Sarah stood beside him and saw a van parked in their driveway. A moment later there was a knock on the back door. Alex opened it.
“I’ve been checking your outside electric lines, sir,” the man said. He wore a heavy sweatshirt under his jean jacket, and his wide leather belt was weighted down with tools. “Everything’s okay on the main line and on the feeder to your house. I’d like to take a look at your breaker box, if I could.”
“Sure,” Alex said, unlatching the screen door. “Come on in. I thought maybe you people had forgotten about us.”
“No, sir,” he said a bit uncomfortably. He nodded hello to Sarah, then followed Alex across the laundry room, tracking melted snow on the floor.
The man stood on the basement landing for fifteen minutes, flipping switches and taking readings on a hand-held meter. Finally, he shut the metal door on the box and stepped into the laundry room.
“No problem there,” he said. “Didn’t you report that the main switch had tripped?”
“Twice this week,” Alex said.
“Were you running a lot of appliances at once? Or maybe a couple of space heaters? Sometimes that can cause an overload.”
“No,” Alex said. “Nothing out of the … ordinary.” He looked at Sarah, and she knew what he was thinking: someone had gotten into the basement.
The man raised his eyebrows as if in apology. “Well, then,” he said, “I hate to tell you this, but you might have internal wiring problems. This is a pretty old house, and if it still has the original wiring …”
He looked at Alex questioningly. Alex nodded yes.
“Then you might have to hire an electrician to check it out. And the sooner the better.”
“Sure,” Alex said. “I appreciate your coming here.”
The man left, and Alex closed the door behind him.
“The lights, Alex. Do you think it could have been—”
“Nobody’s getting in the basement now, Sarah,” he said firmly. “Nobody’s down there, and nobody’s getting in.”
“I know, but—”
She was interrupted by a knocking on the back door.
“Did he forget something?”
Alex opened the door, and they were both surprised to see Brian standing on the steps, his stocking cap down to his eyes.
“Are you guys coming out?”
Alex and Sarah and Brian packed together a beach-ball-sized mound of snow in the backyard. Then they pushed it across the snowy lawn, rolling it from side to side to keep it round until it grew to nearly three feet in diameter, a giant snowball speckled with bits of brown grass and dead leaves, too large finally for them to budge. They patted down the rough spots with their gloves, smoothing the ball as best as they could.
An hour later, after some serious building and an impromptu snowball fight, the backyard was a maze of ruts and footprints in the snow surrounding a larger-than-life snowman. He had sticks for arms and stones for eyes, nose, and mouth. His round head was topped with a wide-brimmed straw cowboy hat that Sarah had bought last summer for Alex as a joke and that he’d ended up wearing whenever he did yard work.
“That’s you, Dad,” Brian said, his face flushed from excitement and exertion. They’d all removed their coats and wore only sweaters and gloves under the warm, bright sun. “Now let’s make one for me and Mom.”
“How about we take a break first?” Sarah said.
They picked up their coats and walked through the wet snow to the back door, leaving their boots in the laundry room. Sarah made hot chocolate, emptying the can. She looked in the cupboard and shook her head.
Brian said, “Let’s make one in the front yard, okay?”
“I think you two will have to work without me,” Sarah said. “We need groceries.”
It was almost one when Sarah returned from the grocery store. She was surprised to find Alex’s car gone from the garage. She assumed, though, that he and Brian wouldn’t be gone for too long—Alex had said that Detective Yarrow was coming to the house that afternoon.
Sarah hugged a heavy sack of groceries in each arm and carried them along the walk, giving herself a mental kick for not remembering to unlatch the side screen door. She walked around the front of the house and smiled when she saw a snowman in the front yard. A snow boy, she corrected herself, noticing that it was wearing one of Brian’s baseball caps.
As she passed the front window, something caught her eye.
She stopped and turned to look up. The drapes were open, offering a wide view of the upper walls and the ceiling of the living room. But that was wrong. The Christmas tree should have been filling the entire window.
The tree was gone.
29
SARAH STARED FOR A moment at the empty window. The heavy grocery bags began to slip from her arms. She carried them to the porch and set them down, then rummaged through her purse for her keys.
She could think of only two reasons why the tree was no longer in the window. First, Alex and Brian had taken it somewhere. Ridiculous. They’d gone off on an errand, and whatever had happened to the tree had happened after they’d gone. The second reason—in fact, the only probable one—was that the tree had fallen over.
Sarah knew it was possible for the tree to have been slightly off center in the stand. It may have been tipping farther off balance, a fraction of an inch a day, until it toppled, pulled down by its own weight. She remembered that her parents’ Christmas tree had once fallen over when she was a child. She’d cried her eyes out until her father had righted it in its stand.
She unlocked the front door and went in, leaving the grocery bags behind her on the porch.
Patches strolled into the foyer from the living room, tail erect. He padded across the tile floor to Sarah, purred loudly, and bumped against her leg. Sarah bent down and briefly scratched his head, then stepped to the doorway of the living room.
“Oh, my God,” she said under her breath.
The Christmas tree had indeed fallen. It lay in a heap, sprawled across the middle of the floor in a tangle of tinsel and strings of lights and broken ornaments. But Sarah could see that the fall had been no accident.
