The Dead of Night

by Jean Rabe

  “I’m sure North Carolina has people like—”

  “No. Nowhere else in the world has someone like that… like that… like that effin’ old woman.” JJ pointed to her Ford and Piper counted eight holes, plus assorted dents, all from shotgun pellets. “She’s in her house, watching us from that window. If I make a move toward the driveway, she shoots. She’s got a shotgun, I’m thinking ten gauge. How the hell can she lift it? She’s little. And old. Almost hit me. Look what she did to her own mailbox. Shot it, and I damn well know that was an accident. Hell, she probably can’t see well enough to aim right.”

  But with a shotgun, Piper knew the pellets spread, and you didn’t have to be all that great of a marksman to hit something.

  “Old doesn’t necessarily mean weak,” Piper said.

  “I came out here, just to talk, just like you told me to.” JJ made a huffing sound. “Except I saw two more busted mailboxes, and Cooper Henderson—he’s the big guy in the wolf shirt you were talking to down there—stopped me and said she’d just zoomed past and deliberately took out his. So I figured I’d arrest her. Do more than talk.”

  “When did she start shooting? After you said you were arresting her?” Piper peered at the kitchen window. Gretchen’s face was half-hidden by a gauzy curtain.

  “I didn’t get that far. Didn’t say a word, didn’t get a chance. I pulled in her driveway, got out, and she opened the front door and hollered ‘you’re not taking my babies.’ Then she blasted the passenger side. I jumped in, backed it out here, and used the PA. I told her to come out and drop the gun. Hell, Piper, she shot again. We’re out of her range here, I’m pretty sure. I called Sylvia D, and you got over here a lot faster than I expected.”

  “I was nearby.”

  “Thank God for that. I’m surprised she’s not stormed out here to shoot us.”

  “Maybe she’s out of ammunition.”

  “Fat chance.” JJ glared at the house and ground the ball of her foot against the road. “We can’t shoot her. We can’t. She’s eighty-two. It’d be like offing my grandma. And with that gun, I can’t get close enough to taze her. I’m pretty sure no one else is in there with her. Henderson told me she lives alone.”

  “How’d Diego arrest her the other day?” Piper hadn’t read his report yet. She’d been too obsessed with the old case files.

  JJ snorted. “He saw her pulling weeds around those big tires. She came over to him half-friendly. He cuffed her and brought her in, said she screamed the whole way. Diego told me the story twice, said he’s gonna put it in a book he’s writing. I had no clue she had a shotgun. We should have kept her locked up.”

  “Couldn’t. She made bail.” Piper studied the house. It was an older brick ranch, small, probably two bedrooms, a single attached garage, the door down. A deep flowerbed stretched all across the front and around the side to meet a row of hedges. Three more flowerbeds were close to the road, in massive truck tires. The place looked pretty and well-maintained.

  “She won’t be able to make bail after this, I’m betting. That’s assault with a deadly weapon,” JJ fumed.

  There was a big picture window, but the curtains were drawn. The only open curtain was the one Gretchen stared out of. No window wells that Piper could see, so maybe it didn’t have a basement, maybe there was a crawlspace. There were no neighborhood gawkers out, probably all at work—hopefully at work, Piper thought. Or perhaps they were afraid of Gretchen and were all inside with their doors locked.

  “How do you want this handled, boss?”

  “Peacefully,” Piper said. “Stay here.” She went to the back of the Hyundai, popped the hatch and reached for her vest and strapped it on. “And put your vest on, JJ. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” Piper recalled a domestic disturbance she’d handled at Fort Campbell, an armed soldier holding his wife hostage. She and her partner talked the man down and he got the psychiatric help he needed. She figured Gretchen needed help, too.

  Piper edged away from the car, hands out to her sides, and slowly crossed the road and stood at the end of the driveway. She saw that JJ was fastening her vest and grumbling about it.

  “So far, so good. Let’s see how close I can get.”

