by P J Parrish
Louis was listening but his gaze remained on the street. Nothing was moving. Only three lights on the whole street.
Jewell was still talking. “The red-haired lady picked up her newspaper at four, the old folks with the flamingos got a pizza about thirty minutes ago, the guys had a visitor at seven -— they seemed to know him —- and the red-haired lady came out again —-”
“Wait,” Louis said. He was remembering the phone call he had made to Wainwright at the cottage. Wainwright had said he was delayed because he was wrapping up a call on a missing delivery guy.
Louis turned to Jewell. “Who got the pizza?”
“The old folks with the flamingos.”
“Did you see the pizza man leave the house?”
“Sure. He walked to the door and came out a few minutes later.”
“Anything else happen at the house after that?”
Jewell looked back at his book. “Yeah, about ten minutes later someone came home in a dark compact car, used the garage opener, and pulled inside.”
“Did the dark compact look anything like the pizza delivery car?”
Jewell looked down again, then up at Louis. “I don’t remember, sir. I just noticed the pizza sign lit up on top of the car, not the make or model.”
“What was the name of the pizza company?”
“Pepe’s.”
Louis looked back at Susan. “Get me their number.”
“It’s Ben’s favorite. I have it memorized,” she said, going to the kitchen.
She brought him the phone, the number already dialed. But there was no answer. Louis looked up at the clock. They were closed.
“Jewell, you guys have a missing delivery man,” Louis said. “Call in and see where he worked.”
Jewell radioed the station. Louis heard the response --Pepe’s Pizza.
“It’s not the empty house,” Louis said. “It’s the old folks at the end of the street. It has to be.”
Louis repositioned himself to get a better look at the flamingo house. He could barely see the place from here. There were no lights in the front windows and no cars in the drive. The garage door was closed.
If they were in there, there was a good chance Ben was, too. But what did they want? What were they waiting for? And why had they announced their presence with a phone call?
“Sir, what are we going to do? Wait for more units?”
Louis shook his head. “I don’t want half-a-dozen sirens screaming down this street. If these guys had the balls to call, they might think they’re safe and I don’t want them running.”
“So what do we do? Wait?” Jewell asked.
“No, you don’t wait. You go,” Susan said, coming forward. “Damn it, Louis, if you don’t go, I will.”
He ignored her. “Jewell, get us some backup but have them park on another block and walk in under cover. And tell them to get Wainwright on the phone now."
Susan was at his arm. “That will take too long!”
He took her by the shoulders and started to walk her back to the sofa, but she twisted away from him.
“Stop treating me like a child!” she said.
“Then stop being crazy, for crissakes,” Louis said. “You want to get me killed? And your son?”
She stiffened, drawing back her shoulders. Her lips quivered but she was nowhere near crying. She hated him right now and he knew it. Hated him for not somehow being able to prevent all this from happening. Hated him for being cautious. For being human.
“If it was your son, you wouldn’t wait,” she said.
He could only look at her, afraid if he said anything, he would regret it. Neither of them moved.
“Sir?”
Louis didn’t look at Jewell, his eyes locked on Susan. Finally, she turned away and moved to the kitchen. He watched her take hold of a chair and lean into it, her head down.
“Sir?”
“What?” Louis said.
“The garage light went on at the flamingo house.”
Louis went back to the window. The garage door was closed but he could see light through the little windows. Then the light went out.
They were leaving. Damn it. Damn it to hell.
He turned and grabbed the revolver off the bookshelf. Susan was coming back into the room and he held the gun out to her.
“Take this and go sit in the closet,” Louis said. “Shoot anyone who won’t identify himself.”
CHAPTER 16
Louis was crouched outside the old couple’s house. It had stopped raining, but the ground and bushes were wet and he could feel the chilling dampness seeping into his clothing. It was dark and the streetlights were a dull glow in the misty air.
He heard Jewell breathing softly behind him. “You want the back or front?” Louis whispered.
Jewell pointed to the front door.
“Give me about two minutes,” Louis said.
Jewell nodded, and Louis crept away, staying in the bushes until he reached a wood fence. He pulled up the metal latch. It let out a squeak and he stopped, listening. Nothing.
He went through the gate, crouching against the house, easing his way around the corner. He could make out the shape of a lawn chair, a small patio, and a barbeque. He pulled his Glock up in front of him and drew in a breath, holding it.
For a moment, it was quiet. No crickets. No wind. No nothing.
Then he heard it. A soft putter in the distance.
His eyes snapped to the darkness of the backyard. The smell was faint, but he knew what it was -- gas fumes. And he knew what was back behind the house -- a canal. He stared hard into the blackness. Slowly, the shape of a small dock came into focus.
A boat. That’s what he had heard. A boat moving quietly and quickly away.
Damn it. Damn it.
Louis squinted beyond the dock. He could just make out the ripples in the inky canal water and beyond that, the black fringe of mangroves. They were gone, hidden now in the narrow twisting channels of the mangroves. It had to be them. No one else would be out on that canal this late in this cold.
He looked back at the house. He knew he still needed to go in. And he knew he needed to go in, gun drawn, in case he was wrong.
