'A very real one, yes.'
'You sure your man's on the way with a signed and sealed search warrant, you
'Yes,” said Dyer.
'We're certain of it.'
Staubb considered his situation and his options a good deal longer before giving the word, but finally he gave in. “Do her.'
The cars moved in, the headlights turning the old place into an eerie, haunted house. It was built low to the ground, but up on cinder blocks, and Dyer spoke of growing up in a house a lot like it, spoke of playing as a child beneath it. This made Dean think of the dwarf and wonder if he ever “played” here. There was a large, squeaking, wraparound porch in need of repair. Part of it was screened in against insects. A peeling green paint outlined every window and doorway, contrasting with a long-ago faded white which had become gray. Overhead, as Staubb had indicated earlier, a chimney fire sent up spirals of the strangest smelling smoke.
'What the hell is that smell?” Staubb asked several times.
The house was rambling. This they could see from the outside. Staubb, a meticulous and careful lawman, had gotten a set of keys to the house from the local Century 21 office, where he had learned the house was leased to Dr. Hamel. They had no trouble with the locks, and this surprised Dyer and Dean.
Entering, they found a light switch, but the lamp that went on barely lit the room, sending deep and scurrying shadows in all directions. There was a brown wash to the entire interior. It was fairly clean for a man living alone. The floors were clear of dust, clothing, and tossed newspapers, and tabletops were equally clean. If they hadn't seen Hamel leave in his Mercedes, they would not have known he was using the place.
Peggy grabbed ahold of Dean's hand. “There's something eerie about this place. Feel it?'
Dean felt something, but he wasn't sure what—not just yet, anyway.
They had to proceed single-file down a hall off which stood several equally unused bedrooms. The kitchen at the very end had a door going to the empty, silent back yard. Except for a few crumbs and palmetto bugs rolling, the kitchen, too, was clean and in order—no dust, but looking as if it were never used. Nothing was out of its place save for a step stool.
'Something's strange,” said Dyer.
'What's that?” asked Staubb.
'Where's that smoke coming from, outside?'
'Don't see it coming from in here,” said Dean.
'There was a fireplace in the kitchen and in one of the bedrooms,” said Staubb.
'But no fire in either one,” said Peggy.
'Hell, it's got to be here somewhere,” said Staubb.
'Start looking for a false wall, gentlemen,” instructed Dean. Peggy joined in the search, snatching a flashlight from her belt. The silence that descended on the house as they shuffled about was complete and utterly disquieting to the soul. Dean felt entombed, as if they were on the brink of some discovery he'd rather not find. But he was so certain that Hamel was their man, and seeing him pull off in a Mercedes only added to that belief. He couldn't believe he'd been so blind to the truth for so long.
Peggy had wandered off in another direction, and Dean, determining that he'd entered the wrong room, turned to see her standing in the doorway, shaking.
'Someone's ... something outside, Dean,” she whispered. “I heard a noise. I think he's come back.'
Dean went toward the front with her, his flashlight off. In the dark, with the others searching the house, Peggy might've imagined the noise, but there was no sense taking any chances. Dean slipped quietly past her and went toward the doorway. Then he heard it, the footsteps of someone on the creaky old porch.
Dean whipped out the .38 he didn't like to carry and preferred never to use, indicating to Peggy that she was to remain silent and to warn the others. She tiptoed toward the back of the house to do so when suddenly the front door creaked open.
Dean leveled his gun at the man's head and cocked it, freezing the figure in the dark before it said, “Jesus, Dean, is that you?'
'Shit, Sid, why're you lurking around?'
'I saw the cars outside, but it was so quiet in here, I thought he'd gotten you all.'
'Do you have the warrant?'
'Yes, right here.'
'Great.'
'Doesn't look like much here anyway.'
'Back here!” shouted Dyer, apparently before Peggy could warn him of the supposed intruder.
Dean and Sid rushed to join the others. In the larger bedroom, along a wall where a chimney stood, Dyer had touched the chimney to find the stones warm. “There's two sides to this chimney. We've got to go through the wall here.'
'Where's Staubb, where's Staubb?” asked Dean, looking around in the dark, not seeing him.
Staubb half-stumbled into the room. “I ... I found it ... God, think I'm going to be sick.'
Staubb rushed for the rear of the house and emptied his stomach, retching several times before he could straighten up and return. Peggy guided the others to where she had seen Staubb earlier, and they found the open closet door and the false wall. It opened inward on a dingy little room that looked like a cave. Peggy's flash went ahead of them, and in its glow Dean caught snatches of what it was that made the big sergeant gag. The walls were lined with hair patches and scalps, some strung together. A dwarfed set of furniture gave the room an unreal appearance, and over the embers of the fire, in a large black kettle, something smouldered and lightly bubbled. Dean somehow knew that Staubb, his flashlight in hand, had entered and looked too closely at what was circling about that kettle. It made Dean's stomach churn, made his mind race back to a whirlpool in Chicago where an old woman and an old man had been drowned for the sake of a pervert's idea of glory. It didn't take Dean's imagination to know what was in the bubbling water. He held Peggy back from the room, telling her to remain outside.
'Dyer and I'll take it from here. Sid, I left my valise outside on the porch ... will you, please...?'
Sid, shaken, staring into the bowels of the lair, didn't readily answer. Instead, he repeatedly said, “We were right about Hamel, Dean ... right ... right.'
Staubb heard the request for the bag and went for it.
'Jesus,” said Dyer, “we got enough here to hang Hamel ten times over.'
'But he won't hang,” said Peggy.
Dyer and Dean looked at her.
'She's right,” said Sid.
'He'll be declared mentally incompetent. He'll be put in a mental hospital for the criminally insane.'
'He is insane,” said Dean firmly. “Our job is to prove him guilty, and get him off the streets, put him and —'
'Look at this, Dean,” said Dyer, who had begun to dig around in the little room and light candles that sat about the tables. Dean stared at a baggy but tiny set of clothes hanging from a hanger. “The dwarf,” Dyer said.
'Looks like a little kid's clothes.'
'Then there really are two of them,” said Dyer.
'I told you it was a dwarf,” said Peggy.
'The brother,” said Dean suddenly, a flash of insight hitting him.
'The what?” asked Dyer.
'Hamel's brother?” asked Sid.
'Bennimin had a twin brother, Sid.'
'Yes, but he died at birth, remember?'
'One thing you can't count on, Sid, is old medical records made out in little hamlets. Suppose the dwarf is the brother that was supposed to have died?'
'But they were
'All the more reason for this warped and perverted idea they have, and how they work so much ... in concert.'
