No dog visible. The front blinds were open. Could be a dog inside. From the road, he could see a sheet of white paper hanging on the door.
In training for Afghanistan, Jake had taken a course in burglary—what the army called surreptitious entry—from an ex-burglar hired by the CIA. It turned out that surreptitious entry was not particularly practical in Afghanistan, but the training had been interesting.
After three passes, he slowed and turned into Schmidt’s driveway.
Just to knock, and maybe get a look at the door . . .
The paper on the door was from the Watchmen: Carclass="underline" Please call in. We’ll be at headquarters until 5 o’clock. This is super-important. Dave Johnson, District Coordinator, Watchmen.
The paper was limp with humidity, as though it had been on the door for a while.
Jake knocked: no barking—but the door was probably the newest piece of the house, a solid chunk of wood with two small view windows and a big Schlage lock. His elementary burglary skills were not going to work with it.
He walked around to the front. Same thing: old house, new door.
He walked around to the carport again, knocked, called: “Anybody home?”
The house was isolated, the occasional car buzzing by on Highway 20, out of sight, and the occasional bee from the weed patch out back. He took a quick trip around it. The house was set on a concrete-block foundation, so there might be a basement, but if so, it was windowless. The house windows were fairly high—Jake was tall, but their lower sills were almost chest high on him. The window glass was dirty enough that he couldn’t see much. Still, no barking, no sound from inside.
The carport entry was obviously the main one. Jake remembered one more thing from the surreptitious-entry course. The instructor said, “A lot of people hide a key outside the house. If they’re going to do that, it’s gonna be in about one of nine places: repeat after me . . .”
He found it in the wrecked washing machine, in the lint filter.
The house was dim and smelled of old moldy wallpaper. The floorboards creaked underfoot as he walked through it. Once inside, there was no point in being casuaclass="underline" he hurried through, calling, “Hello? Hello? Mr. Schmidt?” No answer.
The house had two bedrooms, a small living room, a kitchen with a breakfast nook, a bathroom, and a basement that smelled of dirt and propane. One of the bedrooms had four Browning gun-safes lined up against a wall. There was no chance that he could have opened them, if he’d had to; but he didn’t have to, since the safe doors were standing open, and all four were empty.
He started looking for paper, or blood, or anything that would tie Schmidt to anything relevant. He went through the kitchen, checked the area around the telephone, the kitchen counter drawers, the stove drawer. He found paper, all right, but all of it was routine. Four phone bills, all old, all checked off with an ink scrawl, which probably indicated that they’d been paid. He stuck them in his pocket.
The kitchen cupboards were bare: they’d been completely cleared out. The refrigerator was empty and unplugged.
He went into the bedroom, found a three-inch stack of porno magazines under the bed, with maybe fifty gun magazines. Nothing under the mattress. There were still a few shirts hanging in the closets, some shoes on the closet floor, a few T-shirts and golf shirts in the bureau. He patted through them, found nothing. He did a tap dance on the floorboards, looking for a hidey-hole.
Noticed that there was no suitcase in the house; there were no bags at all.
The living room was spare. He gave it a minute, rolling an old couch up to look at the lining, rapped the floorboards and moldings, then gave up. A hallway showed a hatch that led up into the eaves. He pulled out a chair, pushed on the hatch, pushed harder. Dust began to fall out, and he let it go.
Into the basement, feeling the pressure of time. Damp. A jumble of cheap tools, rusting pliers, a five-dollar socket set, a broken coping saw, were strewn on a chest of drawers used as a workbench. A reloading bench sat in a corner, with a rack of brass and powders above it. A furnace and a water heater. Nothing much. He was about to head back up the stairs when he noticed a circular mark on the concrete floor: one end of the workbench had been rotated away from the wall. He listened for a moment, tension building—he’d been inside too long—then grabbed a corner of the bench and pulled it out from the wall.
Nothing behind it. Then he looked up: an aluminum heating duct was fastened between two joists. There was a space between the duct and the first floor’s subfloor. If you stood on the workbench . . .
He climbed up on it, slipped his hand up and down the top of the vent. At the far left side, he touched something, pulled his hand back. Couldn’t see. Tentatively touched it again. Felt like . . . rags. He gripped it. Heavy. Pulled it out.
A bundle of rags. He knew without looking what was inside: a gun. He carefully unwrapped the bundle and found a Colt .45. One of Jake’s personal favorites . . .
All right. The guy had four gun safes upstairs, once presumably full of guns, now all gone—and he’d hidden a .45 in the basement? What was that about? He weighed the options for a moment, then put the gun back, jumped down, pushed the bench back against the wall.
He’d have to think about all this, but first, he had to get out. The burglar/instructor suggested that you never stay inside a house more than four or five minutes: even if nobody comes, you begin to screw up, you leave behind prints, you give people a chance to see your car.
Jake hurried upstairs, peered through the windows. Nobody there, nobody coming. He slipped out, let the door latch behind him, put the key back in the washing machine. Picked it up again, wiped it, and still holding it in his shirtsleeve, dropped it back in place.
Walked back to his car, feeling self-righteous: Nope, I wasn’t in there, just knocked on the door. . . .
Got in the car and let out a breath. Damn: he hadn’t been that tense since Afghanistan. But he was smiling when he backed out of the driveway. He could feel the rush coming on. Feel the rush . . .
Schmidt was running. He might have expected to come back, but not anytime soon. All the perishable stuff was gone, the clothes left behind were all older, worn out, or showing wear. No suitcases, no guns. Had he sold the guns? Maybe the ATF could check; sixty-four guns would be worth at least twenty thousand.
If he’d sold all his guns, he probably was digging a deep hole. If he hadn’t, if he’d stored them someplace, then they’d have a lead on Schmidt’s best friend . . .
Jake was ten minutes in the car, already north of Scottsville, heading in to Charlottesville, heading home, when Novatny called.
Novatny was running, out of breath, shouting. “Where are you? Jake? Where are you?”
5
“We’re moving!” Novatny shouted.
“What? I can’t hear you.”
“Sorry, I’ve been running up some stairs . . .” Novatny took a deep breath. “We’re getting a helicopter, heading out to Virginia. Are you still in Richmond?”
“I’m down south of Charlottesville.”
“Then you’re a hell of a lot closer than we are,” Novatny said.
“What happened?”
“The Buckingham County sheriff’s office has a body out in a rural area, a state forest, all burned up,” Novatny said. “They found a charred ID near the body. The ID belongs to Lincoln Bowe.”