“Light up the inside, will you?”
He did as asked. “Do you see something?”
“No, just stained and dusty padding.”
“This house reeks of urine,” Ronnie said, sidling up next to Grady on the other side of the tube with his flannel coat pulled up over her nose. “Did you know this thing was in here, Grady?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t been inside of this place before today.”
“There’s another iron lung in here,” Mac said, standing under an archway leading to the next room. “But it looks like parts are missing from it.”
Claire joined him in what appeared to be a dining room. The wallpaper was peeling in large strips, and the overhead chandelier had cobwebs draping so low they touched the top of the partially disassembled iron lung.
This machine had the side panels off with wires sticking out every which way. The top was torn off, too, and leaned against the wall. The padding on the inside was torn, chewed on, and stained with yellow spots—undoubtedly courtesy of the house’s rodent population.
Mac directed his flashlight around the room, spotlighting a couple of dust-covered wheelchairs. In the corner was an open cupboard with cardboard boxes half spilling out. Claire borrowed Mac’s light and stepped over to the cupboard. Careful not to touch where the rodents had chewed, she tugged the boxes out enough to peer into the open tops. One contained various bandages; another had syringes and empty plastic bottles. A third was half-filled with a mishmash of medical supplies.
She returned to Mac’s side. “Why two iron lungs?”
He pointed at what looked like some sort of old-fashioned vacuum attached to a metal suitcase sitting in another corner. “I think that’s a portable ventilator from the mid-1900s.”
“It’s like some sort of creepy medical museum.”
“Claire, come check this out,” Ronnie said from another archway.
She followed Ronnie into what had been the kitchen at one time. Next to an old standalone porcelain farm-style sink stood a metal hoist with a large canvas sling hanging from cables and pulleys. Several layers of dust coated the whole shindig, but it didn’t look as archaic as the iron lungs.
Another wheelchair had been parked facing the wall in the spot where a refrigerator would normally sit. Ronnie started opening a cupboard door.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Claire said. “Unless you want to chance being infected with the hantavirus.”
Ronnie winced and closed the door.
“Grady,” Claire called.
The sheriff’s shoulders filled the arched entryway. He eyed the hoist. “What?”
“When did Joe’s mom die?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to look that up. Why?”
“I just wondered if maybe she was handicapped and this was left over from her final days.”
“The house is currently owned by a J.W. Kessinger,” Mac called from the dining room. “There was no Martino on record for it, although Kessinger could have been her maiden name, I guess.”
“Or Joe’s family rented it from this Kessinger or someone in his family.”
“Or J.W. had some medical issues or a job in the medical industry and stored equipment here,” Ronnie said.
“Can we go upstairs or is it too dangerous?” Claire asked Grady.
“We can try. The place was condemned due to foundation failures according to the county records, but the roof looks shot, too. Water damage may have made its way south and rotted the wood flooring upstairs.”
“I’ll go up and check it out if you’d rather not,” Claire volunteered.
“Of course you will,” Mac said from behind Grady. He caught up with her at the stairwell. “But you’ll follow me up there, Slugger.”
“Wait!” Grady called, stopping Mac at the base of the stairwell that was missing the majority of its rail posts. “I should go first. I’m responsible for you being here. Wait until I make it to the top before following me.”
He edged past them and started up the stairs. The steps creaked and groaned but held his weight.
When he reached the top Mac started up. Claire followed after he cleared the top step.
“Take it slow, Claire,” Grady advised.
“Who was the huge guy wearing the coveralls last night? The guy who joined you at the bar,” Mac asked Grady as she climbed.
“That’s Tank. He owns Hummingbird Towing.”
“Kate had me serve him food and a drink for free.”
“I mentioned that I wasn’t used to seeing him at The Shaft,” Grady said. “He told me Kate had made a deal with him—a few meals in exchange for freeing her car from impound at the cost of the gas it took to tow it to his place.”
Claire smirked as she made it to the top. “That sounds like something Kate the wheeler-dealer would do.”
“Katie and Tank hit it off when we were at his towing place,” Ronnie said from the base of the steps.
“Kate can be quite charming when she’s trying to get her way,” Claire told them. “Are you coming up, Ronnie?”
“No, I’ll wait down here in case you guys fall through the ceiling and need me to call for help.”
“That’s a comforting thought,” Grady said and led them down a narrow hallway. Two doorways opened up off to the left, one to the right; all three were bedrooms. At the end of the hallway Claire could see part of a claw-foot bathtub through an open door.
The bedrooms were empty except for dust bunnies that were aspiring to be tumbleweeds. Pieces of ceiling were falling down in two of the rooms due to the roof leaks Grady had suspected. The floor in the second bedroom creaked something fierce when Grady stepped onto it, making a loud cracking sound that had him backing up lickety-split.
The bathroom was pea green with rusted fixtures and a broken toilet. It reeked of urine more than the rest of the house. Claire heard a thumping sound coming from the packrat debris mound between the tub and toilet. She shined a light on the midden, making out pieces of attic insulation, cardboard riff-raff, and another box of bandages in the pile. The mound shifted as the thumping continued, louder this time.
Back in the hallway, Grady directed his light up at a
