As if sensing what was occurring, what might have already occurred, the world went silent, taking with it the birds in the trees, even the sound of the breeze whistling through the branches.
In their place was nothing but stillness, the air so heavy it had painted me in sweat, my clothes sticking to me.
When my parents died, Uncle Jep never blinked about taking me in. I had spent so much time with him already, I had my own room in the cabin I was now standing before.
Even his dog, a cantankerous old mutt that didn’t like anybody, had accepted that I was around, regarding me with an accepting detachment.
Every last thought I’d had on the drive in rushed to the fore, the good ones falling by the wayside, the bad ones filling my thoughts as I drew close.
If I walked in to find him face down at the kitchen table, keeled over the side of his bed, I wasn’t quite sure how I’d respond.
Even less if I arrived to find something far more heinous had occurred.
Stopping just short of the pair of stairs leading up onto the porch, I gave the front of the place a quick once-over, looking for anything that might lend the impression of him passing by recently.
In the driveway, there was no sign of his old truck, not even a fresh set of tracks carved into the loose dirt.
On the front porch, there wasn’t the faintest scent of tobacco in the air, not even a cigarette butt in the ashtray on the roughhewn table beneath the front window.
The sound of my steps echoed hollow as I stepped up the two stairs and walked across the front porch, a place I’d spent so much time, yet still felt completely detached from.
Right now, this wasn’t my home.
It was a place with an odd and foreboding feeling hanging over it, my core clenching as I walked past the twin Adirondack chairs we built together a decade before. Cupping a hand to my face, I peered in through the front window, hoping to catch some flash of movement, some sign that the old man was inside.
Instead, all I saw were shadows.
Retreating a step, I grasped the arm on the closest chair and lifted it a few inches. Rotating the tire iron in my hand, I ran my fingers over the bottom of the rear leg, sliding the spare key out from the groove carved into the wood.
Holding it up to the light, I could see the brass had faded, the teeth of it dull, carrying nowhere near the gleam it once had.
Meaning it likely hadn’t been used in quite some time.
With my breath held tight, I lowered the chair back into place and turned toward the front door, praying that every bad vision I’d had in the preceding eighteen hours was incorrect.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I hadn’t set foot inside the house in almost a decade, but there was an instant recognizability to everything that was undeniable. Like the most intense form of déjà vu I’d ever felt, the entire world seemed like a snapshot of a time gone by.
Like every last detail was exactly the way I remembered it, except for me.
I’d aged ten long years according to the calendar, more than that in terms of appearance and life experience, but the place around me hadn’t changed an iota.
Despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but allow a single corner of my mouth to curl up.
Exactly like Uncle Jep, for sure.
As fast as it arrived, the smile was gone, my muscles tensing as I raised the tire iron before me.
“Uncle Jep!” I called, raising my voice as loud as I dared. “Unc! You here?”
The sound reverberated off the exposed wooden floors and beams lining the ceiling, echoing through the house and back to me before being swallowed up. Moving nothing but my head, I looked over everything, searching for any sign of movement.
Any sign that he might have been by recently.
The living room was the same as the very first time I visited, a boy of no more than four or five. The left side of the room was done in red brick, a black Dutch oven stove sitting in the middle of it, pipe rising straight up before making a ninety-degree turn and exiting through the outer wall.
Resting on a ledge was the chessboard we made together, hours upon hours of entertainment represented by the multi-colored squares.
To either side were armchairs of dark green, the fabric wore threadbare on the seat and arms from years of use.
Beside each were small magazine racks, each stuffed to capacity with Western Living and Field & Stream issues dating back to God knew when.
On the floor was an oval rug, an ancient entertainment center with a box television atop it, a layer of dust as thick as my fingernail covering the screen.
To this day I had no idea if the thing even worked, having not once seen it turned on.
The sole personal touch of any kind was the pair of framed photographs sitting on the entertainment center. Matching silver filigree, one was of Uncle Jep and his wife Marilee, a woman that passed before I was even born.
The other, my parents on their wedding day, Uncle Jep between them, all three smiling, adorned in their Sunday best.
Or, as close to it as the seventies would allow.
It had been years since I’d seen that photo, one of the few remaining of my parents in general, but right now I didn’t have the time to stop and say hello to them.
Soon, but not just yet.
Instead, I worked my way across the living room and through the open passageway into the dining room, a pair of double doors on the back wall letting in sunlight. Casting a bright gleam across the varnished top of the table sitting square before it, I raised a hand to block the glare, checking the space over.
Just like with the living room, the world seemed to be locked in a state of suspension. Everything was cleaned, put where it was supposed to be, but there was no sign of life.
Not even the scent of coffee in the air, as sure an indicator as any that he hadn’t been by in quite some time.
Hooking a quick right, I could feel my heart rate continuing to rise. The combination of being inside this house, of seeing the polished remnants of a life that no longer seemed to exist, had adrenaline seeping into my system with a steady drip.
Glancing to my arms, I could see sunlight catching the rivulets of sweat tracing down from my shoulders, the taste of salt strong on my lips.
