the door with four Pizza Hut magnets. “Because all the days leading up to today are crossed out. I’m also fairly certain they like pizza—nobody has four magnets for the same store unless they are feeding some type of compulsion on a regular basis.”
“Dunk said she moved around a lot. We must have just missed her.”
Stella leaned back against the counter. “It was kind of her to leave us food. I’m famished.”
“We can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“She left for a reason. What if they’re coming?”
“What if they’ve already been and gone? What if she’s coming back? I’ve been running for over four years, and I too have stayed in houses just like this. Everything I need can be found in my duffle. If I stayed in this house for a week, and I ran out for some reason, even just for an hour, that duffle would go with me. I’d leave this house as bare as it is right now. She might be coming back, and if we leave, we miss her entirely. For the first year after I left that house, I lived in constant fear. My life was ruled by ‘what ifs.’ Then I learned to trust my instincts, and my instincts are telling me this is a safe place, at least for one night. They’re probably still looking for us in Nevada.”
“But they might come looking for Cammie Brotherton right here.”
Stella placed a hand on her hip. “Didn’t we just discuss my thoughts on ‘what ifs?’ That sounds decidedly like a ‘what if.’”
I could tell Stella wasn’t going to budge on this, and the truth was we had nowhere else to go. We could get in our ‘borrowed’ car, point it in some random direction, and just drive, but that seemed reckless, too. We needed to rest. The adrenaline had kept me moving all day and part of the night, but now that I stopped moving, I felt the drain weighing on me. I was in no condition to drive. We could get another hotel, but hotels created paper trails, even when you pay with cash, and we didn’t need a paper trail. Hotels also cost money, and while we had some, it wasn’t an infinite supply.
“She did leave the front door unlocked,” I finally said.
Stella smiled. “She did indeed. You catch on quick, my dear Pip.”
“One night,” I relented.
“One night,” Stella agreed, rummaging through the cabinets. “If you retrieve our bags from the car, I’ll see to dinner.”
I did, but I left her the shotgun.
18
Stack pulled his favorite chair to the window overlooking his street about ten minutes after the van returned. He had been sitting there when the second van pulled up, the third too. Plain white panel vans. No markings or signage of any sort. He was fairly certain they were Chevys, but it was tough to tell from this angle. An hour earlier, he went back outside, this time holding the gun, and like before, the vans disappeared down the road before he could get close. He managed to read a partial tag on one, but didn’t call it in. What exactly would he report? Someone parking on his street? Three someones parked on his street? When he was a rookie, he fielded calls just like that and knew nobody took them seriously. Former detective or not, they’d see him as nothing but an old man wasting their time.
Beside his favorite chair, he set up his favorite rickety metal tray table. Atop the table was the remains of an Iron City six-pack. He drank two so far, and when he finished the second one, he wasted no time reaching for a third. He popped the can free from the plastic ring, opened the top, and put away three solid swallows before setting the can down. Stack knew Fogel wouldn’t approve, but Fogel wasn’t here, and he damn well needed a beer. He tried calling her three times in the past few hours, but the calls didn’t go through. He figured she turned the phone off. When he tried to dial her again about twenty minutes ago, he realized his own phone line was dead.
Stack had gone to the shitter once, but other than that, he kept eyes on the vans. Nobody got out. Nobody climbed in. If they were somehow responsible for the dead phone line, he hadn’t seen them do it. That didn’t mean they didn’t do it. It didn’t mean they did, either.
He sat in his favorite chair with eyes on the vans as the overcast Pittsburgh sky made way for night. He watched the various streetlights come to life up and down his block. He watched a few of his neighbors come home from a day’s work and disappear into their own houses. He’d seen a few kids running around. Not many, though. Most in his neighborhood had grown and went off to live their own lives a long time ago.
Stack watched the vans.
When he finished the third beer, he reached for a fourth, knowing he should be thinking about eating something but not really all that hungry.
19
When I came back in toting Stella’s duffle bag, my backpack, both copies ofGreat Expectations, and the Penn State yearbook, she had our hot dogs boiling in a pot on the stove and several candles burning around the kitchen. The princess blanket we had found in the small bedroom had been neatly folded and placed on the kitchen island, the pillow on top. I set our bags on the floor and the books on the wooden table in the kitchen, then I righted the chair that had been lying on its back when we arrived.
“I felt it best not to turn on any lights. The bedrooms and living room either face the road or the neighbors, so it’s best we avoid those rooms. The kitchen windows all look out over the backyard, which is fenced. If we stick to this part of the house, nobody should see us.” She stirred the hot dogs and nodded toward a closet on the far end of the kitchen. “I found a washer and dryer back there. I think we should take the opportunity to do our laundry while we’re here. Such conveniences aren’t always so handy.”
I had a sudden urge to smell under my armpits, but I was classy enough not to do that while she was watching. I knew my clothes were rank. I hadn’t done proper laundry in weeks. Instead, I washed my clothes in hotel sinks and strung them around the room to dry.
While I had “washed” everything when I arrived in Fallon, nothing would beat an actual machine washing.
