Authors: Blake Crouch Jordan Crouch
Chapter 26
The flashlight was practically worthless by the time Grant and Sophie reached the foyer. In the kitchen, Paige was flipping grilled cheese sandwiches at the stovetop. Grant swapped the flashlight for a pair of candles, and with his partner’s wrist still chained to his, he pulled open the door to the basement.
The darkness hovered as thick as water, and it seemed to push back against the candlelight with a palpable force, limiting the sphere of illumination to only three or four feet. Clearly, the brownstone’s recent renovation hadn’t laid a finger on this creaky set of stairs, each step bowing under Grant’s and Sophie’s weight.
The fifteenth step spit them out at the bottom and Grant held the candle above his head to get a better look.
Walls of crumbling brick climbed to pairs of windows—two near the top of the wall that faced the street, two along the back wall. One of these had been shattered. Shards of glass glinted on the rough stone floor.
A hot water boiler occupied one gloomy corner.
An electrical box another.
These were the only things in the basement that looked to have been built in the last fifty years.
There were mouse droppings everywhere, and the cellar-temperature air reeked of must.
Grant moved past an upright piano against the wall that stood draped in cobwebs. A third of its yellowed ivory keys were missing.
They stopped at the remnants of a work bench underneath the broken window.
The right-hand side of its surface had been smashed in.
“This where you dropped down into the basement?” Grant asked.
“Yeah.”
“Lucky you didn’t break your legs.”
“It was so dark, I couldn’t tell how far the drop was.”
Grant spotted a manila folder next to a rusty vise.
He set his candle down and opened it.
The first page was a spreadsheet entitled “Prior Tenants - 1990 to Present.” It consisted of three columns (Name/Dates of Occupancy/Contact Info) and nine rows of names.
Under the spreadsheet were a number of reports, each individually stapled, and all spring-clamped together. Grant recognized Stu’s handwriting on the first one.
6 out of 9 background checks, best I could do
Under the reports, he found one last item—a Residential Seller Property Disclosure. Across the top of this form, Stu had scrawled …
you owe me for this one
“This everything you asked Stu for?” Sophie said.
“Mostly.” Grant leaned down, squinting at the poor photocopy of the property disclosure, but the light was bad. “I can’t make any of this out.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out Sophie’s phone. It still had a three-quarter charge.
“Grant?”
“Yeah?”
“I can’t believe I’m about to have a serious conversation about this, but I have an observation.”
“Shoot.”
“In thinking about Seymour and Talbert and the other men, there’s a common theme which you appear to be overlooking.”
“What’s that?”
“Your sister.”
“Meaning …”
“This is
her
house. It’s
her
bedroom they’re all walking into and coming out like zombies. Or killing themselves.”
“Point being?”
“You’ve got all this background info on the house—and that’s useful—but are you sure you’re not missing something that’s staring you right in the face?”
“My sister is as much a victim—no, more so—than anyone. She’s a wreck.”
“But you have no idea what she’s been doing for the last five years. I mean … do you really even know her?”
“You’re suggesting maybe Paige is the cause of all this?”
“I’m saying you seem to be looking everywhere but the obvious direction.”
“She wasn’t even in her room when Don went up there, Sophie. And you think she’s somehow causing me to become violently ill when I step outside?”
“Who the hell knows? Assuming everything you’ve told me is true, we’re dealing with a rulebook we’ve never seen before.”
“Yes, she’s an addict and a prostitute who has fucked her own life from every possible position, but that doesn’t mean … what are you saying exactly? That Paige has put a—for lack of a better word—
curse
on this house? On me? On everyone who walks in? Does this mean she’s a witch? Come on.”
“Remember what you wrote in my birthday card last month?”
“Sure.”
“Say it back to me now.”
He shook his head.
“You forgot.”
“To Sophie. You’re the best partner I’ve ever had because you see cases from angles I could never reach.”
“Still believe that?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Still want to dismiss my input so quickly?”
