I heard something thud. It sounded like it came from the basement.”
No answer.
“Marino?” I swab several other fluorescing stains and the presumptive test continues to be positive for blood. “Marino?”
Silence.
“Marino? Hello!”
I shout to him several more times but he doesn’t answer, and I text Lucy again. Then I call her ICE number and it goes straight to voice mail, and next I try the cell phone line I usually reach her on. She doesn’t answer that either. When I enter her unlisted unpublished home number I get an error tone and a recording.
The number you have reached is no longer in service …
The sound of a door shutting again, distant and muffled. It doesn’t sound like a normal door. It’s too heavy.
Like a vault door slamming.
“Hello?” I call out. “Hello!”
No one answers.
“Marino?”
I look around, standing perfectly still, listening. The house is silent, just the incessant noise of flies. They crawl over blood and circle sluggishly like tiny spotter planes looking for the putrefying wounds and orifices, the rotting flesh where they laid their eggs. Their buzzing sounds angry and predatory, as if they’ve been robbed of their unborn babies and denied a carcass, a food supply that was rightfully theirs. The flies seem louder even though there are fewer of them, and the stench seems just as strong with the body gone but that’s not possible.
My senses are on high alert, in overdrive and the same sensation drifts over me like a noxious vapor. I feel a presence. I feel something evil and curdled inside this house and then I think about what Marino said. Chanel Gilbert was into occult shit, and I don’t know what he meant. Maybe she consorted with the dark side, assuming there really is anything to that, and I remind myself it’s understandable if I’m feeling spied on because Lucy was. I just witnessed it.
“Marino?” I try again. “Marino are you here? Hello?”
I envision the door that leads down to a basement where I’ve not yet been.
I’ve not had the chance to search the house but I’m fairly sure that the door is off the kitchen, which is how I entered when I first got here. I came in the same way the housekeeper had earlier, and I remember noticing the closed door opposite the pantry. It occurred to me it led down into what likely was a laundry area, a cellar, possibly a kitchen for the household staff in centuries past.
I listen carefully and have waited long enough. I’m about to go look for Marino when I hear footsteps again, big heavy ones. I stay where I am and listen as they get closer. Then I see him near the staircase.
“Thank God,” I mutter.
“What’s the matter?” He walks into the foyer and his eyes instantly find the blue luminescent shapes on the floor. “What’ve we got here?”
“Someone may have tampered with the scene.”
“Yeah I’m seeing something. I don’t know what but something. Good idea to spray it down just to be on the safe side.”
“I thought you’d vanished.”
“I checked the basement and there’s no sign of anybody,” Marino says as he looks at the blue luminescence from different angles. “But the door that leads outside? It was unlocked and I know I locked it after I looked around earlier.”
“Maybe one of the other cops did it?”
“Maybe. And let me guess who. See what the hell I deal with?” His thick thumbs are busy on his phone as he sends a text. “That would be stupid, careless as shit. Probably Vogel. I’m asking him. Let’s see what he says.”
“Who?”
“The trooper. You know Typhoid Mary? He’s not thinking straight, probably got the whoop just like you said, should go home and stay home.”
“Why was the state police here anyway?” I ask.
“Nothing better to do. Plus it turns out he’s a buddy of Hyde’s, who probably cued him in about the mother. Whenever Hollywood’s involved you know how people get. Everybody wants to hop on the celebrity train. Well it’s a good thing I tried the basement door. Someone breaks in here because we left a door unlocked and talk about hell to pay?” He checks his phone. “Okay here we go. Vogel’s answered. And he says the door was locked for sure. He dead bolted it from inside. He says it should be dead bolted. It’s not.” Marino types a reply.
“Let’s get out of here.” I carry my scene case past the staircase, into a short hyphen of a dark paneled hallway, heading out the same way I came in. “As soon as we check on Lucy we’ll be back. We’ll look around carefully. Then we’ll take care of the rest of it at my office. We’ll do whatever we need to do.”
“You’ve heard nothing from her?”
“No.”
“I could send …” he starts to say but doesn’t finish.
There’s no point. Marino knows better than anybody that you don’t send police to make a wellness check on Lucy. If she’s home and okay she’s not going to open her gate, and if the police get in without her assistance they’ll set off an explosion of alarms. She also has a lot of guns.
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Marino says and now we’re in the kitchen.
It’s been remodeled in the past twenty years or so, the original woodwork replaced by a knotty pine that is lighter than the wide-board floor. I make mental notes of the white appliances, minimalist with hanging stainless steel lamps, and the Shaker-style oak table set with a single plate, a wineglass and silverware facing a window that overlooks the side of the house.
I walk closer to the table set for one, and I get the feeling again as I dig into a pocket for clean gloves and pull them on. I pick up the plate, dinner size with a colorful pattern that depicts King Arthur on a white horse draped in bloodred, surrounded by Knights of the Round Table riding after him, a castle in the background. I turn the plate over and stamped on the back is Wedgwood Bone China, Made in England. I scan the kitchen and spot an empty plate hanger to one side of the door that leads outside.
“This is peculiar.” I return the plate to the table. “This is Wedgwood, in other words a collector’s plate.” I walk over to the empty plate hanger. “It appears this is where it was hanging.” I open cupboards and survey shelves of simple white stoneware, practical, durable, dishwasher and microwave safe, no sign of Wedgwood or anything similar. “Why would you remove a decorative plate off the wall and set the table with it?”
Marino shrugs. “I don’t know.”
He moves to the sink where a cabinet is open underneath. Nearby on the black and white subway tile is a stainless steel trash can. He steps on the foot pedal and pops open the lid, peers inside and gets an astonished angry look on his face.
“What the hell?” he says under his breath.
“Now