Louis retraced his steps to the back door. The door was unlocked and he pushed it open, peering around the door jamb. The house was dark, but he had the sense that he was in the kitchen. He slipped inside, his eyes jumping from corner to corner, his ears alert for the slightest sound.
He took a step, and his shoe skidded and he went down, trying to catch himself on a table. His elbow crashed against a chair and he was on his ass, sitting in something wet.
He grabbed the table edge and scrambled to his feet, jerking the gun back and forth. But he saw no one, nothing. He worked his way forward, to the living room. It was dark, too, and he reached out, hoping to find a light switch. He felt nothing along the wall.
The front door crashed open and Louis swung his gun toward the sound. A blur filled the foyer then vanished into a short hall. He hoped to hell it was Jewell.
“Jewell,” Louis hissed.
Jewell’s voice came back. “The place clear?”
“Can’t find a damn light”
A light went on in the hall. Louis headed toward it, and saw Jewell moving cautiously to the first bedroom. Louis followed him and slipped past to the second bedroom. The light switch was right near the door and he flicked it on.
The bedroom was small, the closet open. It looked un-touched except for a ripple in the chenille bedspread where someone might have sat down. On the bed were a couple of boxes, the contents dumped. But no people, living or dead.
He heard Jewell out in the hall and left the bedroom to follow him. He knew where Jewell was headed. The last place they needed to look was the garage. Louis realized he had probably missed the door coming through the kitchen.
Jewell had a flashlight, and Louis could see it dancing over the kitchen walls as he came up behind him. Jewell found a switch and reached around the co
rner and turned it on.
“Sweet mother of God,” Jewell whispered.
Louis came up next to him.
The white linoleum was streaked in red. What had been a large thick pool was smeared in all directions with a trail heading to the garage.
Oh, Jesus. That’s what he had slipped in. Blood.
The edge of the table and the white door jamb had bright smears of crimson fingerprints.
Louis looked down at his hand. He had wiped the stickiness from the kitchen floor on his jeans when he had stood up, but he hadn’t gotten it all. His palm was tinted red, the creases and lines like tiny bloody rivers in his skin.
Jewell was moving toward the garage. Louis followed, the bloody dampness in his jeans thickening with every step.
The garage door was closed and Jewell used his shoulder to push it open. They were met with a rush of cold air. Jewell’s flashlight swept over two vehicles.
Louis pulled the string on the light.
Two cars. One was a pristine white Buick. The other was a Toyota with pockets of rust. A red vinyl pizza warmer sat on the hood of the Toyota, empty.
They approached the Toyota on opposite sides. On the front seat was a magnetic rooftop Pepe’s Pizza sign. The driver’s seat, the front window, and dashboard were smeared with blood.
Someone was huddled on the floor of the front passenger seat. Red and green shirt. Dark hair. Louis knew it was the pizza delivery man.
“Jeeze,” Jewell whispered.
Louis turned. Jewell had popped the trunk of the Buick and was staring inside. Louis went to him.
The old man was on top of the woman. His pasty white skin and thin gray hair were streaked with blood. He lay on his back, his milky eyes open, his head dropping back over the shoulder of his wife. The gash in his neck gaped open, the tissue sliced as clean as fresh butcher meat.
Louis stepped back, running an arm over his face. He drew in a cold breath, let it out, then drew in another. He forced himself to look again into the trunk. He could see the woman’s bony legs under her husband. He could see the rolled edges of her knee-high stockings. But he couldn’t see under her, to the trunk’s bottom.
“Sir,” Jewell said, “the back of your jeans are covered in blood. Are you wounded?”
Louis shook his head, his eyes fixed on the bodies. “We need to see if Benjamin is under these bodies.”
“We shouldn’t touch them.”
“I know that, but I need to make sure.”
Jewell hesitated then looked around. He spotted garden gloves on the wall and grabbed them, holding them out to Louis.
Jewell reached in and carefully lifted the ankles of the old man, placing them gently toward the rear of the trunk, getting most of the weight off the woman.
Louis pulled on the gloves. Then he placed his hands on the old woman, shifting her gently to get a look underneath her. The vinyl was dark and sticky, and Louis gave the body a soft push to see further. Nothing.
Thank God...
Jewell let out a loud breath then tried to cover it by glancing around the garage. “Guess we better check the Toyota trunk,” he said.
They moved back to the rear of the Toyota. Louis was surprised to see the trunk ajar. He used his gun barrel to lift it open.
It was empty, littered with soda cans, old clothing, and a small spare tire. Wires hung disconnected from the tail lights, and there was a small rust hole in the bottom panel.
Jewell came up next to him. “How did they get away without us seeing them?”
“There’s a canal out back,” Louis said. “They took a boat. I heard it when I was coming around the house.”
Jewell clicked on his radio and Louis turned, heading back in the house. He left the garden gloves on and walked back through the kitchen toward the living room. He found the light this time and turned it on. His eyes moved over the room.
Window blinds, slightly crooked, the edge caught against the sill.
A phone on an end table, turned not toward the easy chair but toward the same window.
A pizza box overturned on the beige carpet and a path of bloody footprints, probably his own. Two dirty round imprints in the carpet under the window, like someone with muddy pants had knelt there.
