It looked like every light in the house was on, spilling golden light into the deepening shadows. Sandy kept her headlights on and walked up to the front door. She knocked. Rang the doorbell. Sandy called out, “Mrs. Kobritz?”
No answer.
She tried the front door. It opened. “Mrs. Kobritz?”
Silence.
“Shit,” Sandy breathed. Why couldn’t anything be simple? She called out again, but knew the house was empty. If Mrs. Kobritz or Puffing Bill had heard, they would be at the front door in a heartbeat. Still, she couldn’t leave the house without checking. So she made a quick sweep. No surprises. It was empty.
The house was built at the crest of a low hill, surrounded by a typically expansive lawn. Flower beds and wind wheels bordered the grass. Attached garage. No barn. No outbuildings at all. A low fence of crosshatched railroad ties separated the back lawn from the cornfields. She flicked her Maglite around the immediate property, just in case Mrs. Kobritz had fallen and was hurt, but Sandy knew it was useless.
No one was around.
Sandy went back to the cruiser. She turned in a long, slow circle under a darkening sky. It didn’t make any sense. Mrs. Kobritz had answered the phone maybe fifteen, twenty minutes ago. Her car was still in the driveway. She couldn’t be far.
Sandy turned on the spinning red and blue lights at the top of the cruiser and hit the horn a few times. She thought about turning on the sirens, but it felt wrong. She thought of her son and wondered how long she should spend out at Mrs. Kobritz’s. She saw herself explaining the twenty-four-hour guideline if someone came into the police station and reported a missing person.
Missing for twenty minutes didn’t exactly inspire panic.
Still, there was no denying that, in her heart, she knew damn well something was wrong. Mrs. Kobritz wasn’t the type who tended to flee to Vegas on a whim. Mrs. Kobritz wasn’t someone who slipped away in the dead of night to escape child support payments.
Mrs. Kobritz was someone who gave the closest neighbor a seven-page list of detailed instructions on how to water the flowers if she left on an overnight trip.
And Mrs. Kobritz would never abandon her dog.
Sandy hit the horn a few more times and kept the lights flashing. Nothing. No hearty welcomes. No invitations to join her for dinner. No shouts of recognition. Nothing. She decided she would take one more walk around the perimeter of the property and wound her way through the little orchard and garden, into the backyard.
She saw something moving in the corn.
Sandy tensed and waited. The corn rustled.
She heard something wheezing. Puffing Bill came out of the rows, trying to sniff the air with his ruined nose. He saw her, momentarily forgot whatever had been on his mind, and bounded over to her with his own peculiar hopping gait, lost in a frenzy of dog happiness, his stump of a tail wriggling furiously.
She didn’t realize she had been reaching for her sidearm until she unsnapped the holster and felt foolish.
Sandy waited, hoping to see Mrs. Kobritz follow her dog up the back lawn. She never appeared. Puffing Bill banged his head into her knee, demanding affection. Sandy gave his head a quick, perfunctory pat. He settled onto his haunches, tucked his one leg across his chest, reared back, and looked up at her. Cocked his head, clearly not satisfied. When she didn’t respond, he gave up, disgusted, and took a leak near the roses in the backyard.
It was so quiet she realized she could hear the dull rush of traffic on I-72 two miles away.
She called out, “Mrs. Kobritz? Hello? Mrs. Kobritz?”
Nothing. Not even crickets.
Puffing Bill froze when he heard Sandy’s voice. He looked back to the corn and there was a suggestion of a distant rumble in his throat. He had remembered that something was wrong.
She’d never seen the dog scared. She’d once seen him take a slow walk around one of the big rigs rumbling in the vacant lot next to the Korner Kafe, as if the dog had been sizing up the truck, looking for a weakness. Nothing scared him.
She flicked her Maglite at the corn, swept it back and forth. The frantic movements of the light created lurching, fragmented shadows that leapt away at the flick of her wrist. She slowed the light at odd moments, trying to catch someone unaware. But her meager light could only illuminate five or six rows deep. Sandy knew that out there, out in the deep darkness, the fields went on for miles and miles, broken only by the occasional dirt track or highway. It was a vast, wild ocean, rolling on and on under a hazy bubble of stars.
Sandy turned off the Maglite and left the backyard, going around to the front, wishing she hadn’t left the flashers going on the roof of the cruiser. The spinning red and blue lights gave Mrs. Kobritz’s front yard and driveway a tense, jittery feel, and even if nothing was wrong, she couldn’t help but feel the lights were making the situation worse.
Puffing Bill joined her, sticking close. He remained at her side as she crossed the front lawn to the cruiser. His ears were up, and he kept his eyes moving.
She opened the driver’s door and switched off the lights. Puffing Bill slipped past her and hopped nimbly into the front passenger seat. He put his one paw on the dashboard and swiveled his wide head, surveying everything from behind the windshield.
“Great. Thanks.” She called the office on her cell, wanting to keep the news of her old babysitter quiet. “Liz. I need to report a missing person.” She went down the list, giving Mrs. Kobritz’s vitals, promising she’d find a picture soon, and told Liz to get the word out.
Sandy didn’t want to, but she got in the car and went next door to ask the sheriff if he’d seen or heard from the Einhorns’ neighbor.
CHAPTER 13
Earlier, Sandy had missed Jerm entirely.
He’d been pedaling up Highway 17, handgun tucked safely in the front of his shorts. He’d seen the headlights crest over the horizon a mile or so distant and knew he had a few minutes to slip into the corn and let the car pass. But the lights had disappeared, and he figured he’d missed them turning into a farm or home. He kept pedaling.
His cousin had once told him that all cop cars had square headlights. It was like a law, or something. So Jerm kept an eye out for square-shaped headlights as he pedaled along the highway, past endless rows of corn. His lungs burned and his legs ached, but the cold, heavy metal of the pistol pressing into his belly gave him strength to keep going. He couldn’t wait to show it off at school tomorrow.
When the cruiser came gliding out of the darkness of the highway with no lights and a nearly silent purring engine, Jerm damn near had a heart attack. If she’d had her headlights on, Sandy would have spotted him in an instant.
Jerm saw a ditch and yanked his handlebars to the left. He bounced down an embankment into the nearly empty irrigation ditch, jumped off, and swiftly rolled his bike into the concrete culvert that ran under the highway.
Above, he heard that crazy church lady yelling at somebody. At first he thought it might be him, but relaxed when he realized it was one of her kids.
The water was ankle-deep, and in the stifling heat of an Illinois summer, Jerm barely felt the tepid water. He leaned his bike against the wall and moved deeper into the large pipe.
Ten feet in, the light from the stars faded. Except for a flash of reflection on the surface of the water once in a while, the light had vanished. The air became palpable, as if it were a black, impenetrable liquid. The culvert was nearly four feet in diameter, and Jerm found he could move forward fairly quickly through the utter darkness, as long as he hunched over and kept his head down. He stopped when he thought he was halfway through the tunnel and froze, listening.