Husk

countryside that now appeared in the form of a dark swath under the nighttime heavens. She grimaced when she passed the Pattersons’ land along the way. The cheery yellow house seemed drab and lifeless now, no doubt its repose made unduly dour in her mind by the knowledge that nothing living dwelled there.

Several minutes later—after turning off 19 onto County Road 50—Melissa came to the long avenue of the Damerows’ driveway. The home itself, a two-story lodge-style building with decorative stonework along its base, sat well removed from the street, situated on a large and beautifully landscaped yard. In daylight the grounds had the appearance of a professionally groomed golf course.

Melissa parked along the spacious turnabout drive set before a wide three-car garage, once again trying, without success, to convince herself she’d wasted her time chasing a weak lead.

Despite the late hour, the home itself glowed bright. Security lights illuminated the front of the house and walkway, and multiple windows glowed from within.

“It’s about time,” Melissa told herself.

Crickets hiding in the low bushes along the brick sidewalk silenced their singing on her approach. She rang the bell, following up with a knock on the huge, brass-handled wood door. She waited.

After a minute she tried the bell again and knocked louder.

Lights could be on a timer.

After trying the door a third time, Melissa returned to her car and retrieved a black, four-cell flashlight from the trunk. She left her vehicle and started toward the far end of the garage, intent on doing a visual inspection of all the home’s key entry points, searching for any signs of disturbance.

She rounded the garage, one hand guiding the flashlight’s beam, probing it through the darkness, while the other rested on the butt of her holstered pistol. She hadn’t worn her bulletproof vest, but the touch of her weapon afforded her some mental armor in the form of confidence.

The Damerows’ ranch—or hobby farm, or whatever it was—sat alone, surrounded by night-cloaked forest and pastures rather than by neighboring homes. The darkness beyond reach of the security lamps appeared uncut and without end, offering a prowler easy concealment.

By the time she’d reached the backyard, she didn’t simply rest her hand on the sidearm; she gripped it.

Moving along the home’s contours, Melissa panned her flashlight around the shrubs and outer walls, unable to locate anything peculiar until she reached the back of the house. There, an impressive wood deck jutted off the main building, one large enough to accommodate a massive gas grill, a shaded picnic table, and an octagonal Jacuzzi. Melissa stepped up to a sliding glass door that connected the deck to the house and peered inside.

Beyond the parted blinds waited a spacious dining room and an open-air kitchen with appliance-stocked counters. Decorative ceiling fixtures lit both rooms, illuminating twin plate settings arranged kitty-corner on the dining table, each awaiting a dinner that apparently never got underway.

She looked to the kitchen: two amber-colored glass pots of mixed vegetables and potatoes sat on the stovetop; a loaf of French bread waited beside a cutting board; a bottle of wine that had yet to be opened stood at the far end of one counter.

Everything looked like a meal was in the process of being completed, except no power indicators glowed on the range’s settings panel and no steam rose from the two pots. Melissa couldn’t confirm it from where she stood, but she guessed a main dish of some type lay uncooked inside the stove.

She strained to see deeper into the house, looking for further irregularities that signified the kitchen scene evidence of an unnatural transgression. The far end of the dining room opened into either an entry hall or a living room, but that area vanished into a deep, concealing blackness.

Resuming her search, Melissa warned herself not to jump to conclusions. There could’ve been any number of reasons for what you just saw. Just because someone takes off before starting dinner doesn’t mean that a crime’s been committed. Besides, a big place like this must have some kind of security service looking out for it.

The thought caused her to stop in mid-stride. What the hell am I doing out here? Just look at yourself, lurking around like some paranoid lunatic! And all because of a stupid phone call. I must really be losing it. Imagine what the owners of this place would think if they come back and find me slinking around their backyard.

She shook her head at her unprofessional conduct during the last hour and fearfully wondered if the stress of her job had finally caught up with her.

Turning, she glanced back at the house and focused on a darkened ground-level window located between two evenly trimmed bushes. She spotted a small sign in the upper right corner.

“Ten bucks says that’s a security company’s ID sticker.”

She directed her light at the emblem.

And it illuminated a face staring back at her through the glass!

Melissa flinched and drew her weapon—

The shape dodged out of the light’s beam.

—then sidestepped away, moving out of the window’s line of sight.

She gasped. Crouching, she craned her head to see around the bushes now blocking her view, trying to find a way to approach the window without exposing herself.

She replayed the moment in her mind, trying to pull details from her memory. There hadn’t been much to see other than a head, but the look of the person’s face—the sight that prompted her to draw her gun—stood out clearest in her brain.

Maybe it had been a trick of the light reflecting off the glass, maybe a shadow cast by one of the bushes, but what she saw looked like the face of a dead person.

Melissa shuddered when she recalled it.  She’d seen enough lifeless bodies in her time to recognize the difference between the real thing and a mask: the waxy skin; the depthless eyes; the frozen muscles. Death had its own face, and she knew it well.

But if the person in the window had been a corpse…

Who the hell was holding it?

She knew all too well her suspect liked displays.

Weapon ready, she ducked around the nearest bush and tried to see if anyone had returned to the window. They hadn’t.

“Crap!” Now the person could be anywhere in or out of the house.

First thing you have to do is get out of this open yard, she thought.

But against her better judgment, she found herself creeping closer to the window, staying at an angle, her Smith & Wesson held forward. She eased up within mere feet of the glass, then clicked on the flashlight and pointed it into the basement.

She crouched low and peered inside.

The space looked like either a basement storage room or a laundry area of some type. Exposed cinderblocks and dark-gray concrete made up the walls and floor. She panned her light around and spotted a large white box- freezer positioned against the far wall.

She immediately recalled a portion of Frank’s book that detailed the finding of similar freezers in Kale Kane’s barn—eight, to be exact—each of which had been found to contain dozens of body parts, depending on how they’d been butchered.

She aimed her light at the floor. A mess of store-bought meats, plastic-wrapped fish, bagged vegetables, and canned juice mixes were strewn around the cooler’s base, all sitting in a puddle of water. Judging by the food’s condition, the pile had lain unattended for hours.

She swallowed hard, attempting to gulp down her fear.

Bringing the light up again, she centered its beam on an odd mark left near the freezer’s lid.

A handprint.

A bloody handprint.

There’s the probable cause you were looking for.

Melissa withdrew from the window, retracing her steps around the house—keeping watch for movement in any of the other windows, taking it slow around the corners—and hurried to her car. She opened the driver’s side door and squatted down behind it for cover. She pulled out her cell phone.

The small phone beeped to life with one touch, but when she pressed the first number, its light-up display