swung inward.
Under any other circumstances I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Felicity was home, and even though she tended to keep the doors locked, she sometimes forgot.
This time it was different.
Every hair on the back of my neck immediately rose to attention. The dull thud in the back of my head expanded to encompass my entire body. My ears began to ring, and every ethereal alarm I had was going off in sequence.
I pushed the door farther inward and stepped through. A cold gust of wind followed behind me and rustled a stack of newspaper that was sitting in a nearby chair. The interior door that led into the house was actually hanging ajar, and beyond it the room was dark.
I carefully shut the outer door, beating back the desire to panic, then took the few steps across the atrium to the kitchen door and pushed it open slowly and carefully.
“Felicity?” I called out, stepping into the room.
I paused, waiting in the darkness, but received no answer. I listened intently and could hear muffled whimpering and barking coming from deeper in the interior. Acid began churning in the pit of my stomach as the panic began to break free and crawl up my spine like a thousand spiders.
“Felicity?” I called again, louder this time, as I hurried through the kitchen and in my haste glanced against the corner of the island.
I let out a yelp and grabbed my side, then aimed myself for the dining room. “Felicity? Are you here? Answer me!”
The only sound to meet my ears was the sharpness of my own voice and the excited yelps of the dogs from somewhere inside the house.
The light was on in the living room, and it cast an eerie glow through the archway and into the dining room where I stood. Looking around, I could see my wife’s purse on the side table and her long coat draped across the back of a chair.
My racing heart slowed and I took a deep breath. She was here somewhere. Maybe she’d gone downstairs into her darkroom for something. Or maybe she was in the bedroom and couldn’t hear me over the dogs, assuming that’s where they were presently holed up.
I crossed the room and flipped the light switch. Even with the artificial wave of relief sweeping over me, the supernatural alarms were still raising a raucous clamor inside my skull. Adrenalin was dripping into my bloodstream on full flow, and I was beginning to physically shake.
The fleeting moment of calm dissolved as quickly as it had come. Something was still very wrong. With the dogs raising that much ruckus, by now I should have heard Felicity telling them to quiet down or at least come to see what was going on to have them so riled up.
I immediately bolted through the house, stumbling over my own feet with a clumsiness brought on by the unchecked anxiety. I began screaming my wife’s name like a madman. When I reached the bedroom, the dogs charged out the door the moment I opened it and proceeded to follow me on the rabid quest as I continued on to other floors and rooms.
In less than two minutes I had covered the entire house-upstairs, downstairs, her darkroom, everywhere. I was panting hard, struggling to catch my breath when I returned to the dining room.
I stopped and glanced wildly around. Eventually, my eyes fell on the table, and I stood staring at a scene that had escaped my attention in the earlier darkness. Now that I was turned to face it and the lights were on, my heart plummeted into the depths of abject despair.
A chair was overturned. The dining room table itself was canted askew as if it had been pushed or knocked out of place. And scattered across the disrupted tableau and onto the floor was the day’s mail.
I began to shake even harder when my disbelieving stare came to rest on the center of the table. There, as if placed with the utmost reverence, rested a book. Gold letters were embossed along the spine and across the cover, spelling out what, for me, were ominous words: Holy Bible.
I dropped the phone four times before my unsteady hands managed to dial 9-1-1.
CHAPTER 26
I was sitting on the floor staring straight ahead with the handset of the phone still clasped tight in my hand when the first uniformed police officers arrived on the scene. I was in so much pain I couldn’t move. Emotional distress had transcended the boundaries of the physical, and I literally ached with despair. I could feel a hole deepening in my chest and spreading outward in a bid to consume me.
I was more than happy to let it.
I didn’t fight, didn’t struggle. I just sat and let the cold darkness eat away at my soul. Right now, this pain was all I had to cling to. It was the only feeling I had left.
I had no idea what I’d told the emergency operator. All I knew is that I could hear his voice issuing faintly from the earpiece. He was asking me something it seemed, although it was just so much gibberish in my mind. Whatever I’d said to him, it had to have been barely coherent but ultimately grievous, as the two officers entered through the back door with extreme caution and weapons drawn.
I continued to sit motionless, watching as they came toward me. They were speaking but their words made no more sense than the tinny ramblings of the 9-1-1 operator. It was obvious to me that until they’d fully assessed the situation, I was considered a possible threat.
I didn’t care.
At this moment-this horrifically drawn out and extended instant in all of time and space-my life meant absolutely nothing to me. If Felicity was gone then I had no desire to continue.
A brief spark of a thought glowed in the forefront of my brain. All I had to do was move. Make a threatening gesture. Act as though I was about to train a weapon on the officers and it could all be done. They could end this hollow pain for me.
Fortunately for me, I simply couldn’t make myself do it.
I just continued to sit and embrace the pain, letting it pool deeper and deeper, until finally, I was fully immersed in it.
Sinking.
Drowning.
Then the unexpected took place. The pain actually began to fade. Warming slowly from cold agony to hot anger. From the moment I laid eyes on that Bible, my life had taken on a completely surreal property. Everything I’d ever seen, everything I’d ever accomplished, everything I’d ever set out to do, no longer mattered to me in the least. The standard by which I had lived my life seemed like a cruel joke.
I had raced immediately into the blind desire to end my life, and while that was a prospect I’d not yet ruled out, it would have to wait. I was now climbing out of the hole. A desire for vengeance was upon me, and I was becoming driven.
I was going to find Eldon Porter, and now the Rede was no longer an option. Harm none, my ass; I was going to send him to meet his God in person.
This wasn’t the first time my home had been a crime scene. I could only hope that it was going to be the last. CSU technicians assigned to the Major Case Squad were going over every inch of the house, including the garage and Felicity’s Jeep.
I could have stayed inside, but I simply couldn’t bear to watch them at work. Not when I recognized so many of them from working the Porter case earlier this year, and especially not when I considered that everyone knew what Porter had done to his victims.
No, not when I could look into their eyes and know exactly what they all were thinking.
I wandered out of the house and found myself standing outside the perimeter, smoking yet another cigarette
