It was breathless and silent, except for the hiss of sleet and the intermittent creaks of tree branches complaining under the new weight of accumulating ice. Every few steps, she’d stop and sweep the cone of light on the yard around her, but the snowy surface was pristine except for the set of prints she followed.
The ugly, tubular shape of the five-hundred-gallon propane tank came into view on the far side of the house, its metal sides flashing back her light. The trail of footprints turned into a jumble around the tank.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Iris mumbled, and felt her shoulders drop a full inch as the tension drained out of them.
The propane man. Her one and only regular visitor, and she’d forgotten all about him. A tall, round teddy bear of a nice guy with big feet and a big laugh and enough black magic to know when her tank was getting low and needed a refill. So he came to make a delivery, stopped at the house to say hello as he always did, and went about his business when he found she wasn’t home.
She shook her head at her own foolishness and turned around to slog back to the porch. Nice going, Iris. You almost called the cops on the propane man.
She never saw the prints behind the tank, close to the house. Never noticed the narrow basement window that was almost closed, but not quite.
In spite of the pokey water heater, the laboring furnace, and the windows that leaked warm air like a sieve, magic happened whenever Iris walked into the old house. No matter how badly the day had gone, the minute she walked into her cozy kitchen, it all simply fell away, almost as if the house itself refused to admit bad things. She didn’t know what it was about the place – a homeyness that came with old-fashioned woodwork and arched doorways and big fireplaces, maybe – but she did know that she’d never felt it before.
Puck was sitting in front of the refrigerator, blinking big green eyes in silent greeting. Even before taking off her coat Iris picked up Puck, stroked her silky black fur, and felt the rumbling hum of her purr against her cheek. It wasn’t much of a warm body to come home to, but tonight it felt like enough. Puck meowed a complaint when Iris set her down, and Iris knew just how she felt. Every living creature needed a hug now and then.
She shrugged out of her coat, then hung her car keys on a handmade pegboard that made it look like a janitor lived here. There were five pegs, all jammed with loaded key rings, most of which had been here when they bought the place. A hundred keys at least, and Iris had no idea what they were for. She was afraid to throw them out, thinking that eventually she’d find the secret doors they all belonged to.
Yes, she’d been a brave little soul, following the scary footprints until they proved her a fool, but she still felt compelled to make a pass through the house before she did anything else, flipping on each and every light until the place was glowing like a centenarian’s birthday cake. Once she was satisfied that she and Puck were the only two inhabitants, she dumped out a plate of tuna for the cat and poured herself a glass of wine. ‘Cheers, Puck.’
Puck sniffed the plate, bolted down an enormous mouthful, then blinked up at her mistress, seemingly confused by the rare gift of human food.
‘We’re celebrating my first day on the job, so you get albacore, I get chardonnay.’
Puck seemed satisfied with the answer, and went back to the work of eating.
What coming home to this house started, the wine finished. By her third sip, Iris felt the last of the tension seep out of her body, letting the exhaustion move in. The simple act of locking the back door seemed monumentally difficult. It was so hard to turn the ancient deadbolt, so draining to move through the house, flipping out the lights one by one, focusing on the window locks, trying to remember if they had to be turned to the right or to the left.
Great, she thought, on top of everything else, turns out you’re a cheap drunk. Three sips of wine and you’re over the moon.
She forced weary legs up the full flight of stairs to her bedroom, feeling like an Everest climber without a flag to plant in the summit. She marveled that she didn’t drown in the shower, remembered to brush her teeth and hang her holster on the front bedpost, and then she didn’t remember anything else, except how to pull the covers up to her chin.
A good night’s sleep, she thought, remembering Sampson’s words as she closed her eyes.
But there were other eyes in the basement that had looked up at the creaking floorboards as Iris had moved through the house, waiting for the floors to go silent.
23
Iris was never certain what awakened her in the middle of the night – not in this house. Squirrels in the attic bowling with their winter cache of nuts; mice in the walls, shredding what was left of the hundred-year-old newspapers they used for insulation in the old days; branches from an overgrown tree scraping the siding; and once, a black bear coming out of hibernation long enough to poke around her barbecue grill for summer leftovers. You never knew.
And tonight she revisited her day in her dreams, from the slow grinding of her almost-dead battery in the morning to the crunch of snow under her feet as she followed the propane man’s footprints at night. Once again she saw Steve Doyle’s dead face and Julie Albright’s ruined one, which didn’t do a lot for a restful sleep, either.
She rolled her head to the right to read the digital clock. Three a.m. Plenty of time to snuggle back under the down comforter for a few more hours before her bare feet hit the cold floor, to start another day. She closed her eyes and started to drift off, thinking that she had to stop turning the heat down so low at night, because, damn, it was cold.
Some noises disturbed your sleep; some yanked you up out of blackness like you were a hooked fish on a line, snapping open your eyes and making your heart pound. Was it a real noise, or one you dreamed? You never knew that, either, so you lay there holding your breath, listening hard, waiting for it to happen again, afraid that it would, because the noise that Iris had heard sounded like a wild animal screaming.
She counted her breaths, thinking they were way too fast, trying to keep up with her heart. She got all the way to fifteen before she heard it again and sat straight up in bed.
Was that Puck? It sounded a little like the old cat, and then again it didn’t. It was incredibly loud, the kind of long, complaining yowl that made your blood run cold, and Puck never so much as meowed during the night. The only time she’d ever heard her make a sound like that was the time Mark had accidentally slammed her tail in the door…
She was out of bed before another second passed, racing down the stairs, flipping on lights as she went, her thoughts faster than her feet or heart, wondering what horrible thing had happened to the old cat, if she had the vet’s emergency number written down, if she could start the damn truck to get the beast to the vet’s office before she died of whatever injury she’d managed to sustain… and then Iris hit the kitchen and stopped dead.
The back door was wide open, a frigid wind was blowing through the screen door, filling the house with winter, and Puck was outside on the porch, yowling like a banshee.
It turned out that Iris was more cat owner than cop, because she jerked open the screen door to let Puck in before she ever thought of leaving prints on the handle. It was only after the streak of black, angry fur barreled into the kitchen and off to God knew where to warm up that she realized she shouldn’t have touched the handle. What that realization implied hit a second later.
Someone had been here. Inside the house. And maybe they still were.
Iris thought she had already felt fear this day – of the dark, the barn, and then the footprints – but how pathetic those silly little fears seemed now, in the face of genuine terror. There were biological reactions she’d never experienced, happening so fast she could barely catalog them. Muscles tensing to run or fight, adrenaline shooting through her veins, flooding her with heat while the shrapnel of a million shattered thoughts started ricocheting through her brain: Where is it safe, outside, inside, I have to get my weapon, should I search the house, was this in the handbook, how many electricians does it take to screw in a lightbulb, and isn’t adrenaline supposed to make you focus, goddamnit?
She took a deep breath and willed her heart to slow down and her knees to lock, willed all that pesky, mind- scrambling adrenaline to break down into its original, benign components and leave her alone, because she obviously didn’t have the kind of thrill-seeking personality that thrived on endorphins.
Nice career choice, Rikker.