  Piper took a few more steps and noticed Gretchen had the window open several inches, the gun barrel propped on the sill. It would give her a steady aim. “Gretchen! I’m Sheriff Blackwell. I just want to talk to you. Can we do that? Just talk?” A few more steps. The driveway was short, and she was halfway to the house now, close enough to smell the flowers in the beds—daffodils, tulips, pansies, and petunias—a riot of color that stood out against the blonde brick. The rains had brought a profusion of flowers early to Spencer County. There was a hint of something foul, too, like a dead animal was rotting in one of the beds. “Can I come in and—”

  “Nooooooooo!” the woman shrieked in a voice that Piper thought might shatter glass. “Nooooooooooo!” Then Gretchen fired, barely missing Piper, but striking so close her sheriff’s hat sailed away with the shotgun pellets. Piper hurriedly backed up.

  “Gretchen! You need to put the gun down!” Piper called. “Put the gun down now!”

  “Nooooooooo!” Another blast, this time at Piper’s feet, the pellets striking the concrete and chipping it. She made it back to JJ, pretty sure that her detective was right and they were out of the gun’s effective range.

  “So how do you want this handled, boss?” JJ repeated. “Should I call for more backup?”

  Piper shook her head, her obduracy holding. “I’ll take the road north of this and go on foot, cut through the neighbor’s, get to Gretchen’s backyard.” She pointed to the radio on JJ’s belt. “I’ll call if I need a distraction, if I need you to make some noise. I’m hoping I can get in the back without her seeing me. Maybe if she’s got a crawlspace, I can get in that way. Or maybe through a garage door. I want to check it out.”

  “I am not going to miss this effin’ county,” JJ hissed. “But I will miss you.”

  Piper got in her Hyundai and drove away.

  20

  Twenty

  A handful of minutes later Piper was parked on the street behind Gretchen’s property. She called Sylvia D. “Check county records. See if Gretchen has any kids or grandkids in the area. Get a list with phone numbers.” Then she called JJ. “She still at the window? Good. Hold tight until I radio you again.”

  Piper worked her way around a pale green saltbox with a six-foot high wood fence in its backyard. She skirted the fence and kept to the corner, studying the back of Gretchen’s. Where the front had looked like it could appear in Better Homes & Gardens, everything seeming immaculate, the back was a mess. The grass was cut, likely courtesy of the riding lawnmower under a metal canopy.

  No wonder the people behind Gretchen had built a six-foot fence to block the view. There were crooked stacks of plastic milk crates of various colors, all bleached by the sun, rusted wire cages the size for rabbits, mounds of tires and hubcaps, coils of discarded rubber hoses that looked split from seasons of freezing and thawing, broken birdbaths, and piles of things that amounted to garbage in her estimation. All of this was directly in the back of Gretchen’s house and so likely not visible from the road in front, a big garden shed blocking the view from one side, and a hedge blocking the view from the other.

  “She needs help,” Piper whispered. “Lots of help.” No sane person would keep all this junk—and destroy the neighbors’ mailboxes. Fortunately, the detritus provided hiding spots as she scurried closer, pausing behind a stack of milk crates to radio JJ.

  “She’s still at the window, boss.”

  “I don’t see any window wells.” But Piper thought they could be concealed by the assortment of debris. Stacks of milk crates blocked the backdoor to the garage. She moved closer and perched next to a mound of tires of various sizes, the tread looking bare. “No. No basement. Can’t tell if there’s a crawlspace, at least not one with an outside access. I’m going to try the backdoor, probably opens to
a kitchen. Give me a little distraction, wave at her or something.”

  Piper heard a shotgun blast and raced to the backdoor, plastering herself up against the wall next to it. The screen door hung crooked, but the wood door beyond, though the paint was chipped so badly it looked like dried fish scales, appeared solid. Something smelled awful and sour, and she couldn’t identify the reek, maybe just the jumbles of refuse in the backyard. But when she eased open the screen, stood on the step and reached for the knob of the wood door, the stench seemed to intensify.

  Something inside the house smelled dreadful, the odor seeping out under a crack at the bottom of the door. Was there a corpse rotting inside? Maybe a couple of them?

  “You get!” Piper heard Gretchen screech, the thin voice carrying around to the back. “I’ll put holes in you!”

  Piper tested the knob—it turned. The backdoor wasn’t locked.

