“I was just trying to save you time,” she said. “I know how hard it is to get the information when you don’t have a badge.”
He looked up at her quickly.
She was standing there in just her bra and panties, all sharp angles, long, lean muscle, and silken hair. The image should have been enough to wash away all thought
It was a standard photocopy, the same thing you’d see hanging in police stations anywhere in the state.
NAME: Jean Lynne Brandt
DATE OF BIRTH: June 6, 1956
HEIGHT: 5'3'
WEIGHT: 102
HAIR: Brown
EYES: Brown
DISTINGUISHING MARKS: None
LAST SEEN WEARING: Blue dress, brown coat.
JEWELRY: Gold wedding band
MISSING SINCE: 12-4-80
There was a blurry picture in the upper right corner. Jean Brandt stared back at him, a heart-shaped face and dark eyes that had a defeated glaze to them. Her hair was covered in a scarf, a few wisps of dark hair framing her forehead.
A solid gray sky filled the small space around her, and even though Louis couldn’t see any buildings, he had the sense that the photo had been taken at the farm.
It was a bad picture to attach to a police bulletin, taken from a distance, unfocused, and sloppily cropped too close to the right side of her head. It probably had been cropped to remove Owen before they copied the bulletins. But Louis was sure the cops hadn’t done the cutting. Maybe Owen had.
And he knew Shockey was right. Owen didn’t give a damn about Jean, alive or dead.
Suddenly, the light went out, and the bed jiggled. Joe’s arms came around him from behind, folding over his chest and beginning an eager caress.
“Come on,” she whispered in his ear. “I just wanted to help. Don’t be mad.”
Her hands slipped down the front of his body, and she started chewing at his shoulder with catlike nibbles. He finally closed his eyes and tossed the folder, turning to take her into his arms.
Chapter Seven
They were standing at the side of the gravel road. The light rain that had started around six that morning was still coming down.
“So you’re just going to leave me here?”
Louis turned to look back at Joe.
“You know you can’t come,” he said.
She pursed her lips. “I’ll wait in the car,” she said.
He heard the thud of the car door as he walked away but didn’t look back. At the padlocked gate he stopped at the trespassers will be shot sign. He thrust the flashlight into a back pocket and scaled the fence, landing in the wet grass on the other side.
He paused to glance back at Joe’s Bronco. He could see her watching him, and he knew she was pissed. As a cop, she couldn’t set foot on this property without a warrant. She knew that. Just as she knew that as a PI, he wasn’t subject to the same strict legal restraints.
He trudged through the high, wet weeds, a small nubby pit in his gut relishing the fact — for once — that she had a badge and he didn’t. Even as his head was telling him what a macho asshole he was for thinking that, even as his dick was telling him how much he had loved being inside her last night, even as his heart was telling him how much he loved her.
He climbed the three steps onto the sagging wood porch and looked back one more time to the car. Hell, she was just trying to help. He would make it up to her tonight with dinner and a good bottle of wine.
There was another padlock on the front door. This one was new. Something else new — a bright orange foreclosure sign — was pasted to the glass of the front door. Louis didn’t remember seeing it the first time he had been here with Shockey, and even out by the gate, the bright orange would have been noticeable.
Louis looked around for options. Some of the windows were boarded up, but a few were still exposed, the rippled old glass filmed with years of dirt.
He walked around the corner of the house, looking out over the land. The sheer size of the rolling land and the overgrown trees and weeds shielded the house from any neighbors. He couldn’t remember even seeing another house on the drive down the lonely and rutted Lethe Creek Road.
There was no sound except the caw of a crow. He spotted the huge black bird perched on the wheel of a rusting tractor. It was hunched down in its oily wet feathers, staring at him.
He jumped up onto the side porch. Three weathered planks were nailed over the door. He grabbed the edge of the top plank with both hands and pulled. With a loud crack, the board came off. A heavy fluttering sound. He turned. The bird was gone.
It took five minutes to work the other two boards off. He peered into the dusty window of the door. It looked like a kitchen beyond.
No lock on this door. He tried the knob, and it turned easily — too easily — but the door didn’t budge. He pressed a shoulder against it and gave a hard shove. The door creaked open.
He looked back at the road. The Bronco wasn’t visible from where he was. With a final glance around the grounds, he went into the house.
The smell. Not what a house should be but weirdly familiar. Then it hit him what it reminded him of: the basement of one of his foster homes in Detroit. Closed and fusty, with the powdery smell of old decaying newspapers.
He closed the door behind him and took in the small room. It was a kitchen, though most of what anyone normally would identify with a kitchen was gone. No appliances, just dusty outlines on the scuffed blue linoleum. Dark scarred wood paneling halfway up the walls, then faded yellow paper spotted with black mold. One wall of built-in cupboards in the same dark wood, the doors flung open to empty shelves. A dripping sound drew his eyes to a sink under the room’s single small window. The water had left a vivid streak of dark red rust in the grimy white sink.
He moved to the next room, stepping carefully over the piles of trash on the dull wood-plank floor.
An archway led to what he assumed had once been a dining room. It was filled with stacks of cardboard boxes. He could make out a round oak table in the middle with several slatted chairs. The table was heaped with more boxes. Each was sealed with packing tape and imprinted with the same letters: HANSEN BROS. AUCTIONS AND ESTATE SALES.
He started down a narrow hallway, clicking on the flashlight against the gloom. The beam picked up old pictures and carved frames propped against the blue-papered walls. More Hansen cartons. A broken ladderback chair.
The place was a warren of small rooms, each with a different wallpaper and different linoleum. Faded stripes, pastoral scenes, and flowers on the walls. Checkerboards, geometrics, and ugly patterns on the chipped and peeling floors.
He had come to the front of the house. Two large windows, draped with yellowed lace panels, let in the gloomy light. He clicked the flashlight off. The room — he guessed it was called a parlor at one time — was empty except for a dust-covered upright piano shoved in the corner. The top of the piano was stacked three feet high with long, thin boxes. He took one down, and the box crumpled in his fingers. It held a player piano roll, the paper as
