he was caught up in a messy investigation. Tony sighed again. “What do you got?”
“This is a strange one,” she said. “Somebody noticed a hole in the wallboard in their garage and took a look in it. He says they can see a human hand. Kind of...withered. His words.”
Tony swore. “It didn’t occur to this guy it’s probably some discarded Halloween decoration?”
“I don’t know. He was pretty shaken up.”
Thus, she hadn’t sent a uniform to check it out. She’d called him. What could he do but commit the address to memory?
Glad he’d been mowing his own lawn and not another family member’s, he was able to go inside for a quick shower and change of clothes. Badge and weapon. Out the door.
The address he’d been given wasn’t half a mile from his house. Homeowner was listed as John Marshall. Caller had been a Matt Marshall.
He could get in, he calculated, look, soothe the homeowners and be home firing up his lawn mower again in forty-five minutes, tops.
To his dismay, in that half mile, he passed from the neighborhoods made up of ranch-style homes, mostly built from the 1960s to the ’70s, to those with older houses. These weren’t as fancy as the ones close to Wakefield College, a private, very expensive, liberal arts school. Those had been handsomely restored. The bungalows on this block weren’t rundown, but homeowners hadn’t done much but keep up the painting and neatly mow the lawns. Still, they were constructed differently than newer homes. A two-by-four really was two inches by four inches, for example, rather than the current, abbreviated size still called by the misleading dimensions. Walls might be even deeper than that, the supports farther apart than in modern construction, too. He’d been counting on the fact that stuffing a body in a typical wall of a house like his was next to impossible, unless it was child-size. Here...he couldn’t say impossible.
He spotted the right number on a white house accented with a bland beige. 1940s, at a guess. The lawn in front was brown—no one here had bothered watering. The detached garage was set back a little farther from the street than the house. Tony had expected the garage door to be open, but it wasn’t. Two vehicles filled the driveway, and two more were parked at the curb in front of the house. A six-foot fence and gate blocked his view into the backyard.
Tony parked in front of a neighbor’s home, grabbed his flashlight and walked up the driveway. Before he could veer toward the front door, the gate swung open and a young woman appeared from between the house and garage. Brown hair was starting to straggle out of a ponytail. Dirt streaked one of her gently rounded cheeks. Her nose, too—no, those were freckles. Maybe her hair was more chestnut, with a hint of red?
“Oh! You’re not...” She spotted the badge and holstered gun at his hip and faltered, “Are you?” She blushed. “I mean, are you a police officer?”
“I’m Detective Tony Navarro, Frenchman Lake P.D. And you are?”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I’m rattled, and—” Breaking off again, she shook her head. “I’m Bethany Marshall. Beth. This is my dad’s house. He teaches at the community college.”
Tony nodded, still at sea but figuring she’d get to the point soon.
“Dad...well, he’s a typical absent-minded professor. It had gotten so the garage was so crammed full of stuff, you could hardly set foot in it. So my brother and sister and I are spending the weekend sorting and getting rid of things. You know.”
It had to have been the brother who’d called, then. “Where’s your father?”
She looked surprised. “He’s in the house. He’s not much good at this kind of thing.”
Okay.
“You see, we found...” She visibly stumbled over what they’d found. “Well, I guess I should just show you.”
Now, there was an idea.
“Let’s do that, Ms. Marshall,” he agreed and followed her lead through the gate and alongside the house, past a garbage can and a recycling container.
He let himself get a little distracted by Beth Marshall, who had a truly womanly body. No matchstick arms here. He wouldn’t describe her as plump, though, just curvy. He happened to like his women curvaceous instead of the currently fashionable stick-thin, so he savored the sight of her while he could.
Two people waited anxiously in the backyard, along with mountains of packed boxes that had been labeled Thrift, Keep and the like. The man said, “Beth?” and then saw Tony behind her. “Somebody came.” He sounded stressed. Tall, lean and handsome in a way that might be polished if he weren’t also sweaty, dirty and disheveled, this had to be the brother. His arm sheltered a young woman, a cute blonde with blue eyes that were puffy and a scattering of freckles across her nose. The youngest of the three, Tony guessed, and probably considered prettier than Beth by most people.
He introduced himself again and got their names. Matt Marshall and Emily Marshall. Were neither of the sisters married? He let his gaze slide to Beth’s left hand. No ring. Did any of them still live at home?
“Okay, let me take a look,” he said.
Matt started to move, but Beth shook her head. “I’ll show him.”
“You should sit down.”
“I’m okay.” She gave an unconvincing smile. “Just bruises. Really.”
“Bruises?” Tony asked, once again following her, this time through a side door into the shadowy confines of the garage.
Glancing over her shoulder, she wrinkled her nose. “I fell off the stepladder.”
“Ah.” He hated to envision her creamy skin blotched with the ugly colors of bruises.
Concentrate. He looked around. The siblings had cleared close to two-thirds of the garage, assuming it had been completely full to start with. Boxes and what looked like a lot of crap were still packed against the far wall. Tony mentally transferred the piles out in the backyard into here and thought, Holy shit. Beth had been understating the problem. Which made him wonder what the interior of the house was like.
Not his problem.
He saw the stepladder right away, and took in the single sheet of wallboard that subtly didn’t match the rest. Stains at the bottom, where bodily fluids would have pooled. Instantly snapping into cop mode, he had a bad feeling he wasn’t wasting his time after all. Didn’t look like he’d finish mowing his lawn today.
Beth hovered behind him as he mounted the ladder. He was careful not to touch the wallboard and snapped on the military-grade flashlight he carried in his left hand. It lit a slice of the interior between two-by-fours.
Despite what he’d seen in his years as a cop, the mummified human hand made his skin crawl. He could see some of the wrist—and the top of a head, the hair blond, stringy, dull but still attached. The size of the hand and arm bone and the length of hair made him believe he was looking at a woman.
How long had she been walled up in the garage of this house? And who was she?
