by K. J. Emrick
“It could be nothing,” Jon pointed out. “He might not even be here. Grace didn’t find anything when she came out to investigate, remember. It might be unrelated and Mason could be off shopping or catching an afternoon matinee.”
They shared a look, and then a smirk. Jon held the same opinion of coincidences that she did. There was something going on here, and Mason Barnes was at the center of it.
No one had answered the doorbell. Darcy tried it again, and then again. She’d never heard the Star Spangled Banner rendered in single, brass tones like that. Honestly it didn’t do anything for a song that was supposed to be so magnificent. Still, nobody answered.
“I guess he really is out,” Darcy said.
Jon nodded. “Maybe. Let’s check the windows and then we can always come back later if we need to. Grace already said there were no signs of a break in.”
They went around the side of the small yellow house, following footprints in the dusting of fresh snow that went close to the wall…
“Wait,” Darcy said, looking more closely at the outline of the footsteps. “If Grace didn’t see any signs of a prowler, what are these footsteps?”
Jon followed her gaze. “Good question. It only started snowing a little while ago, right? Maybe there was nothing here for her to see last time, but now with the fresh snow our prowler left a trail?”
“But that would mean the prowler came twice,” Darcy pointed out. “Once, before the snow fell when Grace got the prowler call, and then again…after she left? Why would the prowler come back?”
Jon thought about it. “Maybe he wanted to avoid being seen by Grace and Officer Miller. Or maybe he was just waiting for Mason to get home. Maybe he followed Mason from the Town Hall after Mayor Andy closed it up…”
“He? Are you sure it’s a he?”
Jon pointed. “Those are pretty big footprints, which usually means a guy.”
“But…if our prowler was waiting somewhere for Mason to come back home, or followed him back here, what does that mean?”
Lifting a gloved hand, Jon pointed at a window. “It means something bad.”
Darcy had been so intent on what was on the ground that she hadn’t looked up to see where the footsteps were taking them. The window right in front of them was broken. One corner of the upper pane had been smashed out and the rest was spiderwebbed with cracks. The sash was still open a few inches. Someone had broken it to gain access to the latch so they could slide open the lower window sash…and get inside.
Jon was right. This couldn’t possibly mean anything good.
She put her hands up against the window so she could peer inside. She could see a bathroom, bits of glass scattered on the linoleum floor. The lights were off, but the day was still plenty bright even with the thick clouds overhead dropping snow like white confetti. A dirty clothes basket was overflowing with tangled garments. The toothpaste tube had been left open with some of the paste squeezing out onto the sink top.
“There’s nobody in this room. I think if you give me a boost I’ll be able to wriggle my way in.”
“Oh yeah?” Jon said, a little distractedly.
“Hey, what are you saying? For Pete’s sake, if the guy who owns those boots could get through that window, I certainly can. I’ll have you know I’m wearing the same size pants I did ten years ago.”
He blinked at her, caught off guard, and his eyes slowly slipped down to her waist.
“Jon!”
He quickly shook his gaze away. “No, no. I’m not saying anything about that. I’m just saying, there might be another way. Come on.”
“Jon, I can fit through the window.”
“And land on broken glass. Let me try something first.”
She followed him around to the front again and up to the front door. She thought maybe he was going to ring the doorbell again or knock on the door. Instead he tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.
With a smug grin he pushed the door open and cautiously went inside.
“Show off,” Darcy whispered at his back.
“Stay close to me,” Jon said. “I’m not sure what we’ll find.”
“I guess if we’re lucky we’ll find Mason in his easy chair with a beer in his hand, right?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Worried he’ll be in his underwear?”
“No, something else.”
“What?”
“Shh,” he said, stopping to listen at the end of the short entryway, where it met another hallway going left and right. A moment passed, and then he chose to go to the left.
“Jon, what are you worried about? Why are we whispering?”
“There was only one set of tracks outside,” he said, “and they led into the house.”
Darcy missed a step as the implications of that settled in. The prowler had gone into the house, but there was nothing showing that he came out again.
He could still be in here.
And where was Mason?
The hall to the left led them to a living room, with a couch and a table, magazines and empty pizza boxes tossed on both of them. Shelves held a haphazard collection of books, empty beer cans, a stray sock, and other odds and ends. Apparently, Mason didn’t bring his cleaning work home with him.
Nobody was here, and they started for the open doorway on the other side of the room, just past the television set, going one step at a time.
Darcy hadn’t noticed Jon taking out his revolver from the holster on his belt, but suddenly it was there in his hand. He wasn’t taking any chances.
Down another hallway they found the bathroom Darcy had seen from outside. In a few more steps they walked past a back door with a little window in it, locked and with the security chain slid into place. It was becoming obvious the house was laid out like a big square. The hallway was going to take them right back around to the front if they kept going. It was eerie, not seeing Mason Barnes or the elusive prowler or anyone at all in the house. Just the two of them, their winter jackets swishing as they walked, and their breathing unnaturally loud in Darcy’s ears.