“Uncle Jep!” I called once more, moving down the back hallway. Cramped and narrow, it lasted no more than a few feet before ascending sharply, the stairs protesting with each of my steps.
One by one, I climbed them slowly, my makeshift weapon held at the ready, the screwdriver point extended, ready to be used as a prod. Turning my shoulders to try and peer up onto the second-floor landing above, I slowed my pace, drawing in air through my nose.
The upper story was at least ten degrees hotter than the one below, the pinched ceiling sealing in the heat for the house, holding it hostage in an impromptu sauna.
Flashing back, I could remember more than one summer night when that very same phenomenon had forced me out through my bedroom window, the slanted shingles of the roof serving as my bed for the evening.
With each step, the house responded in kind, small creaks and groans, an old friend’s way of welcoming me home.
Or accusing me of being too late, wanting to know where the hell I’d been for so long.
Standing inside the space, I’d be lying if I said the same thoughts weren’t occurring to me as well.
For a moment, I considered calling out again, dismissing the notion just as fast. The house was so small, there’s was no way anybody inside wouldn’t have heard me already, especially someone with as keen an ear as Uncle Jep.
Instead, I passed by the futon sitting pressed along one wall, the bookcase lined with Louis L’Amour and Ed McBain novels, the spines cracked from being read and reread over the years.
With little more than a passing glance, I peeked into the room that had at one time been my own, everything exactly as I had left it, right down to the poster of Kathy Ireland still on the wall above the bed.
&nbs
p; Thinking nothing of it, the pulsating nervousness I felt numbing my body to any sort of response, I kept my focus aimed at the second bedroom.
With the door standing open, a dark shadow extended into the space, my pace slowing as I walk toward it, tire iron at the ready. Swinging wide, I squared up to the entry, coming straight through, uncertain of what might lay inside.
Again, previous thoughts of Uncle Jep’s decaying body, of a ghastly crime scene, of Lord knows what else, all enter my mind.
Stepping over the threshold, though, I found nothing of the sort.
What I did find was much, much worse.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The sound of Sheriff Charbonneau’s voice carried out into the bullpen area of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, a small, square structure that was essentially four rooms. The edge of the building was parceled off into three smaller ones of equal sizes, one for the Sheriff, one for a kitchen, and the final for a holding cell that Talula Davis had never seen used for anything more than young men that had imbibed too much the night before.
The remainder of the space was the central bullpen, the area housing a large front desk where dispatch sat, also serving as the greeter/receptionist for the office.
The majority of the time that post was manned by Dan Tanner, a large, bulbous man with thin red hair and a thick red beard. Even when he wasn’t around – as was the case at the moment – his presence was felt, the smell of canned meats or potato chips always in the air.
Which in turn led to equal amounts of flatulence, which also hung like a heavy cloud at the entrance.
Behind the desk stretched almost the width of the building were two smaller desks, each facing a side wall, their backs to one another.
The left side went to Deputy Marc Adams, a local that had been with the department seven years. Lining the top of his desk was a menagerie of photos and drawings, all done in the colorful hand of his two young daughters.
Cute kids – and family as a whole, if Talula was pressed – but after a while it got to be too much, sugar shock setting in.
The far corner was reserved for her, a single wooden desk and chair, the top of it carrying not a single item of her own, stripped clean of any work papers before she left each night. More than once she had thought what the effect would be if she didn’t return the next morning, almost always coming back to the same conclusion.
The rest of the office would have to start doing their own shit work for a while.
“Don’t you know it!” Charbonneau called, his voice rising, full of mirth. Carrying out into the bullpen, the sound of it only made Davis tighten her grip on the ink pen in hand, pressing down hard enough on the paper she was currently filling out to almost tear a hole clean through it.
An hour earlier, the Sheriff had called and asked her to come by. Knowing it was to fill him in on the results of her canvas at Lake Edstrom, she had agreed to do as asked, ignoring the fact that the conference would not even begin until after her shift was scheduled to end.
Now that he had blown by that time by a considerable margin, almost all of it spent discussing the state of Tennessee Volunteer football loud enough for her to hear, she couldn’t help but feel her ire spiking.
Looked like a second consecutive day of double sessions in the basement gym.
“Alright, then, I should get going too,” Charbonneau boomed. “I’ve got something waiting I should finish up. I’ll talk to you later, Charley.”
Again, Davis felt her grip tighten, this time enough to make the veins on the back of her hand stand out.
“Alright, bye.”
A moment later, the sound of the phone being dropped into its cradle could be heard, followed in order by the wheeze of the springs on Charbonneau’s desk chair. One heavy step at a time, he crossed the floor, loud breaths escaping with each one until he emerged at the door.
“Hey, you ready?”
With her back turned, Davis paused a moment, her eyes and lips all three mashing into straight lines.
She had come to the office specifically for the reason of meeting with him, had been going through the motions of filling out paperwork ever since simply to give herself something to do that didn’t involve scrolling through her cell phone.