  When another shotgun blast sounded, Piper twisted the knob, nudged open the door, slipped inside, and doubled over. The stink was overwhelming, and her eyes teared. She fought against the nausea and stood, holding the door for support. She left it open, hoping fresh air might filter in and help. But after a moment, she wasn’t sure anything would improve things.

  She padded into a kitchen, shadowed because the shades were drawn, diffuse light filtering in through the material. The kitchen table was stacked with cat food boxes and cans and litter sacks, more under the table. The counters were covered with dishes, some of which cats were eating out of. There were more cats on the floor, kittens playing. Some of them looked ill and malnourished; some were missing patches of fur. There were litter boxes against a wall, but they were overflowing, and feces was scattered across a laminate floor that was stained, the planks bowed from being soaked with too much urine—that odor strongly identified itself. Piper felt the coffee she’d downed earlier rising in her throat. A green garbage bag in the corner had a couple of dead cats in it. She could tell by the outlines.

  Gretchen needed a lot of help.

  How could this situation have gone undetected? Hadn’t the neighbors noticed something wrong? Clearly Diego hadn’t gotten a look inside. Hadn’t anybody seen this? Piper immediately tamped that thought down. Of course someone knew something was wrong—she was running over mailboxes every few months, and the victims were howling about it. Why hadn’t someone done something?

  None of that mattered, she thought. She was going to do something about it. Fix it.

  A skinny white cat rubbed against her leg, a fat gray striped one with matted eyes followed. Not all of them were underfed. She counted two dozen cats, in addition to a moving mass of kittens of all colors, but she knew there were more. Piper could hear them meowing from another room.

  Some of the cats were agitated. One spit and hissed, ears down. Another’s ears were flat, pointing backwards. One with no hair—Piper hoped it was one of the hairless varieties, like a sphinx—arched its back, and she swore it was growling. A fluffy charcoal gray on the kitchen table had puffed itself and the tail was sticking straight up.

  Not only was Gretchen a Mailbox Mauler, she was a cat hoarder. Maybe a hoarder of a lot of things. Vases in the window held flowers that had dried a long time ago.

  Piper breathed as shallowly as possible, but that didn’t cut the pong. As she crept forward, she clung to the stove, then the refrigerator—a massive double-door one that maybe held a massive amount of milk. She was careful not to brush against the plethora of refrigerator magnets that held coupons that at a glance she saw had expired a few years prior. On top of the fridge were two open boxes that had envelopes and cards piled inside and reaching to the ceiling. A cat peered out between them. Across from her the sink was filled with clean dishes on one side, dirty on the other, with two cats busy licking at the latter. The floor creaked as she went, and she feared Gretchen might hear her. Piper knew she should have some sort of mask. The air was toxic and making her sick to her stomach, her eyes watering worse now. But she wasn’t going to leave and come back with the proper gear. She was going to take Gretchen out of here now.

  “I told you to get!” Piper guessed Gretchen was in the room just beyond this doorway. “I’ll put holes in you! I’m warning you!” It sounded like she was getting hoarse. “First they send the spic, and then they send a skinny shit woman. I’ll shoot you! Get on outta here!”

  Piper stretched her fingers down to her hip, felt the gun, and almost unsnapped the holster to pull it. She sucked in her lower lip. Her MP training dictated she draw her gun. Everything she’d ever studied screamed that she should draw her gun. But if she did that, she had to be prepared to use it—and that wasn’t going to happen. No way in hell would she shoot this old woman.

  Tackle her? That was the plan. Carefully tackle so as not to break her bones.

  She glided forward until she reached the doorway, feeling a cat snake around her calves to rub its head. She looked down and saw bugs scurrying across the floor. Another step and she was beyond the kitchen. Gretchen was at the dining room window, a dozen feet away, the shotgun cocked and barrel resting on the pane. She was small, the floral housedress ballooning around her and making her seem even tinier. Gray hair as fine as spider webs stirred in the faint breeze coming in through the open window. A scrawny black cat sat on the sill and looked out.

  Tears spilled down Piper’s face and she blinked. Her eyes burned terribly, and she felt her throat go dry. How could Gretchen survive in this place?

