by Loretta Ross
They were ubiquitous. Quart jars with rusting brass lids, filled with the sludge of someone’s prized tomatoes or a lump of rancid jelly. It seemed that any time she worked in an old house in the country, especially one that had sat vacant for any length of time, she’d find these reminders of the days when everyone canned their own food for the winter. Normally, they’d throw them out. The price they could get for the jars wasn’t worth the time it would take to empty them and scrub them clean.
Now, though, she put them to another purpose, pulling them off the shelves as she passed and laying them on their sides on the floor behind her, to trip up her pursuer if he came this way.
The door into the kitchen was fashioned from a single sheet of thin plywood, painted white and fastened with a thumb latch. She opened it carefully, worried about knocking something down and betraying her location, and emerged into the long, wide kitchen.
There was a switch in the wall to her right and she flicked it as she had the others, just in case, but there was no power here either.
She was at the back of the house now; the windows in the gravedigger’s room upstairs looked out over the kitchen roof. To her right and sitting at a ninety-degree angle to the wall she’d come out of, a second door identical to the pantry door sat at the top of two steps. It led to the landing of an enclosed back staircase that she had yet to explore. A long counter with a double-bowl stone sink in the middle of it ran along the back wall, to her left. The entire length of the counter was lined, underneath, with drawers and cabinet doors.
The wall above the counter was lined with windows. They showed the back garden, dark in between lightning flashes. Wren could see the yard light, high up on its pole, dark against the stormy sky. That might mean the damage was in the power lines and there was nothing she could do, but it also might mean that the lightning had been bright enough to fool the yard light into thinking it was daytime.
The only way to tell if she could fix it was to find the fuses and the fuse box and try.
She got a sturdy kitchen chair and braced it under the pantry door handle. It wouldn’t hold the door closed for long, but it might slow the intruder down if he tried to come through it.
She started on the left side and started pulling drawers out and opening cabinets. She didn’t bother to rifle through the contents. The box of fuses would be on top of anything else in a drawer, or sitting on the front edge of a shelf in a cabinet.
She was three-quarters of the way down the counter when she found them sitting in the top drawer to the right of the sink. It was a box of twenty, in assorted sizes.
Roy wasn’t the first person to use this drawer to hold fuses, she saw when she picked up the box. There were maybe two dozen more lying loose in the bottom. The fuses, which served the same purpose that breakers serve in newer buildings, were heavy little disks, about as big around as a fifty-cent piece and maybe an inch and a half thick. They were made of ceramic and metal and glass and color-coded for amperage, with a little plug on the back like the base of a light bulb.
Wren’s right pocket bulged with her cell phone and charger. She filled her left pocket with old fuses and took the new box with her as she moved on. Roy had said the fuse box was here in the kitchen, but it could be anywhere.
She forced herself to stop and think. Where would she put the fuse box, if she were going to wire this house?
The intruder was still throwing things around in the dark distance. He sounded closer now, and she suspected he was tearing up the smoking room. If he came through the pantry, she’d hear him falling over her mason jars, but if he went back down the hall and approached the kitchen from that direction, she’d have set the booby trap for herself.
Originally, the kitchen would have been in a completely separate building. That way, if it caught fire, it wouldn’t burn the whole house down. And, too, on a less catastrophic note, the heat from baking wouldn’t warm up the house on a hot summer day. She didn’t know exactly when this room had been built, but the fact that it only shared one wall with the rest of the building meant that wall was the most likely place to locate the power junction.
That wall, opposite the back wall and its row of windows, held a custom cabinet built in under the slanting line of the stairwell, an antique gas stove from the nineteen thirties with a built-in water heater, the door into the dining room, and an ancient refrigerator.
She pulled open the cabinet doors in quick succession, noting cobweb-covered pots and pans and garish, flowered wallpaper on the back walls that didn’t match the rest of the room. In the topmost cabinet she could just glimpse something metallic fastened to the wall. Wren dragged a second chair over to stand on and pushed aside a teapot and a coffee percolator.
It was a round metal plate painted with a thick coat of yellowing white paint. The paint was flaking off now, allowing the metal to catch Wren’s light. Not the fuse box, then. At one time, there must have been a wood stove where the cabinet was. The plate was covering the hole where the stovepipe had been.
She almost overlooked the fuse box. It was above the stove, a bulging cover about the size of a small cake pan, hinged at the top and painted to blend into the cabbage rose wallpaper. She scooted the chair over and climbed up again, fitting her knee in between the burners and setting the box of spare fuses on the stovetop beside her.
None of the fuses looked blown. Normally the glass would be black and smoky. Most likely, either the problem was in the lines or one of the two cartridge fuses in the master cylinder was bad. She had no way to check those, and no spares in any case.
On the off chance that one of the fuses had blown without appearing to have blown, she began changing them as fast as she could, screwing out the old fuses and screwing new fuses in their place. She’d only gotten three changed when she heard the door from the smoking room to the pantry open and the sound of a body tripping and falling.
