John Sandford - The Night Crew

But now Harper was looking past her, toward the kitchen, and he said, 'What's that? In the kitchen.'

His voice carried a chill, and Anna turned again, and looked toward the kitchen. She didn't see anything until he said, 'On the floor.' A stain spread across the floor, as though somebody had spilled hot grape jam and left it to coagulate.

Anna caught Harper's chill, and pulled away and stepped toward the kitchen. 'Careful,' he said, catching her, and she felt in her jacket pocket for the gun. They moved to the edge of the kitchen, and Anna reached inside and flipped on the light.

The stain was the size of a large human hand; liquid, purple.

'Blood,' Harper said. 'Don't go in. We might need crime scene.'

'Oh, Jesus, look at the window.' Harper looked at the window by the door. The plywood plug had been forced in, and only partly pushed back in place. 'He's got her,' Anna said. She grabbed Harper's jacket sleeve: 'He's got her, Jake. He thought she was me.'

'Gotta call Wyatt, and gimme the gun,' Harper grunted. Harper started going through the house, opening doors, checking everything, Anna trailing behind. As they went, Anna ran through the phone's memory, found Wyatt's home number, pushed the call button. Wyatt answered, sleepily: 'What?'

'This is Anna: have you seen Pam?'

Wyatt was instantly alert, picking up the vibration in her voice: 'No. What happened?'

'We came home, expecting to meet her here, but she wasn't here. But it looks like somebody broke in through the back and there's blood on the kitchen floor.'

'Oh, Jesus Christ, you stay right there. Stay there!'

And he was gone.

Anna punched in Creek's number at the hospital. Creek was awake, but hadn't seen Pam: 'What's happening, Anna?'

Anna explained, and Creek groaned, 'Goddammit, I can't move, I'm wired in here, I'm gonna get.'

'No,' Anna shouted. 'You stay there. Maybe she'll turn up. We gotta have somebody there. that's where she'll come.'

Two minutes later, a minivan screeched to a stop outside, and five seconds after that, a second one. Two plainclothes cops climbed out of each, milled for a second, then started for the door. Harper and Anna met them on the front porch: 'You're sure it's blood?' the first man asked.

'Pretty sure,' Harper said.

'She left here a half hour ago, ten minutes after they got back,' the cop said. He looked at Anna. 'She was driving your car, we figured it was all rightactually, we thought it was you.'

Another cop was kneeling in the kitchen. He sniffed the stain on the floor, and looked back at them: 'It's blood.'

'And there's the window,' Anna said. She'd gone to the garage door, opened it. The garage was empty.

'Maybe she's okay, maybe she went out for something,' Anna said; but she didn't believe it. She simply wanted someone else to believe.

Harper looked at her and shook his head.

'He didn't get in here,' one of the other cops said, defensively. 'We watched every goddamned car that came in here, and the only one that turned down the street was that Korean guy.'

'He didn't come in a car,' Anna said. 'He took my car, and there's no other car out here. He snuck in.'

'How? We were watching people on the street; and how in the hell are you gonna sneak around in this place? All the houses are jammed asshole-to-elbow and everybody's nervous about burglars and there's no place to sneak from.'

They were still arguing when Wyatt arrived. He was wearing suit pants and a jacket over a striped pajama shirt, and carried a rumpled dress shirt and tie in his fist.

He listened for two minutes, then said to Anna, 'I thought about this on the way over. It's gotta be somebody on the inside. Somebody here in Venice, probably on your street.'

'Inside?'

'Gotta be,' he said. He ticked off the points: 'He killed a guy who claimed to be having a romance with you. Okay: that could come from simply following you around. But then he came here, and he just vanished. Then he went after your friend Creek, right down the street, and he got away again.'

'He went into his house,' Harper said.

Wyatt nodded. 'That would explain a lot,' Harper said.

Anna was thinking furiously: God knows there were enough strange and troubled people in Venice; that was almost a qualification to owning a home there. But who?

'So you mean the whole thing was a coincidence?' Harper asked. 'That because it happened on the night my son died, and everything else. the animal raid and everything. we just made it up?'

Wyatt nodded. 'It's possibleor maybe he was following her that night, and something he saw set him off.'

Harper said, 'So have your guys check the logs and find out who came out of here after Anna.'

They worked through it, but Anna kept hearing Harper's word, 'coincidence'. None of it felt like coincidence: the flow of her life had turned the night of Jason's death. That felt like the beginning of something. To think that it had all started before thenmaybe long before then, in the mind of one of her neighborsjust didn't fit. Didn't feel right.

She stood up and said to Harper, 'I'm gonna run next door and talk to Hobie and Jim. They're up on the roof half the time, maybe they saw something. In fact, with everybody here, I bet they're out on the roof now.'

She went out the back door, looked up: 'Hobie? Jim? You guys up there?'

A second later, Hobie's voice floated down: 'What's going on?'

'Trouble. Can you come down?'

'Be right thereout the back door.'

Anna met them in the dark space between their two houses, explained what had happened. Jim whistled and said, 'I heard the garage door go up and down, but that was about it.'

Hobie said, 'I didn't even hear that.'

'I think you were making popcorn,' Jim said.

'I'm sorry, Anna. Jesus, I hope the guy doesn't do anything nuts.'

Anna turned back to the house. As she walked along the canal, just before she got to the steps on the back stoop, she unconsciously lifted her foot over a heavy formed-concrete flowerpot. She'd cracked her foot on it thirty times, had always sworn to move it someday. and suddenly realized it was gone. Nothing there.

People were fucking with her house.

And Anna's phone rang. She took it out of her pocket and was about to click it on, then stopped, looked at Harper: 'It's him. He wants me to hear her die.'

'Don't answer,' Harper said, urgently. He turned to Wyatt and said, 'Are you still set up on her phone?'

'Yeah.'

'You gotta get this one,' Anna said. 'I think he's calling like he called with China Lake. Maybe.'

'Jesus.' They stared at the phone until the tone stopped

Wyatt began setting up a neighborhood search, and at the same time, sealing the area off. Harper took Anna aside and said, 'We gotta tell them about Clark.'

'Not yet. Let's find the kid. Jake, it can't be Clark.'

'That sounds like wishful thinking. where'd he go tonight? Why'd he disappear?'

'We don't know that he did. We probably just missed him. Wyatt thinks we've made most of this upjust put stuff together and come up with fantasy. That's what we've done with Clark.'

'I still think.'

'Let's concentrate on McKinley. Please.' She was begging him.

'We don't even know where he is, Anna,' Harper said in exasperation.

Anna held up a hand. 'Got an idea,' she said. 'I should have thought of this before.'

She took the phone out and scrolled through to the Witch, and pushed the button. The Witch answered on the first ring.

'This is Anna,' Anna said.

'What'ya got?'

'A question. You know that kid that got in the fight with the animal activists? Nosebleed and all?'

'Yeah. But talk faster, I'm on a deadline.'

'You had him on a couple of talk shows.'

'Shit, he was on "Today", what do you mean, a couple talk shows.'