  A massive table was between Piper and Gretchen. Chairs were pulled out all around it and newspapers and magazines were stacked on them. Watchful cats crowned the piles. Plastic bowls of different colors and sizes were on the tabletop. An orange striped cat worked at something congealed in one of them.

  The carpet was stained and dotted with feces and dried hairballs. Litter boxes against the wall overflowed. She spied a desiccated cat corpse in the gap under a hutch. She felt dizzy.

  Piper moved closer, nudging a lazing Siamese out of her way. To her left she saw a long couch with cats on it, an easy chair with more cats. The front of the house was one big room that served as both dining and living areas. There were more overflowing litter boxes. A doorway next to the easy chair probably led to the bedrooms and likely more cats. Another step and a cat emitted a high-pitched yowl.

  Shit. Piper had stepped on a tail.

  Everything seemed to happen at once.

  Gretchen turned, bringing the gun around with her and firing, eyes widening, and screaming, “Noooooooo!”

  Piper leaped for the dining table as the pellets sprayed and chewed into the wall behind her and into left arm, shoulder, and vest. It felt like she’d been punched and the air rushed out in one great whoosh. Her momentum made her slide on her stomach across the tabletop, knocking bowls out of the way. Cats hissed. She registered first a burning sensation and pressure where she’d been hit, then the pain slammed her, like someone had repeatedly jabbed a screwdriver into her flesh.

  Her course took her straight into Gretchen, who without the support of the windowsill was having a tough time bringing the barrel back up. Piper reached out with her right hand, grabbed the end of the barrel, and yanked with all the strength she could summon. But Gretchen was stronger than she appeared and kept hold of the gun.

  Piper was lightheaded, from the fire racing down her arm and the awful smell of this place, from gulping in the reeking air. The tears were so thick she looked at the old woman through a film that rendered everything blurry. Her left arm and shoulder were nearly impossible to move.

  “Noooooooooo!” Gretchen continued to scream. The old woman tried to pull the gun out of Piper’s grip. But as Piper spilled over the other side of the table, she kept her hold on the barrel and heaved the gun free, landing sprawled on top of it and adding to her misery. Her left arm throbbed in an agonizing pulsing sensation. The carpet was wet with cat urine and Piper could taste it. Gretchen starting kicking Piper and hissed, sounding like some of the cats who’d come in the room
to protest the sheriff’s intrusion.

  Piper tried to get up, but Gretchen kept kicking, and then toppled a stack of magazines on her.

  “Nooooooooooooo!”

  Piper heard the front door slam open. Somehow Gretchen screamed even louder. Piper felt like she was swimming in sludge as she pushed herself to her hands and knees, magazines falling away, managing to keep her good hand on the shotgun so the old woman couldn’t regain it. The room spun in colors like looking through a child’s kaleidoscope.

  “Don’t shoot her,” Piper gasped, knowing it was JJ who’d come in. “I’ve got her gun.” Then she gave up what had been breakfast, the stench so powerful against the floor it overcame her. She felt like she was going to pass out. The colors swirled sluggishly and darkened.

  “Oh God,” JJ said. “Oh God. Oh God. You’re hit.”

  “Get her out of here,” Piper said.

  JJ rushed into the dining room and pushed Gretchen back, spun her around and grabbed her right arm with one hand and pulled out the handcuffs with the other.

  Piper thought she heard JJ start to read Gretchen her rights.

  “Don’t hurt her,” Piper said, getting to her knees. “Oh, crap. I hurt. I really—”

  21

  Twenty-One

  Piper heard voices, men she didn’t know, JJ in there. Someone screamed, “Noooooooooo!” That must be Gretchen. “Nooooooooooooo!” The howl muted now, traveling away from her.

  “Gotta be a hundred cats in there.” Piper had no clue who said that.

  “Need Hazmat suits.” Another stranger.

  The floor made creaking sounds.

  Cats hissed.

  “I’m calling Oren.” That was JJ again.

  Piper wanted to say something, check on Gretchen, issue orders, tell JJ that Oren’s presence wasn’t necessary, she didn’t need to call him. The Mailbox Mauler was in custody. She was, wasn’t she? Piper remembered JJ handcuffing the old woman.