He was close enough now, with only the thin door between them, that she could hear him breathing heavily and cursing under his breath. His voice sounded familiar. She’d heard it before, she was sure of it, but at such a low volume, in the dark and the confusion, she couldn’t place it.
Bangs and thumps and crashes came from the pantry. It sounded like a maddened wild beast was trapped there. And then the room grew suddenly silent. The storm sounds had begun to abate, though lightning still played across the sky. It was a pensive silence, as if the whole world was waiting with bated breath.
Wren had a sense of vacancy, a feeling that he was no longer there, just the other side of the door. It was so strong that a little voice in her head urged her to pull the door open and see.
“Uh, yeah,” she said to herself. “Not that stupid, thanks.”
She listened, straining with every fiber of her being to hear every noise within the old house. If she hadn’t been so focused, she’d have missed it. It was just a faint thud, a slight scrape, as of a bumped chair sliding on hardwood before being caught.
It had come from the dining room.
The intruder—the armed intruder—had circled around. He was sneaking up on her from the dining room, and the path back through the pantry was a minefield of her own making.
nineteen
The camera flash competed poorly with the lightning still playing across the sky, visible through small windows high up on the wall. Orly Jackson took several pictures of the manger, from different angles and distances, then lay back down on the floor and held the device against the dirt to get a shot of the cell phone lying in situ.
“I’m going to need something to fish it out with,” he said. “My hand won’t fit and it’s clear back against the wall.”
“How about a hay hook?” Kurt asked.
The deputy tried it. “No, it’s not long enough and I can’t get it under any further because the handle gets in the way.”
“A coat hanger would probably work,” Death suggested.
“You got one?”
“Got some in the house,” Robinson said.
“Hang on a second and I’ll run and get one.”
“Those poor dogs,” Nichelle said when he’d left.
“Dogs? What dogs?” Jackson asked.
“Sherlock and Mycroft. The bloodhound pups, remember?”
“Yeah.” Death gave her a rueful smile. “They probably found it. They tried to tell us, but we thought we knew better. We thought they were smelling the dead guy on the beer can, and I’m sure they were. But they were also smelling their target scent on this phone the whole time.”
Kurt Robinson returned with a wire coat hanger. He took it in both hands and pulled it out of shape to make a long, skinny hook and handed it off to Jackson.
The deputy lowered himself back to the ground with a long, put-upon sigh.
“Oh, stop it,” Death said. “You love this.”
Orly, on his knees, paused to cock an eyebrow at the ex-Marine. “Oh really?”
“Ever since you got involved in this case the city cops have been treating you guys like a bunch of simple-minded, bumbling hicks. And now you’re about to break their case for them. So stop acting like you’re being abused.”
“I’m going to enjoy handing them their case,” he admitted. “The crawling around in the dirt in a horse stall not so much.” He went down to all fours, paused, and rubbed a handful of dirt between his fingers. “Is this manure in here?”
“Probably,” Robinson said. “You’re in a horse stall.”
“Ha, ha.”
Jackson lay down on his stomach, stuck the coat hanger into the dark recess beneath the manger, and slowly drew the missing cell phone out into the light. It was a slender smartphone, caked with dirt but with the face intact. He took two more pictures of it lying there, next to the hook he’d used, before picking it up in gloved hands and dropping it into a clear plastic evidence bag.
“You’re going to let us hear what’s on it, aren’t you?” Death prompted.
“Now why would I do that?”
“Because I was nice and I called you in on this. I could have just waited and gotten it out myself and then given it to you.”
“That would have been tampering with evidence.”
“Hard to prove that in court. After all, I wouldn’t have known it was evidence until I listened to it. For that matter, we don’t know now that it’s evidence.”
“Of course it’s evidence! Don’t be stupid.”
“Are you sure it’s evidence? I mean, we know there’s a cell phone missing and we found a cell phone, but you don’t actually know it’s the same cell phone.”
Jackson snorted. “Oh, please.”
“There’ve been a lot of people through here. Any one of them could have lost a cell phone in this barn.” Death caught at the officer’s arm when he would have turned away and looked him in the eye. “Come on, man. This concerns all of us. I think we have a right to know what’s on that phone.”
“And you know what?” Jackson said. “I agree with you. And I would let you listen. But in case you haven’t noticed, the phone is dead. No one can listen to it until I find a charger that will fit it.”
“What kind of plug does it take?” Nichelle asked. “I probably have one in my old cell phone charger drawer.”
“You have an old cell phone charger drawer?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Doesn’t everybody?”
The deputy followed the Robinsons to their cabin through the rain. The storm had lessened so that it was no longer an onslaught, but it was still coming down steadily. Death and Randy brought up the rear, flanking him slightly.
Jackson glanced back at them. “Guarding me so I can’t get away.”
“We’re protecting you,” Death said.
“That’s your story.”
“And we’re sticking to it.”
The cabin the couple lived in was only slightly larger than the ones they maintained for visiting vets. It had a cozy living room decorated with Royals baseball memorabilia, an eat-in kitchen, and a single bedroom and bath on the ground floor. A narrow staircase led to a loft under the eaves.