Of course she was ready.
Ready to get out of the office and home to strip out of her sweaty uniform.
“Absolutely,” Davis said, grabbing up the spiral bound notebook from the desk beside her as she rose. Turning to face the man, all she caught was his back as he retreated into his office, saying nothing as he went.
Turning her head to the side, Davis pushed a silent obscenity out through gritted teeth, picking her way past Adams’s desk and into the Sheriff’s office.
Almost as large as the bullpen, most of it could easily be classified as wasted space, a full-size sofa and mini fridge taking up one whole side. In the corner, the newest in window air conditioners pushed frosted air into the room, the space significantly cooler than the rest of the building.
“So,” Charbonneau said, dropping himself unceremoniously in his seat, the chair sliding a few inches beneath his bulk, “what’d you find today?”
Settling herself onto the straight back wooden chair across from him – far and away the most uncomfortable seating option in the room – Davis didn’t bother flipping open her notebook.
“The long and short of it is, nobody saw anything,” Davis opened. “It being a Monday night, a lot of the cabins weren’t rented, meaning there weren’t that many people around. Of those that were, most were pretty intent on whatever they had going at the time.”
She didn’t bother explaining further, having no need to rehash the trio of meetings she’d had after the Rileys, almost all being some form of the same.
They were drunk, or otherwise incapacitated, intent only on their own defilement.
An a-bomb could have hit right in the middle of the lake and it was doubtful they would have noticed.
“Hmm,” Charbonneau said, leaning back so as to raise his feet to the desk, crossing them at the ankle. “And the witness? The woman that found him...”
“Peg Bannister.”
“Yeah, her,” he said, extending a finger her direction, “what did she have to say?”
“Outside of a whole lot of wistfulness about the past and the way things used to be up there?” Davis began. “Not much that was useful. She didn’t know the victim or the owners of the cabin, just happened to be walking her dog yesterday and spotted the blood.”
She opted to leave out any mention of Adams, or Bannister’s attempts at setting Davis up with him.
Already she knew she was the subject of rampant office speculation. No need to add any more kindling to that fire.
“I see,” Charbonneau said. Folding his arms over his stomach, he sucked at his teeth, a noxious sound filling the room as he stared at the ceiling, processing the information.
Across from him, Davis tried not to think about what might be lurking between his molars, having to stare at his mustache every day already bad enough.
“And the ME?” he asked.
“The ME?” Davis replied, her brows coming together. “What about her?”
Shifting his focus to stare at her, Charbonneau’s eyes bulged slightly. “You mean, you haven’t spoken to the damn medical examiner yet?”
Narrowing her eyes in response, Davis felt a stab of something pass through her, confusion coloring her features. “The medical examiner? No, why would I? You told me to canvas the neighborhood.”
“No,” Charbonneau replied, “I told you to work the case. I assumed that meant you’d be smart enough to go and talk to the damn ME covering it.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Earlier in the day, Deputy Marshal Abby Lipski had anticipated a full afternoon agenda. After arriving a bit late from putting her kids on the school bus, having spent most of the day out of the office the day before checking in on her local cases, she needed the time at her desk to cle
an some stuff up.
Lingering paperwork, research for a possible incoming assignment, the sort of work that never seemed to abate for a person in her position.
With the arrival of Marshal Burrows hours earlier, all of that had gotten shot to pieces, a change of direction so abrupt she hadn’t even bothered to finish eating, the remains of her salad now sitting on her desk, no doubt wilted and well beyond edible.
“Okay, people, what have we got here?”
Standing at the front of the small conference room in the rear of the Portland U.S. Marshals field office, Lipski paced back and forth. Gone was her suit jacket, her shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow.
Also gone was any chance of picking her kids up from daycare or of making dinner, her husband having been alerted hours before that he was on his own for the night.
Which meant the rest of her family would soon be grouping up for Pizza Hut and Pixar without her.
In front of her, a polished wood table was extended almost a dozen feet in length, the emblem for the U.S. Marshals stamped upon it.
Filling no more than half of the available chairs sat a small cadre of colleagues, Burrows the only one that could be considered anything close to senior, the remainder so new they still had their spots.
Given recent budget cuts and growing demands, it was the best she could hope for, especially on short notice.
When nobody feigned to respond to her question, Lipski stopped her pacing and turned, pressing the front edge of the table flush against her thighs.
“Come on! I asked, what have we got here people?!”
At the volume and tenor of her question, the room seemed to snap into focus, a pair of the youngest Marshals on the far end visibly flinching.
“We have the phone call,” Burrows ventured, kicking things off. “It was made at eight p.m. Same as always.”
“Right,” Lipski said, letting a glare linger on the back end of the table for a moment before beginning her pacing anew.
New or not, this was no time for them to be acting like it.
“Lasted just twenty-nine seconds,” Alan Grossman said from the opposite side of the table, the analyst that had first flagged the conversation. Wearing khaki chinos and a pale yellow dress shirt, his face seemed to bear the same sallow color, his entire being an exercise in monochrome.
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