Louis moved carefully to the window and lifted the blind with the tip of his gloved finger. The lights were still out at Susan’s house. He started to turn away, wondering why the hell these guys had taken a chance like this, what had been their plan, when something on the window sill caught his eyes.
It was a tiny plastic cowboy, a gun in his outstretched hand. It looked old, the kind of toy kids played with in the late fifties or early sixties, before Star Wars action figures and cars that turned into robots.
And it was out of place.
Louis looked around, looked at the blue duck wallpaper in the kitchen, the worn Barcalounger, the collection of framed family photographs clustered around the vase of silk flowers on the crocheted doily. The old couple had been well into their seventies. Their house was immaculate, the picture frames filled with the faces of the couple and their son and grandchildren. But there were no children living here now.
So where did this toy cowboy come from?
Louis turned and went back to the second bedroom, going to the boxes on the bed.
One held baseball cards, old and probably valuable, but left untouched. The other box contained dozens more of the little plastic figurines -- Indians, cowboys, horses.
What were the killers doing in here? Looking for money or valuables? Louis moved back to the living room and looked again at the small figure on the sill. Had they given it to Ben, thinking he would like it? Or to stop him from crying? And had Ben left it for them? Was he trying to leave clues?
Louis went into the kitchen and carefully pulled open drawers until he found some Ziplocs. He picked up the cowboy and dropped it in a bag.
He glanced at the garage door, hearing Jewell talking to Chief Wainwright on the radio. Jewell clicked off as he came in from the garage.
“What’s that?” Jewell asked.
Louis put the baggie in his pocket. “I don’t know. Maybe a shred of hope.”
CHAPTER 17
They were gathered back in Susan’s living room. It was cramped and close, the overheated room filled with the smells of wet wool, burnt coffee, and fatigue. Chief Wainwright was stationed near the fireplace, flanked by two Sereno Key cops wearing black rain slickers. Jewell had gone back to his usual spot at the door. He hadn’t removed his soaked windbreaker, and his blond hair was plastered to his head.
From his position on the sofa, Louis watched the young cop’s face. Jewell was trying hard to look stoic and untouched by the scenes he had seen in the old couple’s house. He wasn’t old enough to quite have the look down yet.
Jewell caught Louis’s eye, held it for a moment. It occurred to Louis that the young cop had been here since this afternoon, probably working the third shift that normally ran until midnight.
“Jewell,” Louis said softly.
“Yes, sir?”
“You need some rest. Go home.”
“I’d rather stay here, sir.”
There was something in Jewell’s eyes that told Louis not to press it. Maybe it was just a sense of propriety, but Jewell wanted, needed, to stay. Jewell had been with Susan since this whole thing started, shared her home, seen her at her worst. Louis understood the odd sense of immediate family these sorts of situations created.
Louis gave Jewell a tired half-smile. The young cop went back to looking out the small window in the door.
Wainwright’s voice was a drone in the background and Louis let his head drop back on the sofa. He was dog tired but still alert. The curtains were closed and the spots of red and blue lights moving across them looked almost festive in contrast to the dimness of the living room. Louis had counted ten cop cars outside the last time he looked. There were only five cops on all of the Sereno Key force, so he knew Wainwright had called in help from the sh
eriff’s office and from Chief Horton over in Fort Myers. For all his FBI experience, Wainwright knew he couldn’t handle this one alone. There were too many bodies now. And Ben was still missing.
Louis could hear other voices coming from the hallway. It was the tech crew, dusting Ben’s room so they had his fingerprints. The clock on the mantel chimed once. Louis looked at it then at Wainwright. Like everyone else, Louis was waiting for him to take the lead.
Wainwright was holding up the Ziploc with the plastic cowboy in it. “Gene Autry,” he said softly. “I had one of these when I was a kid. I don’t think this means anything.”
“It was out of place,” Louis said.
Wainwright’s blue eyes stayed on Louis, and Louis could read the sympathy there. But that’s all there was. The Chief thought Ben was dead. Louis looked at the other faces. They all did.
Wainwright gave the Ziploc to one of his men, said something under his breath, and the cop left. Louis knew a second tech crew was dusting the old couple's house and that as soon as Gene Autry made it back to the lab, they would dust him, too. And if anything matched what they were lifting from Ben’s room, they would know he was still alive.
If...
Susan came in from the kitchen, carrying a tray. She set the tray down on the coffee table. “I’m sorry,” she said. “All I have is peanut butter and jelly.”
She moved away, going to stand at the kitchen doorway.
The cops all looked at each other, then at Wainwright. He gave a small nod. One of the cops picked up a sandwich and began to eat. The others didn’t move. They were new, part of the second team sent to Susan’s house.
There was a light knock on the door. Jewell opened the door. A man in a wet windbreaker came in carrying a black case. He and Wainwright exchanged a few words.
“Ma’am?” Wainwright said.
Susan looked up.
“Is that phone in the kitchen the only one?”
She nodded.
Wainwright nodded to his man and he moved past Susan with his case to set up the tap. Wainwright saw Louis watching him.
“We might get another call,” he said.
“Why?” Susan asked.