South Of Hell

A piano. From inside the house.

He quickly but quietly pried the nails from the wood and tried to ease open the door. The screech of the door against the linoleum floor sounded loud in the still, cold air.

The tinkle of the piano stopped.

Louis hurried through the kitchen and down the hall to the parlor. The room was latticed with sunlight coming through the old lace curtains, but nothing seemed disturbed. Except the piano stool. It was pushed back slightly from the piano, the wood seat wiped clean of dust.

“Hello?” he called.

For a second, he heard only the echo of his own voice. Then he caught the sound of footsteps, soft and quick across the planked floor, moving toward the back of the house.

He followed the sound, opening doors to empty rooms and small closets. He paused at the base of the stairs to the second floor, holding his breath and trying to pick up a creak of wood or a door closing.

“Hello!” he hollered. “Hello!”

He heard a furious rattling above his head, like someone desperately trying to open a locked door. He darted up the stairs, drawn by instinct to a small rear bedroom that overlooked the barn and the fields. Before he reached the doorway, the rattling of the doorknob stopped, replaced by fast footfalls that seemed to drift without direction through the house.

“Please stop running!” Louis called. “I won’t hurt you.”

From below came the scrape of a door. He hurried down the stairs, out of breath by the time he reached the kitchen. The outside door was wide open, the room icy with cold air.

Damn it.

He went to the porch and looked first toward the Bronco. Joe was standing against the passenger door, arms crossed. If someone had run in that direction, she would have seen the person and already been in pursuit.

Louis spun toward the backyard, his hope waning as he scanned the other buildings. Nothing. He went back inside the house and stood in the center of the kitchen, his head tripping with questions beyond who had been in here. Whoever it was knew this place. Knew it well enough to move stealthily and quickly through the maze of rooms.

Some neighbor kid who liked exploring? Or some bum using the abandoned place as a refuge? No. Neither would stop to play a piano.

Had the intruder been a woman? Had it been Jean?

He started back out to the porch, thinking he could at least search the buildings. But there was something strange right here, in this kitchen. He turned a circle, stopping as he came to face the west wall. The first time he had been here, all the cupboards had been thrown open. Now, the door of the middle lower cupboard was closed.

He moved closer.

The exterior was slatted wood, painted a dull, dark brown. A few of the narrow boards in the front were missing, giving it the look of a makeshift wooden crate.

He bent and listened for a noise from inside. When he heard nothing, he braced himself for the possibility that someone might bolt at him, then jerked the door open.

A child was huddled inside.

No, not a child. A young girl.

Thin arms clutching her knees, tangled brown hair the same color as the cupboard doors. And her brown eyes beneath the shaggy bangs — terrified, almost feral.

“She’s dead,” the girl whispered.

Joe wandered along the edge of the road, kicking at rocks to vent her irritation. At Louis, for coming back so drunk last night he couldn’t talk and then this morning because he wouldn’t talk. And at herself for taking it from him.

You could always go home.

Why hadn’t she?

“Joe!”

She turned at the sound of his voice. He was leaning out the side door of the house, waving at her.

“Joe!” he hollered. “Come in here!”

She walked to the fence and stopped. He knew she couldn’t come onto the property.

“I need your help!” he called again. “Please.”

He suddenly looked back inside the house and disappeared. Joe gave him a few seconds to come back to the porch. When he didn’t, she stuck a boot toe in the fence and climbed over. Halfway across the yellowed grass, a bad feeling in her gut, she broke into a trot.

Louis was standing in the center of the kitchen when she walked in. The kitchen registered only as a brown blur, the moldy smell pricking her nose.

“What is it?” she asked.

Louis pointed to the bottom row of cupboards. An open door blocked her view, and she stepped around it to look inside. A young girl stared back at her.

“Oh, my God,” Joe said softly. “Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” Louis said. “She won’t say anything except ‘She’s dead.’”

“Who’s dead?”

“I don’t know. That’s all she said.”

Joe dropped to her knees. The girl’s brown eyes sharpened with an unexpected alertness — assessing Joe and her ability to hurt her.

“Who are you?” Joe asked.

The girl took a slow peek up at Louis, then her gaze came back to Joe, studying her as if she were trying to make a connection that kept getting interrupted.

“My name is Joe. Tell me yours.”

The girl’s eyes brightened. “That’s my name, too,” she whispered. “Amy Jo Brandt.”

Joe looked quickly at Louis, then back at the girl.

“Will you come out of the cupboard for me?” Joe asked.

Amy looked again at Louis and gave an almost indiscernible shake of her head. Joe motioned to Louis to back away. He did, taking a position against the far wall.

Joe extended a hand, and Amy took it, allowing herself to be drawn from the cupboard. When she rose to her feet, she pulled away from Joe, pressing herself against the cupboard, a small hand raised to keep Joe from touching her. Her dirty fingers were trembling.

Joe took a long look at her.

Amy was small, barely reaching Joe’s chest. A T-shirt, faded blue and a size too small, pulled tight across her small, budding breasts. She wore ragged jeans on narrow hips. Her face was smudged with dirt, her hair a long tangle.

“Who are your parents, Amy?” Joe asked.

“My mother’s name is Jean,” Amy said. “My father…” She dropped her head, and her face disappeared behind her hair.

“Is your father’s name Owen?” Louis asked.

Amy’s eyes shot up to Louis, and she took a step back.

“Joe,” he said, “you’d better ask the questions. She doesn’t seem to want to talk to me.”

Joe went closer to Amy. The girl didn’t shrink away, but she was watching Joe’s every move, her wariness not easing until she was sure Joe was coming no closer.

This was a familiar scene, Joe thought. For most of the years she had worn a police uniform, this had been her territory: quieting the crying child, taking the statement from the rape victim, or comforting the woman whose boyfriend had knocked out her front teeth. At one time, she had resented it, this assumption by the men that she had some magic connection by virtue of her sex. But the feeling had lessened when she made detective at Miami Dade Police Department as her understanding had grown that her empathy was her greatest tool.

“Is Owen your father, Amy?” Joe asked.