Kurt nodded at the stairs as they went by. “Tony and Zahra used to sleep up there when they’d stay with us.”
Death rested his hand on the other man’s shoulder and didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say.
Nichelle pulled open a drawer in the kitchen and came over to the table with a Gordian knot of white and black chargers. “I’m not sure what’s here, exactly. Most of these are from cell phones but there are other things too. I know some of them are interchangeable. We’ll just have to see.”
The men seated themselves at the table and started untangling cords. Nichelle pulled up a tall stool and perched on it to watch. In the brighter light in the kitchen, she looked tired and drawn.
“This one probably won’t work,” Death observed, holding up a sturdier cable with a round connection.
“Hey!” Robinson said. “That’s to my cordless drill! I wondered where that went.”
“I think this one will fit,” Randy said, separating out a cord and charger.
Jackson took it, removed the phone from the evidence bag, and plugged it in. The dirty touchscreen lit up and went to a charging graphic. He held down the button on the side of the phone until it powered up, and then held it up to show them a lock screen with a pattern of nine dots.
“He’s got it locked. Unless you geniuses have any suggestions for what his pattern is?”
“He’s a Christian fundamentalist. Try a cross,” Death suggested.
Jackson tried it. It took him several attempts because his gloves were interfering with his ability to use the touchscreen, but he finally got it to register his finger. He drew a cross on the phone face without lifting his hand, and the phone opened to a home screen. It was a landscape picture, probably the one that came with the phone, with a sprinkling of apps showing.
Jackson tapped call log and the record of the last calls on the phone came up. The last caller was identified simply as Sir. He showed the others.
“Any of you recognize this number? Be honest with me now.”
The others all looked at it and shook their heads.
“The 816 area code is Kansas City,” Nichelle offered. “That’s no one that I know, though.”
“Call it,” Randy suggested, caught up in the excitement.
Death reached around and smacked him on the back of the head.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Great idea, genius,” his big brother teased. He pretended to be making a phone call. “Hi, is this the person who murdered August Jones? Yes, I just wanted to let you know that we found his phone. We know who you are now and we’re coming for you, so if you want to go on the lam or take hostages or anything, now would be a really good time.”
“Smartass,” Randy said. “I didn’t say call him from that phone. Call him from yours or mine or Nichelle’s maybe. Find out who it is, and then pretend you’ve got a wrong number.”
“A call from anyone even remotely connected with the case could tip off the killer, though,” Death said. “If that happened, the city police would have our butts in a sling.”
“Not ours. We’re just bumbling civilians,” Randy protested. “They’d have Orly’s butt in a sling.”
“Oh, you’re right. Okay. Go ahead and call then.”
“You guys would make lousy comedians,” Jackson said, pulling the phone away. “Hang on a second while I find the recorder app.”
He found the icon and tapped it, then scanned the list of recordings it brought up. “Jeez. He’s got a ton of these.”
“He recorded a lot,” Robinson said. “That’s what the members of Zahra’s mosque said. He recorded everything.”
“This is the most recent.” Jackson hit play and set the phone down on the table. There was a slight buzz of sound, and a rustling noise.
“Fabric,” Death said, “brushing against the phone. He had it in his pocket.”
They sat in silence while thirty interminable seconds
crawled by, broken only by the sound of cloth moving against the microphone. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece and the rain outside tapered off to a gentle patter. There was an indrawn breath and then a single word.
“Sir.”
Jackson paused the recording. “Who is that? Is that Jones speaking?”
The other four looked around at one another and shrugged.
“We never met him,” Robinson said.
“And he was already dead before Randy and I even heard of him,” Death added. “But he made a phone call to someone listed on his phone as ‘sir’ and he’s talking to someone he calls ‘sir,’ so if we’re assuming this is Jones’ phone, and I’m sure it is, then it makes sense that he’s the one speaking. Turn it back on and see what happens.”
Orly hit play. After a few seconds of silence, the first voice spoke again.
“Are you just going to stand there? Do you not have anything to say for once?”
“What serpent are you, that comes to me in this disguise? What devil has turned this Judas against me?”
Nichelle gasped. Jackson and Robinson both nodded.
“Who is it?” Death demanded. “Is that who I think it is?”
Jackson paused the recording again to answer. “Yeah, it is. Haven’t you ever heard him speak before?”
“No, I’ve been lucky.” Death turned to Randy, who still looked puzzled. “It’s Tyler Jones, the head of the CAC. The day he died, August Jones sneaked off to a meeting with his father.”
_____
Carrying the box of fuses with her, Wren climbed the two steps to the back stairwell and tugged on the door. The wood was swollen with the damp and it stuck. For a minute she was afraid that it was painted closed, but she pulled hard and it opened suddenly, nearly knocking her back to the floor. She caught her balance and pulled herself through just as a gunshot rang out and a bullet buried itself in the door jamb by her head.
She glanced back and her light found the face of her assailant, shone in his eyes and made him shy away and cover his face, but not before she recognized him.