She tried to look in every direction at once, in front of them and to the sides when they passed the next empty room and behind them, always behind them. She’d held guns before in her life, but she’d never carried one with her. They didn’t tend to make her feel safe like they did other people. At the same time, she was selfishly glad that her husband carried one with him. The memory of a scream that wasn’t a scream slipped into her mind, a reminder of how she and Mark Franks had searched through Gilbert Fischer’s home earlier today, and how she’d been expecting the worst that time as well. That time, she had discovered there had been nothing to worry over.
Hopefully it would be the same now.
Like with her recurring dream, where she saw an image of herself, crying out.
…help…me…
Nothing to it, she told herself. There was nothing to it.
There was no way that dream could have any relevance. She’d seen Jon’s ghost once, and that had been a whole thing to be sure, but she could explain that one. She couldn’t make any sense of a dream with her own ghost calling for help.
It was impossible for her to see her own ghost. It had to be a mistake. It had to mean nothing. Just like the scream that hadn’t been a scream. Nothing.
No doubt it was going to be the same this time, too. The prowler who had broken in would be long gone by now. Of course he would. They’d find Mason in bed sleeping or listening to music with headphones that kept him from hearing their constant knocking. The front door hadn’t been locked. Didn’t that have to mean that he was still in here, somewhere?
Mason might be an untidy housekeeper, but he did like to decorate. There were paintings hung along the hallways, most of them of sad yet eerie circus clowns with overlarge smiles and poofy flowers on their tattered jackets. Mason had an odd taste in art, that was for sure. She couldn’t help thinking how different Mason was from Gilbert Fischer.
Darcy wasn’t sure what he meant by that until she looked inside for herself. It was a small room, crammed by a workbench all along the wall and then another one in the middle. Darcy saw tools, and a circular device on the main table with levers and little canisters around the outside. Jars of ball bearings stood in a row next to other jars full of empty bullet casings. Things that looked like die-cast molds were cast aside but ready to be picked up for use again.
“What’s all this?” Darcy whispered.
“That’s equipment for reloading ammunition,” he explained, talking into her ear so his voice wouldn’t carry. “See that little burner there is where he melts the lead ball bearings, and then he forms bullets and uses the empty casings to make new rounds.”
“Really? This is something people do?”
“Sure. It’s cheaper than buying your own bullets and it’s kind of a big hobby up here in New England among hunters. Which means we’ll probably find some guns to go along with all these bullets at some point. A 20-20 rifle by the looks of it.”
“Great.” As much as she liked the fact that Jon was armed, more guns didn’t make her feel any safer. Guns didn’t always make things better.
Jon squeezed her hand. “Come on. Let’s see what else we can find.”
The next corner brought them around to another hallway and a room off to the right. Jon peered around the corner of the open door. Darcy looked over his shoulder. A bedroom. An untidy little room, with boxes and clothes discarded on the floor, the sheets pulled half off the bed. A glass-fronted cabinet to the side of the window showed them exactly what Jon had told her to expect…three rifles, standing upright in their slots. There was a desk built up against the wall on one side. In front of it was one of those wheeled gamer chairs, orange and black, with a high back and wide armrests and padded everything.
Sitting in the chair, with his back to them, she recognized the pudgy form of Mason Barnes.
She exhaled a grateful breath that they’d found him.
Checking up and down the hallway again, making sure they were still alone, Jon put his gun away. “Mason?” he called in quietly. “Mason, it’s Chief Tinker. We need to talk to you.”
The man didn’t answer.
“Mason,” Jon said, in a more insistent whisper. “We need to get out of here. You might be in danger.”
There was the slightest movement of Mason’s head in the chair, as if he was cocking his ear to listen more closely to what Jon was saying. His hand slid into his lap. Only that. He still sat there, his back to them, waiting for something that Darcy couldn’t imagine.
“Stay here,” Jon told her quietly. “Keep watch in the hall. If the prowler is still in the house, he must have heard us by now. We still don’t know what they want, and they might try going through us to get to Mason. I think he’s terrified. Sometimes people freeze up, literally, when they’re afraid. I’m going to get him and help him get moving, then we’re all going to get out of here until we can figure out what’s going on.”
Darcy nodded, ready to shout at the top of her lungs if she saw anyone else in the house.
Jon moved quickly and silently to the chair and took Mason by the arm. Darcy watched both ends of the hall at the same time that she watched her husband shake Mason, and then shake him again.
And then, slowly, Mason slumped forward…and fell out of his chair. He slumped in a heap on the floor, his bottom sticking up in the air, his face smushed into the rug.
“Jon!” Darcy exclaimed, forgetting to be quiet. Forgetting to look for a shadowy prowler who had broken into Mason’s house. Forgetting everything, except the man lying face down on the floor.
Mason Barnes was dead.
It took her a moment to get her breath back. When she did, it was for one single word. “How?”
“I’m not sure,” Jon told her. “But at least he isn’t going to have to pay the money back he owes the town.”
“Jon, he was just moving. I saw him move.”
“It wasn’t real movement. It was just the body slipping. Gravity, slowly taking hold.”
