Accustomed to the Dark (9 page)

The door to the final bedroom was locked. I was bending down to use the picks when I caught a whiff of something. It was a smell that didn't really surprise me. At some level below consciousness, I suppose, I had been half-expecting it. It was the smell of decay.

10

I
DIDN
'
T BOTHER
with the lock. I leaned back, raised my foot, and I slammed it into the door, just below the knob. The door smashed open and the smell exploded out, a stench of rot and refuse and human filth. My throat cramping, I forced myself to walk in.

There was no body. In a way, I almost wished there had been.

Sitting on the smeared dust of the nightstand, next to a TV remote, was an empty glass, its sides and bottom lined with milk that had dried and cracked. Curled beside that were the remains of an old apple, black and shriveled.

The nightstand was the cleanest part of the room.

Alongside the bed, piled haphazardly on the wooden floor, were aluminum TV dinner trays, most of the food only half-eaten, some of it so old it was furred with green mold. The blanket and top sheet had been tossed back from the bed to the floor. Where the bottom sheet clung to the center of the sagging single mattress, most of the cotton was dark gray and nubby, as though it had never been washed. In the center were several large irregular yellow stains, overlapping each other.

Gray cobwebs drooped from every corner of the ceiling. The wall beside the bed was streaked with grime where greasy fingers and greasy hands had wiped themselves clean. The floor was strewn with candy wrappers, milk cartons, pizza trays, empty cardboard ice-cream pints, crumpled paper towels crusted with unidentifiable slop.

There was more garbage on top of the big stereo television. Paper bags from McDonald's and Dairy Queen. Powdery fragments of cake, desiccated crusts of bread. A piece of chocolate that had melted and run out along the walnut veneer before it hardened again. A glass bowl of something that might once have been cereal and milk, its sunken surface blistered and filmed.

Weeks must have passed, maybe months, for the room to get this foul. And Sylvia Miller had obviously been living in it all the while.

I had a sudden vision of her moving from room to room through the rest of the house, relentlessly cleaning and polishing, sweat breaking out on her forehead as she vacuumed and swept and dusted—until at last, finished, she retreated here, to her lair. Where perhaps she collapsed in relief to the filth of that bed, happily sucked in that dense, choking, poisoned air.

Had she lived like this as a kind of balance to the feverish cleanliness of the other rooms? As a kind of revenge?

But why the cleanliness? Why that neurotic balance?

Worse than neurotic. Both of them, the filth and the cleanliness, the balance itself, seemed finally self-denying, life-denying.

Had she reveled in her hidden squalor? Had it been one of those dark secrets that some damaged people clutch to their hearts with a kind of fierce bitter pride?

I looked around the room. The closet door was open, and the floor in there was littered with clothing. To the right of the door stood a square birdcage on a tall brass pole. I walked over to the cage. The feeder and the water supply were full, the foil liner was scattered with seeds and bird droppings. But there was no bird. It had flown away, perhaps, with Sylvia.

I spent over an hour in that house, most of it in Sylvia Miller's room, but I found nothing that would tell me where she might be now. There was no diary, no calendar, no revealing doodles scribbled on the front cover of the phone book, or anywhere else. There was a telephone, buried beneath the bedroom rubble, but there was no answering machine attached.

There were no personal records, no insurance papers, bank statements, sales receipts, checkbooks, utility bills. Sylvia had not only disappeared. She had never, it seemed, even existed.

I returned to the antique kitchen, washed my hands, dried them on the wash towel. I stuck the Beretta back beneath my belt, lifted the clipboard from the counter, and then I left, using the sleeve of my blazer to wipe the prints from the doorknob.

When I came out from behind the house I saw that the neighbor, across the street, was out on her lawn, lightly hosing the rose bushes that ran along the brick front of her house. Her back was toward me, but she must have sensed my presence, because abruptly she turned around, eased off on the hose nozzle, and stared at me with open curiosity.

