“It’s just a dead end down here,” I said.
“No, there’s another street down here, see?”
He was right. You didn’t see it until you came to the very end, a side street named Hickory.
I took the left and saw the police car immediately. I held onto the wheel and swung the truck all the way through, like I was just turning around. “Where are you going?” he said. “His house is down that street.”
“There’s a police car in front of the house,” I said. “I don’t want them to see me.”
“Just cruise by like you’re looking for something else.”
“No, they might be watching for my truck,” I said. “I wouldn’t put it past Maven.” I went back up Walnut Street a few houses and pulled over.
“So what are you going to do?” he asked.
It was a good question. In the back of my mind I knew that there was only one thing I could do if I wanted to answer all the questions. There was no way that Maven would ever let me see those papers. The news clippings, the diary. I couldn’t think of a way to force him to show them to me. Technically, they were all pieces of evidence that would be used to close the file on three murders.
“I have to go inside his house,” I said.
“Are you totally insane?”
“I have to,” I said. “If I don’t, this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“You’re going to break into a sealed house,” he said. “You’re going to corrupt evidence. That’s a felony.”
“I don’t care.”
“There’s a policeman right outside the front door.”
“I know,” I said. It might be Dave, I thought, the same man who was keeping watch at my house. They could be sticking him with more offshift duty. But how would I know for sure unless I went up and knocked on his window? Excuse me, is that Dave in there? Any chance of letting me inside the house for a minute?
“So how are you going to get in the house?” he said.
“When you were here before, did you go inside?”
“Yes, for a second.”
“Was there a backdoor?”
He just looked at me for a long moment. “I think so, yes.”
“Good.”
“You really need to do this, don’t you.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” he said.
“The hell you are.”
“I’m not gonna just sit here in this truck while you go breaking into that house. I’m an accessory already. I might as well go with you.”
“Why would you want to help me?” I said. “I thought you hated me.”
“Who says I’m going to help you? I just want to see how you do it. I want to see how good you are.”
“I think you should just stay here,” I said.
“Back at the restaurant, you gave me two choices, remember? Now I’m giving you two choices. Either we go together or I go wake up that cop.”
We went together. Leaving the truck where it was, we made our way through the woods to the back of the house. I brought a pair of work gloves from the truck, a flashlight that I would only turn on if we absolutely needed it, and a set of lock picks. I had ordered them the same week I had gotten my license, but I’d never thought I’d get to use them. If I had, I would have practiced.
The back door was maybe thirty feet from the woods. The night was dark enough, nobody was going to see us. The houses on either side looked deserted. We crept up to the back door and knelt down on the ground. I snapped on the flashlight for a second and took a quick look. There were a couple garbage cans, an old lawn-mower. The siding on the house was just like Prudell described it, rough and shaggy like a shedding dog. There was police tape across the door.
“You don’t want to break this tape,” Prudell whispered tome.
“I will if I have to,” I said.
“Wait, turn the light back on for a second.” When I did, he stood up and traced the line of tape to its end. When he pulled on it, it came right off. “Very sloppy work,” he said. “It comes right off this siding. They should have run it all the way around the house.”
“I’ll be sure to give Maven that tip,” I said. I took my gloves off, took the set of picks out of my pocket, and began working on the door. With the tension bar set, I tried a couple rakes to see if I could get lucky. The lock didn’t give. I settled down to working the tumblers one by one. Prudell stood by, making sounds of impatience. A cold wind kicked up, the kind of wind that starts somewhere near the North Pole, picks up a load of moisture off the lake, and then hits you across the face like a frozen porcupine. I lost the tension on the bar and had to start all over. One tumbler. Two tumblers. Three. And then I lost the tension again. The top half of the door was all window, so I just slipped my right hand back into the glove and took dead aim.
Prudell stopped my hand. “What’s the matter with you?” he hissed. “Give me those.” He took the picks from me, set the tension bar, and then gave the tumblers three quick rakes. “How’d you ever become a private eye, anyway?” he said as he opened the door for me.
I stepped into the house first. Prudell came in behind me and gently bumped the door closed with his hip. He doesn’t want to leave fingerprints, I thought. Not a bad idea. I put my work gloves back on.
“Don’t you have a pair of surgical gloves?” he asked.
“I left them with my stethoscope,” I said.
“Those work gloves are too bulky to pick anything up.”
“They’re not too bulky to punch you in the mouth if you don’t shut up.”
I went to the front window and peeked through the blinds. The police car was still sitting at the curb. Its interior was dark. I pulled the flashlight out of my coat and turned it on, shielding most of the ray with my hand.
“Don’t you have a red filter?” he asked.
“Prudell, I swear to God, if you don’t shut up…”
“Not another word,” he said. “Go ahead and do what you got to do. You’re obviously the trained professional here.”
I fantasized for a moment about hitting him in the head with the flashlight. Relax, Alex. The man is right. Do what you got to do and then get out of here.
It was a small house. It could barely be called a house. There was one main room that served as kitchen, dining room, and living room. The bed was separated from the rest of the house by a cheap partition that didn’t even go all the way up to the ceiling. The bathroom was too small for more than one person to stand in. The whole place had the distinctive smell of loneliness. Unwashed bed sheets, overcooked food, cigarette smoke.
There was a stack of magazines on the kitchen counter, one of those detective rags on top. “He Mutilated the Cheerleaders and Then Buried Them In His Basement.” There were some gun magazines, as well, and a few cheap propaganda pamphlets. “Feds to Bring In Chinese Troops to Take Our Guns Away.” The usual antigovernment nutcase garbage.
I circled through the room and came to the gun cabinet. If nothing else, this man knew how to take care of his guns. There were five or six rifles stacked side by side behind the glass. I could smell the gun oil. In a glass case next to the cabinet there were three handguns. A classic service revolver like my own, a. 357 magnum, and another gun that I didn’t even recognize. There was an empty space where a fourth gun might have rested, and next to that there was a silencer. I was about to open the case, but then I stopped myself. There was no need. I already knew what gun that silencer was designed for.
The police hadn’t touched anything yet. I knew the drill. They would bring a team in tomorrow, probably. Take lots of pictures, then remove everything piece by piece. Dust for prints. There wouldn’t be any rush. The suspect was dead, after all. All they would be doing was closing the files on the three murders. They might even bring in some young officers, let them look around the place as part of their training.
I had an uneasy feeling, like Raymond Julius would open the bathroom door and walk into the room. Prudell stood by the back door. He hadn’t moved. He kept his hands in his pockets. “Do you know what you’re looking for?” he said.