Rachel’s story about Ryan’s disappearance for three days. How David had ordered a car to take him home from a bar in the city. How he’d looked like he’d been on the receiving end of a beating.
I turned the card over. Written on the back in black ink was one word.
Speranza.
A phone number was jotted below it.
My heart moonlighted a funny shimmy, then went back to its day job. Okay, this was something. What, I had no idea. But it was the only business card I could see from the city, and definitely the only one with writing on it.
Okay.
I resettled the rest of the cards and paper back the way it was. Shut the drawer. Clicked off my light. Time to go.
Out in the hallway the smell of death hit me again. It wasn’t as bad this time. Maybe I was getting used to it. I once heard that people are so adaptable, they can get used to anything, so chances were, if I hung out in this house long enough, I wouldn’t even smell the last of David’s bodily functions.
Yeah. Sure. Think the crazy thoughts and leave them behind.
Doing the macabre game of Twister for a second time, I stepped around the pools of blood and entered the kitchen. Over there near the counter, Rachel had kissed me. Over here in the hall, her husband had died. I wondered again if there was an invisible chain tying the two together. Maybe someone at the other end of the number on the back of the business card could tell me.
At the top of the stairs, I paused, listening intently, thinking I’d heard something.
There it was again. A quiet click. A clock ticking? There was a grandfather clock in the game room on the lower level.
No. The clicks were too far apart.
Again. Louder this time. It was coming from the rear entry.
A brief creak. Another click.
Then a deeper shadow filled the bottom of the stairway.
Someone was in the house.
11
That feeling you get when the traffic light switches to yellow and you’re entering the intersection.
Too late to hit the brakes. Touch the gas and you’re running a red light.
Indecision locked me in place. The shadow shifted, then came closer to the stairs.
I ducked down, crab walking sideways toward the front foyer. The front door—it was my only hope. I could let myself out and hopefully get down the steps and onto the street before whoever was inside saw me.
Light glittered across broken glass in the entryway.
They hadn’t cleaned up the busted window yet. No surprise since there was still blood and piss on the floor in the hall. I couldn’t go out this way; the intruder would hear the glass breaking under my shoes. A stair creaked.
Where could I hide?
Where?
Where?
The entry closet door was beside me, and without thinking, I pulled it silently open and stepped inside.
Darkness. Complete and total. The quiet was suffocating, all the coats and sweatshirts hanging around me dampening the sound to nothing. I wouldn’t hear whoever it was approaching until they pulled the door open and blew my stupid brains out the back of my head.
I had to control my breathing. Sweat ran down my spine into the back of my pants.
Light suddenly shone beneath the door. Swept away. A flashlight.
The murderer. Obviously. They’d returned to the scene of the crime just like in every movie and book ever written. Why hadn’t I thought of that? I was a fucking mystery/thriller writer. What a goddamned disappointment I was.
The light returned. Got brighter.
Brighter.
Glass crackled under a boot.
I bit the inside of my mouth. Tasted blood.
Psalm 23 came to me then, and I recited it in my head, not out of any sense of spirituality but because it took me away from the panic, from the knowledge that if there was anything after this world, I’d be seeing it in a matter of seconds. And if there wasn’t, the darkness of the closet would be my new eternity.
The Lord is my shepherd.
The light shone bright enough under the door for me to see my feet.
I shall not want.
More glass crackled.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Footsteps and the brush of fabric against the closet door.
The light receded. Gone.
My breath slithered out of my chest, and I leaned against the back wall. What now? Stay here? Wait until whoever it was left? What if they came back?
I found the doorknob and turned it. Opened the door a crack. No flashlight, no sounds.
Wait—there. A drawer opening and closing down the hall. I could make it. I could get out without them ever knowing I was here.
Deep breath. Move.
My eyes had grown even more accustomed to the dark, so the house was more visible as I maneuvered around the glass on the floor.