Darkness on the Edge of Town (25 page)

“Here’s what I want to do,” Laura said to Chief Redbone outside the police station early the next morning.  “I want one officer on the back door, and the rest of us will go in the front.”

“I don’t know we need to do that,” Redbone said.  “The place is boarded up and you said yourself this guy is in Arizona.  We don’t have to go running in there like we’re looking for terrorists or something.”

He had a point, but it was not one Laura would concede.  She didn’t care if the place was boarded up, she wanted a safe entry.  She outlined it for him: she, Redbone, and one officer would take the front, and the third officer would take the back.  She would position herself to the left of the front door and Redbone and his officer would take the right.

She said to Redbone, “I’ll go low and you go high.  Your officer will go low.  That way I’ll cover the right side of the house and you’ll take care of the left.”

He shrugged.  “You’re calling the shots.”

Jerry Oliver drove up and got out of his car. 

Redbone called out, “Jerry, you ever check that steak knife of Ginny Peacock’s into evidence?”

“Don’t worry, it’s safe in the trunk.”

“Why don’t you do it now?”

“Can’t it wait until after we do the entry?”

“No, it can’t wait.”  Redbone looked at Laura. “Tell you what. You go with Officer Descartes, and Oliver and I’ll be right behind you.”

Warning her, perhaps, what caliber of officer Jerry Oliver was.  She hoped Descartes was better.

Officer Descartes, it turned out, was much better. 

“How’s that strep throat, Andy?” Redbone asked as a young man in an Apalachicola PD uniform emerged from the City Hall building. Redbone turned to Laura. “Got him out of bed for this thing.”

“I’m fine now, sir,” Descartes said.  “The antibiotics pretty much knocked it out.”

Redbone introduced them.  “I hope that pretty wife of yours is taking care of you.” Redbone winked at Laura.  “Newlyweds.”

Laura noticed the unmistakable outline of a protective vest under Descartes’s uniform.  That made two of them.  She’d asked Redbone earlier if he had Kevlar vests, and he’d said that the city council was still considering if it was a necessary expense.  Evidently Officer Andrew Descartes had ordered the vest on his own.  And, unlike Jerry Oliver, Descartes’s uniform was pressed and his brass polished.

The trip to Lundy’s house covered only a few blocks, allowing Laura to get a feel for the third member of the Apalachicola PD.  She ran down her plan.

“Are we clear on that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You might think because the place is boarded up that this should be a cakewalk.”

Before she could continue he said, “I don’t think that, ma’am.”

“Why not?”

“I was taught at the Academy you always need a plan. I mean, think about it, the bad guy might—have a plan.  And if he does and you don’t, you could get yourself and others killed.” He came to a stop at an intersection, scanning the street with sharp eyes. “Besides, you know what you’re going to do, you practice it, then if things go bad on you you’ll probl’y come out all right because you fell back on your training.”

“You sure you feel up to this?” she asked.  “Strep throat is nothing to fool around with.”

“I’m fine.  Those antibiotics kick major—they really do the job.” 

On Fifteenth Street now, he made a pass by the Lundy house.  He didn’t slow down, didn’t give any hint that this was the house he was interested in, although his eyes missed nothing.  He reached the end of the block, turned, and parked out of sight of the house.  He turned off the engine, tapped the wheel with his fingers.  Geared up. 

“Have you ever done this before?” she asked him.

“No, ma’am.”

“I’m not worried,” she said.  “Just trust your instincts.”

Right now, her instincts told her that at least one member of the three-man Apalachicola Police Department wasn’t up for this. Even sick, Descartes looked like the better bet. 

She stepped out into the warm morning. The grass and hedges were still soggy with dew and the street was quiet—no one around. Good.  A tickle of excitement in her own gut.  Nervousness.  Not unusual, but something to acknowledge.  Mentally she took inventory: the Sig Sauer forty caliber under her blazer, the S & W 9 millimeter in her boot, handcuffs tucked into the back pocket of her slacks. Flashlight. Pepper spray. Gloves.

They walked up to the corner.  An Apalachicola PD patrol car came up the street.  To Laura’s dismay, it stopped right in front of Lundy’s house.  Might as well be a flashing sign.  Laura wasn’t surprised to see Jerry Oliver emerge from the driver’s side.

