Steven Havill - Prolonged Exposure

“They’ve split,” I said. “It’s as simple as that. They took most of their clothes and left.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Estelle said. “If I packed in a hurry and took everything I could think of, my house would still look like two hurricanes lived there, in addition to my husband and myself.” She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the small bedroom. “There’s no sign of the child.”

She stepped to the bed and pulled down the bedspread, a neat no-pattern blue. Underneath the spread was another blue blanket, and then white sheets. She bent down and examined the pillow closely, then bent even closer and inhaled deeply.

“Not for a while,” she whispered. “Let’s try the other house.” She glanced up at me. “And then the RV.”

We turned off the lights and made sure both doors were locked, leaving the Cole house a dark, looming shadow.

We could have jogged in less time than it took to climb in the car and drive. I swung into the oncoming lane, easing the county car close to the west curb. No lights were on at 407 North Fifth. I swiveled the spotlight and washed the area in the beam’s harsh white glare.

Andy Browers’s truck with the camper in the back was parked on the concrete driveway, where the boat and trailer had been.

“Where’s the boat?” Estelle whispered.

I stopped the car and switched it off. “Good question. Maybe in the garage.”

“Wait,” Estelle said. “Pull forward just a bit.” I did so and heard her suck in a sharp breath.

“The RV is gone.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. It’s gone.”

I leaned forward, hunched over the steering wheel. “Son of a bitch.”

“Yes,” Estelle said softly. She opened her door.

Halfway across the front lawn, it occurred to me that we might have been smarter to wait for some backup, since I didn’t have a gun or my badge, or even the correct pair of glasses. And, like the two veteran officers that we were, with a combined total of half a century of experience, we hadn’t even bothered to alert Dispatch.

Estelle reached the front of Browers’s truck first and stood in the darkness, listening. I stopped beside her. The place was so quiet that our footfalls on the grass sounded amplified.

She walked around the corner of the garage, turned on her small black flashlight, and bent down to examine the ground where the RV had been parked. “No marks,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“No jack marks. Remember before? It was up on jacks-or at least looked like it was. But if the leveling jacks were actually supporting that thing, they’d be driven into the ground enough to make permanent marks.”

An uneasy tension began to coalesce in my gut. My own flashlight was about as handy as a small baseball bat. I touched her on the arm. “Let me have your gun.” She didn’t argue, just swept her hand under her jacket and pulled out the small automatic. It felt awkward in my hand; I was so used to decades of holding the rounded contours of a revolver. “Go back to the car and get another unit down here,” I said. “And bring the shotgun.”

While Estelle padded back to the car, I slipped along the side of the house to the first window and peered inside. I couldn’t see well enough to make any sort of judgment. I heard the door of 310 close, and I returned to the front steps.

“No lights,” I said, “and with that thing gone, very likely no one here. If I was a gambler, I’d bet that we’re going to find the same thing here as down the street.”

Estelle nodded. “The keys are in the truck,” she said.

Sure enough, a large wad of keys hung from the ignition of the GMC. It took a full minute to find the one that fit the front door’s lock. Finally, it turned with a solid click. I took a deep breath, twisted the key, and applied gentle pressure. With Estelle’s small 9-mm in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I nudged the door ajar with my elbow.

The air inside a confined space accumulates its own bouquet, a mixture that, if it could be analyzed in a laboratory, would astonish by its complexity-the personality of all the woodwork, the smells produced by the electrical system, even the chlorine in the treated water. Hundreds of faint aromas would mix with the more massive odors-a dirty T-shirt left hanging over the back of a chair, a carton of past-date milk, carpet mildew, human sweat.

The air from inside Andy Browers’s house drifted out through the two-inch crack I’d opened and hit the cool, still night air. I recoiled a step and held out a hand to stop Estelle.

She didn’t need the warning. The odors that wafted out were heavy and unmistakable-the smells that human beings create when they die.

“Sir…” Estelle Reyes-Guzman groaned, and I felt her touch on my right arm, featherlight.

“Stay here,” I whispered. Instead of doing as I asked, she started to move forward, as if to squeeze by me to reach the door. “No,” I said, and blocked her way. “Now do as I say and stay away from the doorway.” Even in a close-quarters whisper, my voice sounded as if it would carry for blocks.

She stopped, holding the shotgun awkwardly in both hands. “Here,” I said, taking the shotgun and handing her the pistol. “Put this away.” When she had done so, I said, “Move back.” When I was satisfied that she wasn’t going to charge ahead of me, I touched the edge of the door with my flashlight and swung it open. What was required was something no more complicated than putting my boot across the threshold and stepping inside. It was just a house.

I could not move. I didn’t know if I was breathing at all, but I could hear Estelle behind me, her exhalations coming in little choppy bursts.

After what must have been a full agonizing minute, I clicked on my flashlight, keeping it off to one side. “If prayer does any good…” I murmured, and stepped inside.

Across and down the street I heard a door slam and I froze in place, listening. Whatever had happened, the neighbors were blissfully ignorant. The houses on either side of Browers’s were vacant, with FOR SALE signs in both yards. He could have had a screaming brawl in his living room and no one would have been bothered as long as he kept the front door closed.

And that’s apparently what had happened. The floor of the foyer was vinyl tile, and a blood streak extended from the doorway toward the hall, which turned at right angles and led back to the bedrooms.

I moved a step forward, to a panel of four switches, and turned on the second one. The foyer light came on directly over my head.

Estelle stood in the doorway, looking down at the blood. “It looks like someone dragged a bloody mop across the floor,” she said.

“Stay here,” I repeated, and advanced to the hallway. There was blood on the floor, smeared in wide swathes. In one spot just beyond the access door to the gas furnace, a bloody hand had reached out and hit the wall, streaking a stain upward, as if when the hand made contact, it had been knocked upward.

The bedroom door was closed, and I tried to flatten my girth against the wall as I pinched the knob carefully between two fingers at three and nine o’clock positions and turned it. If the house had been built like a hundred others just like it, the light switch would be at chest level on the right as the door swung open in the opposite direction.

I could see the empty bed, shadowed by the light that flooded down the hallway from the foyer. I turned on my flashlight and saw the blood.

Estelle had followed me and she heard my curse. I heard her quick footsteps then as she advanced down the hallway.

With the tip of my flashlight, I tipped the bedroom light switch up and the place became as cheerful as any bedroom can be that’s a bloody nightmare.