“Okay, sure…but how?”
He had his cellphone out now, dialing the police station. When they picked up his call, she got her answer.
“Sean, it’s Jon. Yes, I’m at Mason Barnes’ house. He’s dead. Looks like a single stab wound in the back. Didn’t bleed much so I’m guessing it was pretty quick. Yeah. Send an ambulance to transport him to the hospital and tell Grace to come back here with Miller and Sykes. We’re going to have to work up the whole scene. Whoever the attacker was, they’re long gone.”
He hung up, looking over Mason’s body with a police officer’s keen eye. She could tell by his body language that he was seeing more with just a simple glance than she ever could. She watched him get down on one knee, arm bent over his leg, his whole face frowning.
This had been just a simple case of theft. A worthless trophy had been stolen for no good reason. That’s all. Now…there was a dead body. Although, she had to ask herself if maybe she knew it was always going to turn into something else. Why would she have thrown herself into this case if she thought there was nothing to it? She wasn’t that bored with her life that she needed to stick her nose into every single case that Jon had to investigate. She had other things to keep herself occupied.
It was as if she had known all along that there would be more to it. Her sixth sense had told her so. The family gift, telling her things she couldn’t know.
Now she stood there, watching Jon think and puzzle through what they were seeing. She was just beginning to think that he’d forgotten she was even here when he said, “I don’t think Mason Barnes knew the person who attacked him.”
“What? Why not?”
“He was sitting in the chair when we found him.”
“Yes, I know. I was here. I’m not sure how that leads to the killer and Mason being strangers.”
Jon spun the chair to face her. “This is a chair made for playing video games. It’s got a high, supportive back.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“Mason was stabbed in his back, Darcy.” Jon pointed to the bloody cut in Mason’s shirt. “See this? Just to the left of his spine. Right in the heart.”
Her eyes got wider as she caught on to what he was saying. “So there’s no way he was sitting down when he was stabbed.”
“Exactly. The knife would have had to go right through the chair to cut him where it did. He had to be standing up when he was stabbed, and as the killer pulled the knife out, he dropped down into the chair. There’s blood here but not much. He died almost instantly.”
“And if the killer stabbed him in the back, it means they snuck up on him.”
“Right again. Which is something you do when you don’t know your victim. If you know the person you’re about to kill, you can walk right up to them, get close, and then stab them in the chest. This was a surprise attack. Our killer—the prowler—didn’t want to risk Mason seeing him and calling for help, or going for any of those guns in the cabinet.”
“Because if he’d seen his killer coming, he would have tried to defend himself. I know I would. I’d beat the snot out of someone if they tried to hurt me.”
“I know you would. I’ve seen you do it.”
She gave him a rueful grin. She’d been lucky in her life so far. All of the dangers she’d found herself in over the years, and she was still alive to tell the tale. So far she’d been able to talk her way out of danger, or hit it over the head with a teakettle, or call on Jon for help. That could all change tomorrow, she supposed, but as for today, she was alive because she met danger head on.
Mason Barnes wasn’t given that chance.
Darcy thought it all made sense. It didn’t help them figure out who the killer was, though. After another glance, she turned away from the bedroom. She’
d seen enough dead people in her lifetime as it was. Ghosts and corpses alike. She didn’t need to see Mason Barnes lying there with his buttocks sticking up in the air.
“It’s okay,” Jon told her, still kneeling beside the body. “You can step outside if you need to. We’re obviously alone in the house and Grace and the others will be here any minute. If anything happens, just beat the snot out of someone.”
“Ha, ha,” she said. “Very funny.”
Still, she could use some fresh air. The nice, fresh cool air of a late winter day in Misty Hollow. It might do her some good.
She went down the hall, heading back for the front door the way she and Jon had come in. It didn’t hit her until the first corner that she was going the long way but she supposed it didn’t really matter. The house was one big loop, and either way led out. She looked at everything all over again as she went. Paintings of clowns. Hobby room where he melted lead and made bullets. Messy living room. She remembered seeing all of that.
But she didn’t remember seeing that…
On a shelf in the living room, there was a statue. A dull yellowish bust of a man’s head, maybe twelve inches high. It seemed out of place in this house. It wasn’t a clown. It wasn’t a cutesy dog or something like that. It didn’t seem to fit into Mason’s tastes at all.
Curious, she got closer to the shelves, and saw there was a name stamped on the bottom. Plato. Now, that really was curious. Plato had been a fifth century Greek philosopher. Mason, may God rest his soul, didn’t seem like the philosophical sort.
She picked it up off the shelf, and nearly dropped it again. This thing was heavy.
Heavy. Hadn’t she and Jon just been talking about something heavy?
Right. The SpringFest trophy, on the video when Mayor Andy was carrying it into the storage room.
Right before the mayor found it was missing.
Which was when the mayor had called them and they had started investigating.
Mayor Andy.
Heavy.
She cradled the statue in her hands, close to her chest, and doubled back down the hallways again. “Jon? Jon! I know what happened. I know why Mason was killed.”