I waved, called out “Hi,” and walked toward her. I strode up the paved driveway, carefully avoiding her well-tended lawn. I loosened the muscles of my shoulders, loosened the muscles of my face, found a smile somewhere and stretched it over teeth that ached from having recently been clenched.

She was in her sixties but trim and slender in a pair of blue Nikes, gray sweatpants, a hooded gray sweatshirt. Her hair hugged her head in soft white waves. She stood with the gun-shaped nozzle pointed downward, away from me, but I sensed that she thought of it as a weapon, and that she was ready to turn it on me.

“My name is Croft,” I told her. “Joshua Croft. I'm looking for Sylvia Miller.”

“And why would you be doing that?” she asked me, her voice giving away nothing. Bright blue eyes, a thin nose. Laugh lines along the sides of her mouth, even though she wasn't laughing at the moment. Just below her left cheekbone, a small smudge of dirt stood out against her pale skin like a fading bruise.

I had a story prepared. An insurance investigation, Sylvia a witness to an accident.

But snooping through Sylvia's house had worn me out, and the woman's frank blue eyes belied the wariness of her face. I had been fooled by blue eyes before, but I felt—or I told myself—that I might get more from her with the truth. I relaxed my face and the false smile faded away to wherever it was that false smiles went. “There was a prison break down in Santa Fe,” I said. “I think Sylvia was involved.”

Her expression didn't change. “Sylvia? It wasn't her brother who escaped.”

“No. I think she was involved with one of the men who did.”

“And you're … what? Not a policeman.”

“A private detective.”

“Representing whom?”

“No one. My partner was shot by one of the men who escaped.”

She nodded. “A woman? Rita Something? One of those lovely old Spanish names. It was on the radio.”

“Mondragón.”

She considered this. She said, “I didn't see you go up to Sylvia's house.”

“No, ma'am,” I said. “I've been poking around out back for a while.”

She considered that. “Do you have any identification, Mr.…?”

“Croft.” I took out my wallet, handed it to her. She examined the driver's license, the photocopy of the PI ticket. She handed them back to me. She said, “Sylvia's in trouble?”

“I think so, yes.” I thought that Sylvia had been in trouble for quite some time.

She hesitated for a moment, and then she made up her mind. “I'm Betsy Rudolph.” She switched the nozzle to her left hand and held out her right. I took it. Her grip was firm. “Maybe we should go inside,” she said.

Sometimes the truth can be useful.

She asked me if I'd like some tea and I said I would, and I waited while she prepared it.

It was a relief to be in a house that hadn't been mummified. Here in the living room, the gray curtains were open at the picture window, and sunlight poured into the room and streamed over the dark Colonial furniture and the white shag carpeting. On the end table beside the sofa lay issues of
Psychology Today
and
Newsweek
and a copy of the latest Elmore Leonard thriller.

There were more books in the pair of matching cherry-wood bookcases along the wall opposite the window. I stood there for a few moments, glancing over the titles. Mysteries, more thrillers, biographies, poetry anthologies, a couple of shelves of psychology texts, some expensive coffee-table art books, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Renoir.

“I just called the bank,” she said behind me.

I turned. “Excuse me?”

She held a dishtowel in her right hand. Her face was concerned, eyebrows lowered, mouth tight. There was still a smudge of dirt on her cheek. “The bank. The First National, where Sylvia works. She wasn't there. They said she was on vacation. Friday was the last day she worked.”

I nodded, waiting.

“It's not that I don't trust you, Mr. Croft,” she said. “I'm sure you're who you say you are, and I'm sure you believe everything you've told me. But I've known Sylvia since she was a little girl.” She held the dishtowel with both hands now, twisting it gently and probably unconsciously. “The idea of her being involved in a prison break … It's just so bizarre.” She frowned and she looked off at something, maybe at the past and the young Sylvia she remembered.

“Did the bank say when she'd be back?” I asked her.

“Two weeks, they said.” She shook her head slightly, as though shaking herself back into the present. “But Sylvia never mentioned anything about a vacation, and I spoke with her just last week. It doesn't—” She blinked, and then she frowned. “I'm terribly sorry. Where are my manners? Please. Sit down.” She gestured toward the sofa. “The tea is brewing. It'll be ready in a minute.”