She regretted not pushing Chief Redbone to request a SWAT response from the sheriff’s office.  She knew the chief was smart, and there was no question he knew his town. But he might be out of his depth here.  If it weren’t for the fact that the house was boarded up, she would call this off now.

She let Redbone outline the problem, only interjecting to say that she wanted Descartes to take the back and Oliver to remain in front with them.  She wanted Jerry Oliver where she could keep an eye on him.

As Redbone parroted her earlier instructions, Laura looked the house over.  Like its neighbor, it was clapboard—modest compared to some of the houses on this street.  The original color was Wedgewood blue trimmed with white, but the wood had weathered to gray.  Plywood had been hammered across the windows, the front door barred by several planks.  As they crossed the leaf-littered yard, an enormous magnolia tree swallowed them in dark shade.  Some kind of hedge Laura didn’t recognize grew around the house, something with thorns.  It had gone wild, obscuring several of the windows.  The porch was festooned with Virginia creeper that in some places had died but remained, snarled and gray like a spider web.

Gun ready, Laura crept up to the house at an angle, even though no one could see out the windows.  She stood to the left of the door, which would open inward.  But first, it would have to be stripped of the planks that had been hammered across it.

Redbone nodded to Oliver, who pried up the boards with the sharp  end of a crowbar.  When he was done, Oliver threw the crowbar on the grass with a hollow bang.

Laura crouched down, looking over to see that both Redbone and Oliver were in position.  She caught Oliver’s eye and nodded toward the gun on his hip. He sighed heavily and drew his weapon.  Redbone checked the radio to make sure Descartes was stationed at the back door.

The radio crackled.  He was in position.

Redbone tested the knob on the door. Locked.  He nodded to Oliver, who reholstered his weapon, retrieved the crowbar, and bashed the lock with repeated blows.  The door creaked open a couple of inches.

This time when Oliver threw the crowbar, it nearly took out Laura’s foot.  He caught her look and had the grace to look sheepish.  He again withdrew his weapon, but held it loosely at his side, pointed down and dangling a little behind his leg. 

She thought: I hope his complacency doesn’t catch up with him someday. 

She dropped into a crouch.  Looked at Oliver again.  He assumed a crouching position and raised his gun.  Redbone remained standing, aiming his weapon toward the left.  Laura shouted, “Police!  Search Warrant!” and shoved the door the rest of the way open, swinging back and forth into the dark, her weapon leveled on empty air.

The word that came to her was “surreal”.  As if she were in the middle of a snow globe, but the snow was the dust motes that floated in the golden light from the open doorway.  Glittering snowflakes falling across the jumping beam of her MagLite.

It floated out of the darkness at her, this strange, cluttered room.  Too much to assimilate right now. She didn’t have time. 

“Clear!” she called as she ducked into the doorway to her left. Another light—Redbone’s—jumped into the darkness, a weak ray.  She was in the kitchen.  Counter, sink, refrigerator—

“Kitchen is clear!”

Her flashlight swung in the other direction as Laura heard Oliver scrambling toward the doorway on the other side. 

“Bedroom is clear!” Oliver shouted.

They went through the house, systematically clearing every room.  Laura saw things that she did not expect to see, but it was so dark she would reserve judgment until they could get light on the situation.  They returned to the first room, the living room.

Despite her wariness, respiration was beginning to return to normal.  They’d checked every closet, every alcove.  No one home. 

The place smelled stale. 

Oliver holstered his weapon and stretched his neck as Andrew Descartes entered through the front door.  Jerry Oliver would not be punished for his inattention today.

 “Let’s get some light in here,” Laura said. “Get the rest of that plywood off.”

Once the plywood was off, there was enough light to search some of the rooms, but not all. Redbone got on the horn and made arrangements for a gas-powered generator and a pair of 500-watt quartz lamps from the Franklin County sheriff’s department. 

There was enough light, though, for Laura to think she had stepped inside an old photograph of a Victorian house—something you’d see in a history book.

The front room—the
parlor
—seemed to press in on her.  A stamped tin ceiling, an old-fashioned chandelier, dark furniture, burgundy velvet drapes swagged to reveal immaculate white lace.  Everything fringed, shirrred, swagged, or flocked.  The wallpaper was dark, the floor dominated by a large oriental carpet. Oval portraits on the walls in old, convex glass.  Bric a brac everywhere; china cabinet, ottoman, settee, footstools—

So
much
of it.