One of the steps creaked bloody murder.
Grant turned and stared at the shadow of his sister.
Paige stood as still as a statue halfway down the staircase.
“Everything okay?” Grant asked.
“Dinner’s ready.” Her voice was flat, void of emotion, unreadable.
“Great.” He closed the manila folder and shelved it under his arm. “We’re coming up.”
Chapter 27
They sat at one end of the dining room table which Paige had forested in candles and cleared of the stacks of bills and junk mail. The grilled cheese sandwiches had been cut into triangles, and Paige ate quietly, eyes locked on her plate.
Grant and Sophie sat side-by-side, still cuffed together, perusing the contents of the folder. While Sophie skimmed the background reports, Grant studied the seller’s property disclosure, a form required by state law to be completed by a seller of real property in a real estate transaction. The seller was obligated to disclose the presence of any structural, water, sewer/septic, common interest issues, and the like to the buyer.
Additionally, in most states, including Washington, material facts—anything that could influence a buyer’s decision to purchase a home—had to be disclosed. This included a death on the property, particularly if violent or gruesome.
Grant flipped through the five-page document to one of the final questions:
Are there any other defects affecting the property known to the seller?
The “NO” box was checked.
Sophie said, “What’s wrong? You just sighed.”
“This disclosure form doesn’t tell me anything.”
“When did the property last change hands?”
Grant traced his finger to the bottom of the final page. The signature was indistinct, but he could read the date.
“Six years ago last March. Anything of note on your end?”
“There are actually seven background checks here. The first is on the current owner.”
“What’s their story?”
“Forty-nine year-old woman named Miranda Dupree. She’s out of state. Lives in Sacramento. Nothing juicy. Just your plain-vanilla rich bitch. She owns a bunch of properties through an LLC. The tenant prior to Paige—Terry Flowers—has had two DUIs.” She kept flipping. “Nothing else pops, but then again, Stu doesn’t have access to the major league databases.” Sophie dropped the reports on the table. “I don’t even know what we’re really looking for here, Grant.”
“You and me both. That’s how these things go, remember?”
“No, I’ve never had the pleasure of investigating a real haunted house before.”
“Resume builder.”
“Can’t wait to update mine with all this new and relevant experience I’m gaining. Promotion for sure.”
Grant grinned as he pulled out her phone and punched in a number.
“Who you calling?” Sophie asked.
“Station. You know who’s on tonight?”
“Frances, I think.”
“Good. She loves me.”
Frances answered two rings later with a voice of smoke-laced apathy. “Investigations.”
“Hi, Frances, it’s your favorite detective. How are you?”
“Well, I’m here, so draw your own conclusion.”
“Sophie and I are working on something and we’re away from our laptops. Would you mind running an address through NCIC and ViCAP?”
“Sure. One second. Okay, hit me.”
Grant stared across the table at his sister, looking for some reaction to what he was about to do, some sign of reassurance or disagreement. But she just chewed a bite of sandwich with complete absence, like she wasn’t even seated at the same table.
“Grant? You there?”
Was it worth the risk? Putting the address out there?
“Grant? Did I lose you?”
He said, “Twenty-two Crockett Street.”
He heard Frances typing.
“No love from ViCAP,” she said. More typing. “No love from NCIC.”
“Anything in our database? Maybe something that didn’t get entered into NCIC?”
Frances’s laugh sounded like rocks tumbling. “Like that could ever happen. Nothing in our database either.”
“I’m going to e-mail you a photo of a spreadsheet with nine names. I want you to run them all and call me back on Sophie’s cell with anything that pops.”
“And you need this by …”
“ASAFP.”
“Oh good. I was going to spend the night playing Minesweeper, but this will be so much more fun.”
“One more favor?”
“This what I get for being so accommodating?”
“Can we keep this request just between us?”
A long pause, and then: “You know every search gets logged automatically. Nothing I can do—”
“I understand that.”
“Oh. You don’t want me mentioning this in passing to the big man. That what you getting at?”