“Thanks,” I said, and I sat down and leaned back. The big Beretta reminded me that it was there by digging into my spine.

She sat down in the armchair opposite me, leaning forward, her knees together and bent slightly to the side, as though she were wearing a cocktail dress and not that prosaic gray sweat suit. Her right arm rested along her lap and the length of the dish-towel hung down along her leg, trembling slightly as she kneaded it.

11

T
HE PSYCHOLOGY BOOKS
,” I said. “They're yours?”

She was staring at the floor. She looked up. “What? Oh. No, they were my husband's. He taught psychology at Highlands.” The state university here in Las Vegas. “He died four years ago.”

“I'm sorry.”

She nodded, still distracted, and then she looked directly at me. “Please, Mr. Croft,” she said. “Tell me about Sylvia.”

“I don't know very much, Mrs. Rudolph. I was hoping you'd be able to tell
me
about her.”

“But what makes you think she was involved in that escape from the prison?”

“An informant told me she was bringing drugs into the place. She could have also brought in a gun. And someone helped the men escape afterward, cut the perimeter wires at the penitentiary.”

“Drugs?” she said. “But Sylvia's never been involved with drugs. She doesn't even drink. And a
gun?
”

“Apparently she handed the drugs over to her brother Ronny. He handed them over to a man named Lucero. What kind of car does Sylvia drive, Mrs. Rudolph?”

She frowned again. “Well, for the longest time she owned an old station wagon, a Ford. It had belonged to her father, and she'd had it for years. Mr. Miller died in nineteen eighty, and even then it wasn't new. But I thought she'd never get rid of it.”

“But she did?”

The woman nodded. “She bought one of those big—what do they call them? Not a trailer. One of those big, self-contained things. With a stove and a bathroom?”

“An RV?”

“An RV,” she nodded. “Sylvia bought it just last week. That was when I spoke with her. It was … let's see … a week ago Saturday. I saw her drive it into her driveway. I was just coming back from my walk—I walk every day, in the evening—and I thought it was someone visiting. Visiting Sylvia, a guest. And that surprised me, you know, because Sylvia
never has
guests. But then Sylvia stepped out of it. I called to her and she came over to say hello. She told me she'd just bought it, that day. The RV. I was stunned.”

“Stunned?”

“Well, Sylvia's a very reserved woman. Repressed, my husband used to say, and I suppose he was right. I don't mean that she's not pleasant and well spoken, because she is. But coming from the kind of background she did, it's not surprising that she might be repressed. And the idea of her
camping
, and in a big old thing like that RV … It just seemed so completely incongruous.”

“Did you ask her about it?”

“Well, yes, of course. As I said, it seemed so out of character. She told me she was thinking about taking a long trip this summer. Getting away from it all. And that surprised me, too, naturally.”

“But she said this summer. Not next week.”

“No, not next week.”

“Did you happen to notice the brand name on the RV?”

“No.” She shrugged lightly, apologetically. “It never occurred to me to look.”

“Was it new?”

“I don't think so. I don't know anything about them, of course, but I don't think so. It looked very clean, very well cared for, but I think it was used.”

“And she sold the car. The Ford.”

“I assume so. I never saw it again.”

“When was the last time you saw the RV?”

She thought a moment. “Friday. Friday morning. At about seven in the morning. I happened to look out the window and it was there, in the driveway. When I looked out again—that would be around nine or so—it was gone. But Sylvia had usually left for work by then, so I didn't think anything of it.”

“It wasn't in the driveway over the weekend?”

“No.” She sat up abruptly, blue eyes wide, and for a moment I thought she had remembered something crucial. “The tea,” she said. “I'm sorry. I'd forgotten it.” She stood. “I'll be right back.”

And, a few moments later, she was, carrying a black lacquered tray that held a blue porcelain teapot, matching cups and saucers, matching sugar bowl and creamer. She set it in front of me on the coffee table. “Would you like milk or sugar?”