“We’re fine,” Pam answered, though she too, like Rudy, thought “fine” was a long way from the truth. She had an awful feeling, almost a certainty, that Helen Iverson was dead. She’d seen her walking back to her own house from the Cheng’s after the excitement at the end of the street had died down, but hadn’t seen her since. Scared, she’d climbed up on the roof with her son, and though she’d heard a volley of gunshots as she made her way up the ladder, Shane claimed he hadn’t seen anything. She wanted to ask Mike about it, and the shot they’d just heard from the Navaro’s, but she thought those questions could wait until later, when they were face to face and not shouting down from the rooftop for everyone to hear.
Her husband seemed to recognize this in her expression, in the crisscross posture of her arms and legs.
“We’re missing one of the Navaro boys,” he told them, creased eyes squinting against the sun. “The four- year-old; Rudy says his name is Zack.” He paused a beat. “Have either of you seen him?”
“No,” Shane replied, looking like a dead spirit perched atop the roof, his rifle at a restful slant between his legs. “But there were some shots that sounded like they came from behind the Hanna’s.”
Mike looked across the cul-de-sac.
“Two or three, I think.” He shrugged. “They weren’t very loud.”
Mike sighed, troubled by this. “Probably Larry shooting at something out his back window,” he decided, imagining something wandering down from the hilltop. Zack Navaro flickered briefly across his mind. “Keep an eye out that way,” he told them. Their heads lifted toward something behind him and he turned to see Rudy emerging from the Navaro’s, a bundled blanket swinging from his hand. The three of them watched as he approached the piles of carrion at the end of the street and dropped the bloodstained bundle into the arms of its mother. He stared at it for a moment, as if undecided whether or not to leave it, then he looked up and saw them watching.
His head tilted toward the Sturling’s and Mike nodded.
“We need to look in on Keith and Naomi,” Mike told Pam. “You two stay right where you are. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Michael, be
He smiled then started walking. He was almost to the street when Shane called out to him.
“Mrs. Sturling… she didn’t look very well.” He hesitated, looking even grimmer. “I don’t think she made it.”
Mike nodded. “I’ll be careful,” he promised.
22
He met up with Rudy at the curb and the two of them followed the blood trail into the house. There was a surprising amount to follow, especially once they left the lawn. Inside the Sturling’s living room, they found themselves standing on an oatmeal-colored carpet, its knap thick and luxurious, with flecks of blue and brown sprinkled in to help hide the dirt and give it texture. The loss of blood was nothing less than shocking against it, as if it had come off a roller, deep red and on clearance all day. The smell alone was overwhelming.
The two men glanced uneasily at one another, knowing the only thing they’d find at the end of such a trail would be a corpse, which of course might or might not still be there.
Without a word, they checked their guns before proceeding.
Beneath the blood the house smelled stale, like a cardboard box left out in the sun. It was dark, boarded up. A faint fan of light fell against the kitchen floor, but the blood didn’t go anywhere near it; instead it veered down the hall, toward a bedroom or the bath, through nothing but gloom.
They listened but nothing moved, no one answered, though the dark itself seemed to grin back at them.
Rudy found himself wishing he’d brought a pistol, something that was easier to wield within the close confines of a house. Pistols, however, were in short supply and he’d left one of the ones they’d taken at 7-Eleven with Aimee. Another thing they forgotten was a flashlight. Over at the Navaro’s they hadn’t needed one because there was only a thin gauze of curtain over the windows, not ?-inch plywood. The Navaros had bowed out of the game before the reinforcements had gone up. Here though, at the Sturling’s, there was only a small peninsula of light with a sea of darkness pressing around them. Another step and they’d be wading in it; two more and they’d be drowning.
Fortunately, a solution presented itself. Since the power had gone out, most everyone had taken to keeping flashlights or candles within easy reach, and the Sturling’s were no exception. There was a small penlight just inside the door, on a table that had once collected bills and car keys and sunglasses. It lay there like an unspoken invitation.
Mike picked it up and juggled his shotgun to get it working. A thin yellow beam appeared, ending on the ceiling as a fluid ellipse. He pointed it down the hall. The blood scraped the wall then hooked into a darkened doorway.
The grin widened.
“I don’t like this,” Mike said unhappily, his voice directed at Rudy now, as if his neighbor could somehow absolve him. Wave his hand and pronounce him free from any further responsibility. “He should have answered.”
Rudy agreed. They stood fast on their lighted peninsula, escape just a step away.
“Any plans or suggestions?” Mike wondered.
Rudy admitted that nothing came to mind, except the most obvious: follow the blood.
Mike frowned. “I was afraid of that.” He studied the darkened hall and sighed. “I told Pam I’d be careful.”
“Oh yes,” Rudy agreed. “Most definitely.”
The two of them inched forward, guns out.
Trying not to step on the trail.
23
The first bedroom they came to was a spare, a desk firmly anchored in the far corner. It had likely started out as an office or den and then simply became a receptacle for everything the Sturlings couldn’t bring themselves to throw away. A treadmill buried under a fall of winter clothes, a bookcase loaded with old videotapes and computer programs. A sewing machine surrounded by shoeboxes and magazines.
A thin layer of dust lay over the hard surfaces, as if the room had already been abandoned or was in the process of becoming a museum display, a place tourists would visit but find too dull to photograph. The flashlight swept the corners and poked about underneath the desk, but quickly decided there was little else to see. The room was unoccupied.
The blood led as far as the next doorway, then became a sticky pool on the bathroom floor, which Mike entered hesitantly in his bare feet. Here they found Naomi, jammed limply in a corner by the tub with her eyes staring up at them, as if the last thing she’d seen had been standing just where they were. Her pretty blonde hair was in bloody tangles.
A step or two further and they saw the bullethole, then the dark splash of brain matter sticking to the wall behind her.
“