Every Christmas present had been ripped open, and wrapping paper was strewn about the room.
Sarah walked into the living room, dazed, as if she were a survivor of a train wreck, unharmed but surrounded by destruction.
Pants and sweaters had been slit apart, the pieces tossed about. Alex’s robe lay partially beneath a branch of the tree, cut to ribbons. Brian’s Parcheesi board was broken in half and the game pieces scattered across the room. His ski parka was slashed in a dozen places, and his radio-controlled VW had apparently been hurled against the wall—it lay broken on the floor below a red-and-black smudge on the wall. In the corner of the room near the base of the tree lay Alex’s first-edition history book. The cover was off, and most of the pages were torn out in bunches and lay scattered on the floor.
Sarah’s initial shock began to wear off. Now she had a mental image of someone in here, violently and thoroughly ripping things apart, slashing them with a knife.
Damn her, she thought. She had no right.
But her anger was chilled by fear—fear that whoever had caused this destruction was still in the house.
Sarah backed out of the room, nearly tripping over Patches. She scooped up the cat, tucked him under one arm, and hurried out the front door.
The very act of fleeing seemed to intensify Sarah’s fear, to make it more real. And fleeing from her own home made it that much worse—this was the place she should be able to run to.
She ran through the yard and past the grinning, sun-lit snow boy, her feet sliding in the wet snow. When she neared the edge of the yard, the snow was deeper, old and crusty beneath the shade of the pines, and it slowed her progress. But not much, for a panic had seized her, forcing her on. Still carrying Patches, she pushed her way into the high, leafless lilac bushes that separated the yards. The big cat struggled under her arm, clawed her wrist,
then broke free and ran back toward the house. Sarah fought her way through the bushes. And they fought back with stiff, dry branches, pulling her hair and scratching her face and neck.
At last she broke through into the neighbor’s yard. She half-ran, half-stumbled through ankle-deep snow to the house.
Sarah rang the bell, then pounded on the door, until it was opened by Jack Dahlquist.
He was a middle-aged man with a balding head. Sarah had spoken to him at length only on one occasion, during a backyard barbecue she and Alex had hosted on the Fourth of July. Other than that, she’d only waved to him and said hello from a distance. She was better acquainted with his wife, Denise. Even so, Sarah had expected Jack to recognize her. Clearly, though, he did not.
He frowned and kept his hand on the inside knob, as if he were ready to slam the door in her face.
“Yes?” he said with disapproval.
“Jack, it’s me, Sarah, from next door.”
His eyebrows went up. “Sarah? Oh, yes, of course. Are … are you all right?”
“I need to use your phone,” she said hurriedly. “I have to call the police.”
“The police?”
“Jack, please.”
“Yes, of course.” He stood aside for her to enter. “You can use the phone in the hall,” he said, extending his arm and then following her across a small foyer and around the base of a staircase to a long, narrow hallway. There was a telephone sitting on a fragile-looking antique table.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.
Sarah nodded. “Someone’s been in our house,” she said, lifting the receiver. “She may still be there.”
Sarah dialed 911. She looked up from the phone and gave a start at the small oval mirror on the wall. Staring back at her was a wild-eyed stranger with messed-up hair and a long red scratch on her forehead.
A woman answered the phone, and Sarah blurted out that she needed the police. The woman calmly asked Sarah for her name, her address, the reason for the call, if anyone was injured, if she’d seen anyone in the house …
All the while Sarah was clenching the phone in her fist, trying to force herself to calm down but realizing that Alex and Brian might drive home at any minute.
Denise Dahlquist came down the stairs.
“Sarah’s house has been vandalized,” Jack told her. He’d obviously been listening to Sarah talk on the phone.
Denise’s carefully made-up eyes grew wide. “Oh, dear,” she said, and reached out a hand toward Sarah.
Sarah told the woman on the phone that she’d wait in the driveway for the police, then hung up.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, brushing past them.
“But, Sarah …”
She hurried outside, hoping to intercept Alex and Brian. She didn’t want them to walk into the house before the police got there. She prayed they hadn’t already returned.
Sarah started toward the bushes, then changed her mind and ran down the driveway to the street.
The pavement was wet with melted snow. Ghostly wisps of vapor snaked along its surface, wiggling under the warm sun. Sarah ran along the edge of the street toward her driveway, stopping when she heard a car approaching from behind.
It was Alex’s Toyota.
Sarah waved frantically, getting his attention. Alex nosed the car into the driveway and stopped. As Sarah ran toward the car, she saw Brian staring wide-eyed at her through the passenger-door window. He moved away from her and toward Alex when she climbed in.
“Sarah …” Alex looked alarmed.
“Someone’s been in the house again.”
“What?”
“Who, Mom?”
“The Christmas tree, the presents, everything’s been destroyed.”
Alex held her eyes for a moment. His face hardened.
“Wait right here,” he said evenly, and started to get out.
“No, Alex, she might still be in there. I’ve—”
“Who, Mom?”
“I’ve already called the police. They’ll be here soon.”
Alex paused, then steered the car down the driveway to the garage, shut off the engine, and set the emergency brake.
