“Not that there’s any crap left worth stealin’。 Sold off the furniture, dishes, all that. Only thing brought any real money was from the cellar. An armoire, chairs, a few headboards from beds he had down there. Doors from the rooms where he locked them women.”
David wondered what kind of dark-minded people wanted items from the abattoir of a rapist-murderer and how Stuart Ulrich knew where to advertise to attract their attention.
“Had some damn serious offers, could’ve made good money from his mattresses. But the FBI hauled ’em out to some lab to test ’em for who the hell knows what and never did give ’em back.”
Hidden crickets sang in the tall brown grass, and small clouds of midges danced across the ragged lawn, sparkling like specks of glitter in the morning sunlight.
“What’s the FBI doin’ anyway, bustin’ in here after Jessup’s been found out and arrested by the sheriff? He weren’t a threat to no one by then.”
“It was their Critical Incident Response Group,” David said. “Behavioral Analysis Units Three and Four. A few times Ronny Jessup crossed state lines to snatch his victims. The Bureau is tasked with putting together the evidence for the federal prosecutor.”
As they stepped off the driveway and onto the lawn, moving toward the porch steps, Ulrich said, “Shit, Jessup pleaded guilty. It didn’t go to no damn trial. But they never did bring back even one of ’em valuable mattresses.”
Seven big crows perched on the ridgeline of the roof, peering down at them, like guardian totems put there not to ward off evil but to repulse whatever forces of good might come to reclaim this place of incalculable abominations.
The loose steps rattled underfoot, and the porch floor creaked.
Ulrich unlocked the deadbolt and pushed the door open. “There’s electricity, so there’s light. Do whatever it is you need to do. I’ll be in my truck when you’re done.”
In the shade of the porch, the man’s gray eyes were bright, direct, and keenly inquisitive.
David had the curious thought that, at night with no light but the moon, Ulrich’s stare would shine like those of lantern-eyed coyotes on the hunt.
“If you’ll leave me the key, I’ll lock up.”
Pocketing it, Ulrich said, “I’ll do the lockin’ myself after you’re gone and I’ve done the usual inspection.”
| 16 |
Nothing screamed murder house. Well-crafted narrow-plank oak floors long in need of refinishing. Dusty moth-eaten draperies, some closed, others open. A long-neglected ill-fitted living room window where years of rain, leaking under the bottom sash, had rotted the sill, stained the wall below, and damaged the flooring. Flowered wallpaper yellowed in swaths where sunshine had traveled past an undraped window. A brick firebox framed with oak columns supporting a carved mantel. Large ceiling fixtures of glass were etched with garlands of ivy, and shadows of those patterns fell in faint reflection on the floors.
David imagined that once there had been wood-legged sofas and armchairs with crocheted antimacassars on the upholstered arms and headrests. A collection of figurines in the recessed shelves that flanked the fireplace. Perhaps a grandfather clock ticking in the hallway.
The mother who had willed this property to Ronny when he was twenty-six had most likely been so genteel that she lacked the experience and capacity to wonder even for a moment if her gentle-giant son might be a monster.
David had no need to explore the second floor. It would be no different from the first. No outrages had been committed up there. The house was like the murderer himself: The horrors were not to be found in the public rooms, but were restricted to the windowless spaces below.
The cellar could be accessed only from the kitchen. Like all the interior ground-floor doors, this one was made of two-inch-thick solid-core oak. It stood ajar.
The door was hinged on the kitchen side. He opened it wider, pulling it toward him, and saw that the two deadbolt locks were blind set, with no escutcheon, keyhole, or knob on the cellar side. If a captive had escaped her cell, she could not have gotten through this barrier with other than an axe.
David wondered why Ulrich had not sold this door of doors when he’d sold those from the cells below. Perhaps even in this callous and shameless age, there were not sufficient connoisseurs of cruelty with whom to place all the available product.
David stepped onto the landing and flipped the wall switch. Light bloomed on the stairs and below. Ronny Jessup had installed tinted bulbs from which issued a rose-colored glow.
For minutes David stood at the top of the stairs, considering the place below as not a hard passage of his life to be endured, but as a scene in a novel. Writing fiction, he maintained control, had the final decision on what events would occur and what their meaning would be, as in life he nearly never did.