Dead and Gone

“They must have loved that.”

“No. But the hospital backed me up—the story was plausible. They had nothing to hold me on, anyway. One night, I just walked away.”

“So there’s no way of knowing what they know.”

“I guess that’s right. This is a new face for me. And I’ve been underground, even deeper than usual, for months. This happened back in August.”

“Tell me again why you need to talk to these people out here.”

“They wanted me done. Or they work for someone who does. Whoever that is, they may not know if I’m dead or alive, but sooner or later, they’ll find out. I want to find them first.”

“You’re not here to take them out?” he asked, the warning clear in his tone.

“No. No way. Whoever went to all that trouble, it couldn’t be people I don’t know. I figure the ones out here for branches, not roots. Anything happened to them, my last door would be closed. You want to go back, get your own car? I can find the address myself, no problem.”

“We’re already here,” Clancy said, pulling into a long driveway between stone columns.

“How much would a house like this go for around here?” I asked Clancy.

“Somewhere between three-quarters of a million and one-point-five, depending on the grounds, what they got inside, like that. It’s high-end, but not cream-of-the-crop. Not for this area.”

“It doesn’t look deserted.”

“Let’s see,” he said, opening his door.

The driveway had been shoveled. Professionally, it looked like, the edges squared. The double doors set into the front of the house were massive, bracketed by tall, narrow panels of stained glass. A faint light glowed behind the glass.

“No bell,” I said.

“There’s got to be a tradesman’s entrance around the side. This one, it’d only be for guests. And they’d use this,” he replied, lifting a heavy brass knocker and rapping three times against the strike plate.

We waited a couple of minutes. If the cold bothered Clancy, he gave no sign. Me, I wasn’t so sure.

“Come on,” he finally said.

He strolled around to the side of the house as if he belonged there. I followed, keeping my mouth shut. Sure enough, there was a sort of outcropping off the house, with a single door set into it. And there was a bell. Clancy pushed it. We could hear its two-tone chimes from where we stood. Clancy moved so that he was taking up all the optic room the peephole offered. A metallic voice asked, “Who is there?” and I spotted the tiny speaker set into the door frame.

“Police,” Clancy said.

“What is wrong?” the voice asked. A woman’s voice, strongly accented. Sounded nervous. But maybe it was a tinny speaker.

“Nothing at all, ma’am. We’re conducting an investigation and we thought you might perhaps be of assistance.”

“Who are you investigating?”

“Could you please open the door, ma’am?” Clancy said, a trace of impatience in his voice.

I could sense decisions being made inside. Suddenly, the door opened. The woman was short, with dark hair cropped just past her nape. She was wearing a denim skirt and a man’s white button-down shirt. Looked around late thirties, maybe younger.

“You are the police?” she asked, hovering between obsequiousness and challenge.

Clancy didn’t flash his badge like most of them did. He took it out slowly, flicked the leather case open, held it out to her, palm up. “You can write down the number,” he said gently. “Close the door, call the station, ask if I am actually a police officer. My name is Clancy. This is Rogers.”

I didn’t react to the instant name-change he’d conferred, just waited to see what would happen.

Clancy smiled. The woman’s mouth twisted as if she couldn’t make up her mind. “Please come in,” she finally said.

We entered a kitchen big enough to be a New York studio apartment. “Do you want coffee?” she asked, gesturing toward a breakfast nook built into a bay window.

“That would be lovely,” Clancy replied. “It’s cold out there.”

“That is not cold,” the woman said, taking a ceramic pot from a fancy coffeemaker and pouring two mugs, apparently accepting that Clancy would be doing all the talking. “Where I come from, this would be springtime.”

“Would that be Russia, then?” Clancy asked her, a brogue creeping into his voice.

“Siberia,” the woman said, with the kind of pride you see in earthquake survivors.

“Ah. Well, here, when the wind comes off the lake, the temperature gets all the way down to—”

“It is not temperature that makes cold.”

“You’re right,” Clancy said, gesturing with his coffee cup to make a salute, dropping the argument.

The woman made a sound of satisfaction. “You said you are investigating …?”

“I did, indeed. But you are not the …”