Seldom Seen in August

his shoulders. The hair on the nape of his neck prickled and he glanced back over his shoulder. There were windows all around him, staring vapidly down from over a labyrinth of privacy fences.

He shook his head. Flaws, or not, he didn’t have a choice. It was hide or keep running and he could only run so far before they wore him down. He reached out a hand, closed his eyes for a moment, and gripped the cold metal handle on the sliding door. C’mon, you sonofabitch, he thought, and pulled. To his amazement, the door slid open with a soft whoosh.

He paused on the threshold, listening, heart hammering against his ribs.

There was no sound from within.

Wade smiled. Another furtive glance over his shoulder, and he was inside.

CHAPTER TWO

The interior of the house offered no surprises.

Wade gently slid the door shut behind him and locked it, then pulled the curtains.

He turned to inspect his surroundings, but it was hard to make anything out in the gloom. What he could tell was that beneath his feet was a carpet that had seen better days and the air smelled faintly of furniture polish and pine air freshener. He did not need to know what the room looked like, only that he was the only one currently occupying it.

He felt a little better now that he was off the street and hidden, though he remained intrinsically aware that this did not constitute freedom. He was far from out of the woods. Anything could still go wrong, and in cases like this, usually did. Until he knew that he was alone in the house, he wouldn’t let his guard down. Even then, he would remain on edge until a viable long-term escape plan presented itself, if one presented itself and he wasn’t just dawdling here while a juggernaut of doom bore steadily down upon him.

Goddamn you anyway, Cartwright, he thought, clenching his teeth in frustration. He remained where he was, standing in the darkness by the drawn curtains, listening.

The house was quiet as the grave.

Not fool enough to take that as proof that he was alone, Wade cocked the gun as quietly as he could, which was not quiet at all, and slowly crossed the room, bound for the door in the wall opposite. Twice he barked his shin against furniture that had been lurking in the dark and had to restrain a gasp of pain. At length, ankle throbbing, he found the door and beside it a light switch he yearned to turn on, but resisted just in case it gave him away should someone be waiting for him in the hall.

Quietly, he opened the door.

A naked bulb cast sickly yellow light down on the narrow hallway.

There were coats, children’s by the look of them, hooked over the newel post at the bottom of a short flight of carpeted stairs. A punctured football sat on one step beside the naked head and torso of a baby doll. Its eyes were closed as if sleeping. Wade gave it only the most cursory glance. He hated dolls, and had ever since that movie he’d seen as a kid in which one of them had opened its eyes in a darkened bedroom and grinned at a terrified child. The stupid movie hadn’t even been about dolls, he recalled, and shook his head as he edged into the hall.

Ahead of him was a doorway, the light from the hall unable to reach very far over the threshold. There’s no one here, Wade told himself. He was alone. He could feel it, but he knew better than to rely solely on instinct. Last time he’d trusted his gut, he’d enlisted Cartwright to help him with a heist and now six people were dead and the police were hunting them both. Unless of course they had already caught Cartwright, and Wade might not have been bothered to learn that was the case had his idiot partner not been lugging around with him the fifty grand or so they’d cleared from the bank job.

He moved on, back pressed to the wall, until he was inside the kitchen. It smelled like disinfectant in here, and he imagined the chaos of a busy family in the morning: kids yelling and shoveling cereal into their maws while their parents got dressed and tried not to let show the hatred and regret they felt for their own lives and each other. He pictured a woman, just this side of good-looking, her teeth grit as she vigorously scrubbed down the kitchen surfaces while pretending the sponge was a lathe and the counter her husband’s face. They would exchange pleasant farewells for the sake of the kids, all the while secretly wishing fatal misfortune on one another.

Misery.

Wade had lived it and so found it easy to envision. Indeed, though he recalled little of his childhood, so generic was this house that it summoned what unpleasant memories he had retained of it.

Pain.

Anger.

Annoyed, he shook off the reverie before it could properly take hold of him and moved further into the kitchen, sure now that he was alone in the house. The kitchen was empty. The dirty cups, bowls, and glasses piled in the sink in the center of the L-shaped counter confirmed his suspicion that what he had walked into was the aftermath of an ordinary morning in a hectic household. It was Monday; if he was lucky, the family would be gone until early evening when school and work relinquished its hold on them. If not, and someone came home for lunch, things could get ugly. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

There was a small calendar tacked to a corkboard beside the refrigerator. He noted that today’s date had been circled in red marker. August 16^th. The picture above it was of a lush green meadow, speckled with dandelions beneath a sprawling blue sky. It might have been a pretty scene if not for the monstrous black satellite dish dominating the right side of the picture, the red tip of its phallic probe turned heavenward.

After uncocking the gun and tucking it back into his waistband, Wade opened the refrigerator and helped himself to some milk, straight from the carton. He belched and, still thirsty, exchanged the milk for a cold bottle of water, which did a better job of soothing his parched throat. His stomach growled, but he decided that could be dealt with after he’d inspected the upper rooms. He finished the bottle of water and tossed it in the trashcan, then moved to the large window, which looked out on the street. Cautiously, he fingered open the Venetian blinds.

Cars sat silently beside curbs.

Windows reflected the clear blue sky.

Sunlight through the sycamore trees painted leopard skin patterns on the sidewalks. Heat shimmered on the road.

But there was nobody on the street, no neighbors enjoying a day off, no retirees out mowing their lawns, no housewives gathering up the morning paper, no dogs barking despite the signs he’d seen that claimed the place was chock full of them. It was completely deserted, which was odd. If he’d chosen a dilapidated neighborhood as his hiding place, the absence of people would not have bothered him so much, but Seldom Seen Drive, while clearly not upper class, was no ghetto either. There should have been someone out there.

And you should be thankful that there isn’t, he told himself and a moment later nodded his agreement. There would be countless obstacles in his path before he made it home free, he knew. Better not to question the things that weren’t a problem.

He let the blinds snap back into place and returned to the hall. Averting his gaze, he stepped over the doll torso and quietly ascended the stairs. The further up he went, the darker it got until his progress slowed to a crawl and he was left fumbling for a light switch. Again he was reminded of the danger of switching on a light before he had explored the whole house, but concluded that it was equally dangerous to be trying to explore it blindly.

“Shit,” he hissed, almost tripping when his foot connected with something hard and unyielding. He steadied himself, dropped to his haunches and listened for signs that someone had been drawn to his presence on the landing, but heard nothing. Only his own steady breathing. He squinted down at the floor and reached out with his hands until they touched on something smooth and round. An attempt to form a picture with his hands of what the object might be proved fruitless, so he lifted it, surprised by the weight, and lugged it over to the head of the stairs where he set it down on the top step.

It was a large pink ceramic pig with a slot in its back.

Jesus, Wade thought. A friggin’ piggy bank.

It was loaded with coins, but why it had been left in the middle of the landing, like a lure for thieves pettier