“Stan? Where are you? We need to talk.”
Bedroom one. Bedroom two. Empty.
Taking a deep breath, Kovac rested his hand on the doorknob of the bathroom. This was where they did it, often as not, in the bathroom, where the mess could be steam-cleaned.
Kovac pushed the door open.
Empty.
A second’s relief.
He ran back down the stairs and out the back door, nearly mowing down the nosy neighbor.
Garage.
Carbon monoxide.
But the small detached garage sat empty.
No Stan Dempsey. No car.
Shit.
“What’s happening?” the old lady asked. “Is Mr. Dempsey hurt?”
“He’s not here, ma’am,” Kovac said.
“Well, I don’t know where he’d go,” she said, as if she couldn’t possibly imagine Stan Dempsey having a life.
Kovac rubbed the back of his neck and sighed heavily. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to return to your home. The police will be sealing off this residence.”
The woman looked confused and frightened as she backed away.
“Oh, dear.”
“Thank you for your help,” Kovac said. He stood there until the old lady turned away and retreated, the bunny ears of her slippers bobbing up and down as she went.
The basement of the Haas home had been where the murdered children had been hung from the ceiling. There was a certain logic to thinking Stan Dempsey might have chosen the basement, might have hanged himself down there.
Kovac went back inside and flipped on the light leading down to the basement.
“Stan? It’s Sam Kovac. I’m coming downstairs,” Kovac warned, going slowly, taking one step at a time.
The basement was finished with knotty pine paneling, cheap green carpet, and a yellowed acoustical tile ceiling that had absorbed years of cigarette smoke. No walls divided the space. A laundry area in one corner. Storage took up one end. In the remaining quarter Stan Dempsey had set up his own command center.
Several freestanding bulletin boards were covered with photos from the Haas murder scene, photos from the autopsies. Copies of reports, copies of Dempsey’s own notes. He had taped white butcher paper to the wall above the bulletin boards with time lines sketched out-who was where, when; what time the bodies had been discovered; the approximate time of death as stated by the ME. Boxes on an old card table held copies of files on the case.
None of it struck Kovac as being particularly unusual. He had a basement full of old case files and notes himself. Most of the detectives he knew did. They hung on to them for various reasons-superstition, paranoia, in case an old case got overturned on appeal, in case the station burned to the ground and the originals were destroyed. He had laid out cases himself in his home office so he could ponder and stew over them in his off hours.
The thing that bothered Kovac about Stan Dempsey’s basement was the chair. A single straight-backed wooden chair sat front and center by the board with the photographs. An oversized red glass ashtray sat on the floor beside it, full of ashes and butts.
Kovac could imagine Stan Dempsey sitting in that chair for hours on end, staring at the carnage. Images straight out of the darkest nightmares anyone could imagine. The brutality stark and cruel, frozen in time. The faces of the victims, blank and staring. The mind didn’t want to accept the idea that these had been real people, living human beings, only hours before the photographs had been taken. Or that in those hours prior to death, these people-this mother and two small children-had been subjected to unspeakable tortures, that they had experienced choking fear, that they had probably known they were going to die.
If a person’s mind allowed those realities to sink in, then it became too easy to hear the screams, to see the sheer terror in those now-blank faces. It became too easy to see the events unfold like the worst kind of horror show.
If a cop allowed that to happen, if he made a case like this one personal, if he allowed logic and procedure and a professional distance to be overrun by emotion and empathy and reaction… thereon lay the road to madness.
A terrible feeling of foreboding lay like a stone in Kovac’s gut as he climbed the basement stairs. This time he took in everything as he went through the house.
The kitchen was a mess. Cereal flakes were all over the counter, all over the floor, as if the box had exploded. Raisins were scattered throughout like rat turds. The milk carton had been overturned. Milk puddled on the counter and dripped over the edge.
The cereal box looked to have been slashed several times with a knife. The countertop had received similar treatment-multiple stab wounds. The knife was not in sight, but there was some blood.
Stan Dempsey lost his mind in this room, Kovac thought as he looked around at the chaos. A small television sat on the counter. The local news was running, but the sound was off. Karl Dahl’s mug shot and his physical description were up on the screen.
Considered extremely dangerous.
Do not attempt to approach.
Call 911.
Kovac moved into the dining room. From the dining room, he could see the living room, which was also trashed. The old brown couch had been shot to death. A floor lamp had been knocked over. The coffee table had been overturned.
What the hell went on here?
Kovac briefly considered the notion of an intruder, but the house had been locked up tight. No. This was Stan Dempsey’s rage. This was what had been building inside that homely, quiet, strange man in the months since Stan Dempsey had been called out on a triple homicide one stormy night in August a year past.
The array of weapons laid out on the dining room table was impressive. Shotguns, a deer rifle, several handguns, some that appeared to be World War II vintage. Knives of various lengths and blades. An old leather sap-a leather sack filled with sand or buckshot. Coppers used to carry them in the old days before the Miranda rules had come down. A smack behind the ear could take down a big guy instantly if it was done right. Nobody carried them anymore. Not legally, anyway.
And lined up neatly in a row above the weapons: medals. A Purple Heart. A Bronze Star. Several commendations from the police department. All laid out on display, as if Stan had fully expected people to come into his home. These were the things he had wanted seen, the awards that had marked his life into segments-the army, war, the police department.
On the buffet behind the table stood a couple of framed photographs. Stan in a bad suit from the seventies and a too-wide tie. Standing beside him, a homely woman with beauty-parlor-blond hair teased and sprayed into a sheer helmet circling her head. A girl of maybe five or six sitting in front of them, the only one smiling, a black hole where one front tooth had been.
The family. Kovac hadn’t known Dempsey had ever been married. It was difficult to picture. He had seen no evidence of a woman living in the house. No clothes in the closets, no woman stuff on the dresser or nightstand. The wife was gone, by either divorce or death. The little girl was grown and long gone by now.
Finally, with a sense of dread heavy in his chest, Kovac looked at the video camera perched on its tripod, pointing at the lone chair pulled out from the table. He stepped behind it, looking how to turn the thing from RECORD toVCR.
Stan Dempsey came on the small screen, walking in front of the camera, seating himself in the chair. When he began to speak, there was no emotion whatsoever. Very matter-of-fact. He talked about the things that had gone on in his life, how all he’d ever wanted to do was become a cop, a detective. He talked about how much he had loved the job over the years. He talked about a couple of cases he’d worked that he was especially proud of.
In the background Kovac could see through the doorway to the kitchen to a cookie jar in the shape of a pig sitting on its ass on the counter. He looked up from the video screen, through the doorway into the kitchen. There was the cookie jar, a silly, stupid thing completely incongruous with its owner. A simple, normal thing completely in contrast to the creepy, dark tone of the videotape.