“Did you see anyone?”
“No, I just got home and walked in and—”
She stopped when she saw the police car pull into the driveway behind them. Two policemen climbed out. Sarah recognized them from last Tuesday—overweight and red-faced Officer Bauer and tall, black Officer Eastly.
“You and Brian wait in the car, okay?”
Without waiting for a reply, Alex got out and went back to the officers. Sarah watched them talk for a moment, then walk toward the front of the house—Bauer first, followed by Eastly and Alex.
“What are they doing?” Brian looked confused and afraid.
Sarah put her arm around him. “They’re … just seeing if it’s safe for us to go in.”
“Why isn’t it safe?”
“We … had a burglar, honey, but I’m sure it’s okay now. No one’s going to hurt us or—”
“But Patches is in there,” Brian said in a panic. He turned and reached for the door handle. Sarah stopped him, holding him close to her.
“No, honey, Patches is okay. I took him outside with me.”
“Where is he?”
Sarah remembered her last image of Patches, leaping from her arms, running back toward the house. She tried to remember whether she’d left the front door open.
“He’s … okay, honey. He’s just playing outside.”
Sarah held on to Brian and waited.
After a few minutes Brian said, “Did you see me in the front yard?”
“What, honey?”
“The snowman in front. That’s me.”
“Oh … Yes, I did. He’s pretty neat.”
“I made him all by myself. Well, mostly by myself. Dad helped some.”
“You did a good job.”
Brian explained in detail how they’d done it. Sarah only half-listened, staring through the window toward the house, wondering what was going on in there. Now she asked Brian where he and his dad had gone.
“To the store to buy a lock.”
“A lock?”
“For the attic,” Brian said.
Sarah saw Alex walking toward them from the house. She and Brian climbed out of the car.
“We searched the whole house,” Alex said. “There’s no one. The back door was ajar.”
“You saw the living room,” Sarah said. It wasn’t a question.
Alex nodded yes. “Also …”
“Was there more?” Sarah asked.
Alex glanced down at Brian. “She’d been upstairs, too,” he said. “Let’s go inside.”
The three of them walked around to the front of the house.
“They’re in the kitchen,” Alex said. “Maybe you should take Brian upstairs first.”
Sarah helped Brian off with his coat and hung it in the closet. When she turned around, she saw him standing in the doorway of the living room. His mouth hung open, and his arms were out from his sides, elbows bent.
Quickly, Sarah went to him and put her arm around him.
“Mom, the tree.” There were tears in his eyes.
“It’s all right, baby, we’ll fix it.”
“What happened to it?”
“It just fell over, honey. It’s okay. We can fix it.”
She gently pulled him out of the doorway before he could focus on the other, more violent destruction. As she led him toward the stairs, she glanced down the hallway to the kitchen. Alex was sitting at the end of the table next to Officer Bauer, who appeared to be filling out a form with a pen. Officer Eastly was not in sight.
Sarah walked Brian up the stairs.
Her legs were heavy, and it was an effort for her to climb the steps. She realized now how tired she felt, drained by her earlier rush of adrenaline.
As they reached the top of the stairs, Sarah hesitated, remembering something.
; “She’s been upstairs, too,” Alex had said.
Sarah knew he’d meant there was more damage. But she didn’t know exactly what. Obviously, he hadn’t elaborated because Brian had been standing next to her. Was it something that would be particularly upsetting to Brian? she wondered. Surely it wasn’t in his room, or Alex wouldn’t have suggested that she take Brian up there.
Then she saw that the door to their bedroom was closed.
She walked Brian past it to his room.
“Come here, Mom, I want to show you.”
He led her by the hand to the window. The last time she’d stood there had been last night, when she’d seen the light from the basement window. Now she looked down on the snowy side yard, blindingly white under the hungry sun, which had already eaten most of the snow from the concrete driveway and the peak of the garage roof. Although the sun hadn’t been able to get at the north side of the garage.
“See, over there,” Brian said, pressing his nose and index finger against the glass.
Sarah had to lean close to the window to see where Brian was pointing, beyond the corner of the house and behind the garage. Another snowman. This one wore a scarf on its head.
“That’s you, Mom. Neat, huh?”
“It sure is.” She put her hand on his head. “I have to go downstairs and talk to the policemen now. But when I’m through I’ll come back up here and get you, and then we can go outside for a closer look. Okay?”
“Okay. Mom?”
“What, honey?”
“Is Patches still outside?”
“I … believe so.” Sarah was thinking of the closed bedroom door.
“Can I go out and look for him?”
Sarah shook her head no. “I’ll be back in a little while, honey.”
She stepped out and softly closed the door behind her. Then she walked down the hallway to the master bedroom. She paused for a moment, her hand on the knob, a sick feeling in her stomach.
Then she opened the door.
The bedspread and blanket had been pulled from the bed and lay on the floor. There was a huge dark-red stain in the center of the sheets. The brass headboard and the white wall behind it were splattered bloodred. Protruding from the center of the stain in the sheets was the handle of a kitchen knife. The entire length of its blade was buried in the mattress.
Night of Reunion: A Novel Page 21