The Silent Hour

fountain now, and the pond was covered with a skim of algae and leaves and hidden behind a cluster of dried, broken reeds, but I hardly cared about the water. The house held all my attention. It should have been gorgeous, but instead it was buried under a heavy layer of grime and disrepair. The windows were broken in several places and covered with dirt, but even so you could see what it must have been, what it could still be if only someone had taken care of it.

I walked up to the lower-level window and used my shirtsleeve to rub away some of the filth, then pressed my face to the glass, shielding my eyes with my hands like someone window-shopping at a store that had closed for the night.

A swimming pool was just inside, long and deep. A lap pool. Empty, of course, with stains and corrosion lining the cracked tank. Around the pool was a floor of Italian tile, many of the pieces broken, and behind that the thick plaster walls were bare. I could see two ornate columns rising behind the door that led into the next room, and a curving stone wall with a fireplace.

I stood there for a long time. Didn’t move until my breath began to fog the glass and I could no longer see. Then I stepped away and looked from the house to the silent pond and back again, suddenly feeling very ill at ease.

This was not normal. The housing market in Medina County wasn’t booming, but some people were willing to trade a long commute for a little country living, and the price tag on a place like this would have been mighty. So why not sell it? Why did you let a home like this sit empty and exposed to the elements for twelve years?

I walked away from the back of the house and up the other side of the hill. I found an angle that allowed me to look in at the second story, in at more beautiful but empty rooms. All the way around the hill was another entrance, a sunporch with almost all the glass broken out. I stepped over the jagged shards and walked to this door and repeated my face-to-the-window act. This time I saw a hallway bordered by a short partition that had recessed floodlights and doors opening to hidden rooms beyond. Back through the broken glass and into the woods, and now I was walking away from the house faster than I’d walked toward it, returning to my truck with a strange tightness in the middle of my back and sweat-dampened hair clinging to my forehead. I splashed back through the creek without a single muttered curse or a thought about my shoes and climbed up to the driveway.

People did not leave homes like this. I’d never seen anything like it, and maybe that was why it was affecting me in this way, why I felt almost relieved when I was back in the driver’s seat and had the engine going. It was just something . . . different, that was all. Felt a little off because, well, it was a little off. Abnormal. Still, I could figure out what had happened, and I could tell Harrison, and I could be done with it. I owed him that much, because his request certainly seemed genuine, convicted murderer or not. This much of the truth he had told me: The door was there in the earth, and the house beyond it was empty.

4

__________

My shoes forced a return home. I was tempted to head straight for the Medina County Recorder’s Office, find out who held the deed on the property and whether there was a mortgage, and then continue on to the auditor’s office to see whether the taxes were truly paid up and who the hell was paying them. My shoes and the lower third of my pants were soaked and coated with a slimy creek mud, though, and I didn’t want to go tramping into the county offices looking like I’d just emerged from a swamp.

I was back in the city, only a few blocks from my building, when Amy called.

“Guess who visited today?” I said in place of a hello.

“Who?”

“Parker Harrison.”

Amy Ambrose, friend-turned-girlfriend—a process not without its bumps—was well aware of the letters I’d received from Harrison.

“The psycho?”

“The rehabilitated murderer, Amy.”

“Fava beans,” she said. “Tell me he talked about fava beans.”

“Sadly, no.”

“Well, what the hell did he want? How was it? Is he crazy? I bet he’s charming. Those guys always are. Or did he get angry? I could see him getting—”

“Amy.”

“Sorry. Got carried away.”

“Indeed.” I turned left across traffic and bounced into the alley beside my building.

“So?” she prompted.

“He is unique,” I said. “More toward the charming side, definitely.”

“Please don’t tell me he charmed you into working on his case. From what I read, the guy couldn’t be any guiltier.”

“That isn’t in dispute.” I parked and shut off the engine. “He candidly admitted his guilt.”

“What did he want with you, then?”

“Help with the most minor of investigations. I mean, it’s odd that he went through all the dramatics of the letters, because this is something that shouldn’t take much time—”

“Oh, no. You agreed to do it, didn’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you’re trying to explain it in that rational, matter-of-fact tone you always use to justify something stupid.”

I smiled and didn’t answer.

“Speak,” she said. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

More silence.

“Lincoln!”

I explained it to her then, told her about Harrison’s story as quickly as possible and went on to describe the house. I knew the house would pacify her. Amy’s natural curiosity well exceeds my own.

“How much do you think the place is worth?” she asked when I was done, her voice softer.

“I’m not good with real estate, but I’d have to say a few million with all that property involved. The house is incredible, but it’s also been ignored for a long time. It would take someone willing to invest in rehabilitation.”

“I want to see it,” she said.

“Bring some waders. That creek provides the best way in.”

“Your psychopath didn’t mention that? He didn’t even know there was a gate?”

“My client did not, no.”

“Hey, you work for a murderer, you better get used to the criticism and name-calling. Anyway, maybe that means the gate is new.”

“Probably.”

“I wonder who put it up.”

“So do I. I’m going to change clothes and drive back down there and check with the auditor, see who has been paying the taxes.”

“You’re going back today?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Lot of driving for one day.”

It was, and with any other case I might have delayed the return trip. This was different, somehow. There was something about the place that had gotten under my skin after just one visit, and I wanted to know who was responsible for it, who’d kept it away from a sheriff’s sale but still didn’t bother to actually take care of the home.

“I’m not busy,” I said. “Faster I get this worked out, the faster I can terminate my relationship with Harrison.”