“Or anybody else.”
“I won’t bring it up—”
“Thank—”
“—unless someone brings it up to me. Then you on your own.”
“All I ask. You’re the best, Frances.”
Grant snapped a photo of the spreadsheet and e-mailed it to Frances from Sophie’s account.
He suddenly realized he was starving.
Bit a giant wedge out of one of the triangles.
“This is perfection,” he said. “You okay, Paige?”
She looked up.
“I’m fine.”
Sophie’s phone vibrated—a text from Dobbs.
4th man just arrived … how’s grant?
Grant said, “Paige. Paige, look at me.”
Paige raised her head.
“Your phone,” Grant said. “Where is it?”
His sister’s eyes looked distant and unfocused, even as she reached into the pocket of her kimono and held it up.
He said, “Sophie showed up, and I completely spaced it. We need to watch the video. The one you took of Steve.”
Paige’s eyes slammed back into the present.
“What video?” Sophie asked.
Paige said, “Whenever I take a man into my room, I always black out, and he’s always gone when I wake up. With this last guy, Steve, I set up my phone and recorded us.”
“Can I see it?” Grant said.
Paige shook her head. “I want to watch it first. Alone.”
Chapter 28
Paige took her phone into the kitchen.
She was gone awhile.
Grant and Sophie stayed behind in the dining room.
While they waited, Grant tapped out a response to Dobbs’s text:
grant’s ok, send pic of new guy
Grant showed Sophie Dobbs’s last text, said, “The fourth man has to be Steve. What do you make of it? Four men, none of whom—far as we know—have any personal connection beyond Paige. They go into her room. They disappear. Then they meet up. Why?”
“I wish you could’ve heard them talking. It was so strange.”
“How so?”
“Like there was this whole other conversation happening below the surface, but they were only verbally expressing a fraction of it. I know it doesn’t make sense.”
“What does anymore?”
As Grant reached for his water glass, he heard Paige gasp in the kitchen.
“Paige?” he called out. “Everything okay?”
The door to the kitchen swung open.
Paige stood in the threshold. Even in the firelight, Grant could see that her face had lost all color, the tremors in her hands so violent they extended up into her shoulders.
He rose out of his seat and went to her.
Paige pushed her phone into his chest.
“What happened?” he asked.
She shook her head, eyes welling.
He took her by the arm and helped her into the chair.
Grant set the phone on the table and looked at Sophie, a knot tightening deep in his gut.
He turned the phone lengthwise, revived the touchscreen.
The video was cued.
Eleven minutes, forty-one seconds.
• • •
For a second, Paige’s face fills the lens.
She pulls back, walks out of frame.
The view is level.
It shows a bedroom from a wide angle, three or four feet up off the floor.
Left-hand side of the frame: floor to ceiling drapes hide a window.
Right-hand side: double doors, presently closed, open into a closet.
The bed is centered almost perfectly in the shot.
Four posts reach for the ceiling.
The headboard is hidden behind a rampart of pillows.
Paige and Steve Vincent walk into frame, Paige holding his hand and guiding him toward the bed.
At least a dozen candles populate each bedside table, but still the light is poor and the picture grainy.
Paige unties the cloth belt and lets her kimono slide down her shoulders into a pool of silk around her feet.
Grant said, “How am I supposed to watch this?”
Sophie said, “Suck it up, you big baby.”
“That’s my sister.”
Grant looked at his sister.
Paige was staring hard into the table like it was a visual sanctuary.
In that moment, he felt the strangest mix of anger and compassion toward her.
A conflicting yet simultaneous desire to hold her, to love her, to hurt her.
Vincent begins to moan.
Grant glanced down at the phone.
Took his eyes a moment to piece together what he saw.
The man is on his back, spread-eagle, with Paige between his legs, her head bobbing up and down.
Grant shut his eyes, and Paige must have caught a waft of the heat coming off him, because she said, “What did you think happened up in that room?”