Ottoman, settee…Words people didn’t use anymore: A room out of the nineteenth century.  The operative word here was
fussy
.

“Good Lord Jesus,” muttered Redbone.  “It looks like a museum.”

Laura’s attention was caught by a sewing machine, modern vintage, on a table.  Another sewing machine that looked exactly like the first one—except smaller—a child’s machine?—sat on a shorter table. 

Laura’s throat felt dry as her latexed hand pulled open the many drawers and searched alcoves neatly stacked with patterns, thread spools, bobbins, measuring tapes.

Him and his mom, sewing together in the good old days?

But it still confused her. 

This room confused her. 

A Bible stand in the corner of the room, old and well-used.  On the inside it said, “
This Bible belongs to
Alene Davis.” 

His mother’s maiden name.

This room had a surreal quality, as if all she had to do was close her eyes and when she opened them again she’d see an abandoned house with plywood windows and cracking plaster.

She ran an index finger across an oval rosewood table.  Dust.  Several layers.  But other than that, the place was clean.  The dust was the only sign that Lundy had not been here for a long time.  Everything was neatly
displayed
, a tableau. 

A shrine?

She bent to look at the underside of the rosewood table: Ethan Allen—the store.

Not an antique, then.  An
approximate
of an antique.

She flashed her light on the ceiling.  It might have been stamped tin, or plastic made to look like stamped tin. 

Watching where she walked, Laura went down the hall.

She looked in on a bedroom.  It, too, looked frozen in time.  A single bed with lace and eyelet Victorian linens, a down comforter, heaps of satin pillows.  A wooden rocking horse.  Enormous dry flower arrangements in tall vases.  Dolls on a window seat. 

A little girl’s room, but Dale Lundy was an only child.

Onward, farther down the hall.

A boy’s room.  This one had Darth Vader sheets and posters from the seventies.  A hooked rug on polished floorboards.  Cowboy and Indian wallpaper, cornflower blue. 

Dark in here.  On an impulse, Laura walked to the window.  Carefully, she moved aside the cowboy and Indian patterned drapes with her latexed hands.  She was right.  Black-out curtains.

He’d used plywood to cover up the windows, but he’d added black-out curtains as well.  Why?  It was as if this house had to remain a secret. As if it embarrassed him in some way.  Maybe the kids at school had called him a mama’s boy. 

But he had been home-schooled—isolated from other kids.

Lonely?

At the end of the hall was what Laura assumed was the master bedroom.

She opened the door.

From every wall, Marisa de Seroux stared down at her.

Eight-by-tens, four-by-fives.  Posters, blown up and fuzzy.  Photo after photo after photo, a collage from floor to ceiling.  Mostly black and white.  All of the same girl.  Most of them candid shots, where the girl wasn’t posing or even looking at the camera.  Many of them had been blown up to catch her face.  But the majority of them were good; professional quality.  Taken with a telephoto lens, pictures of the girl, unaware, going about her life in the small town of Apalachicola.  As if she were being followed around by paparazzi.

The photos were cracked in places, as if they had curled up at one point and then been flattened again and again, glued in place.

She called Chief Redbone in. 

“What does this look like to you?”

“I’ll be damned.  He sure had a thing for her, didn’t he?”

“So this is definitely Marisa de Seroux?”

“Oh, I’d say so. That’s Misty.”

“Misty?”

“That’s what everyone knew her by.”

Laura walked to the first wall.  “She didn’t know he was taking them.”

“This makes no sense.”

“Maybe it does. It looks to me like he was obsessed with her.”  Enough to come back to town and pretend he was a member of her family?  She had seen stranger things in her career.

She inhaled.  It was musty in here; the place had been closed up for a long time.

“Hey, look at that.”  Chief Redbone motioned to a shelf crammed with books.  “That one on the end. Looks like a scrapbook.”

She walked over to the shelf and gently lifted out the scrapbook. More dust, like a blanket. The scrapbook was a cheap one he must have gotten from a drug store. It had a bright yellow sunflower on the front.