“The fires happened almost twenty years ago,” I said. “How active can the investigation be?”
“Police department requested my old files about six hours ago. So it feels pretty damn active to me. Now what’s your interest, exactly?”
“Who requested them?” I said, ignoring his question to ask another of my own. “Was it a detective named Cal Richards?”
“Nope. It was an officer named . . .” There was a pause while he thought about it or looked for his notes. “Larry Rabold.”
“Larry Rabold requested your old file,” I said, and Joe’s eyebrows lifted when he heard. “And you still had it? After seventeen years?”
“I keep my notes on any major case that we don’t close. And we never closed that one. I told this Officer Rabold what I could remember about things, and then I dug out my old notes and made copies for him.”
“No arrests were made in the case?”
“Listen, like I said, I’m not going to talk to you guys when I don’t know who the hell you are and the cops are suddenly looking into this thing again. I’m not trying to be a bastard about it, but I’m also not going to change my mind.”
“No problem.”
I hung up and looked at Joe. “He doesn’t want to have anything to do with us. Reason is that he believes there’s a renewed police interest. Rabold interviewed him and asked for copies of the old case file this morning.”
Joe slipped his sunglasses on and nodded. “When I did my background check on Rabold today, I got his shift information. He’s supposed to be off-duty today, but he’s out working on a seventeen-year-old arson case? Hardworking sons of bitches, him and Padgett.”
“If it’s his day off, he might be at home. Maybe we could drop by, see if he’s around.”
I said it casually, as if I were suggesting we stop off for a beer on the way home.
Joe frowned, considering it. “We’d be tipping our hand a little early, maybe. Showing our interest.”
“I’m betting Jerome Huggins informed these guys of our interest hours ago.”
He hesitated only briefly. “All right. I guess it’s time to ante up, anyhow. No matter what his response is, it should tell us something.”
Larry Rabold’s home was on the stretch of West Boulevard that ran between Clifton and Edgewater Park—a historic neighborhood, and damn high rent. The house was a large Victorian, and through the yard you could see the bright blue sky and swath of water from the lake. A wraparound porch offered nice views, and as we walked up the sidewalk toward the house, I could see a boat with a bright multicolored sail out on the water.
“How many cops you know have a porch with a lake view?” I said as we turned up the driveway.
“Counting this guy, the total is one,” Joe said. “Although I’m beginning to hesitate to call him a cop.”
A two-car garage was set behind Rabold’s house, and a black Honda Civic was parked outside it, another vehicle partially visible through the open garage door. We walked up a cobblestone path lined with a nice flowerbed. The front door had a fancy brass fitting in its center, with a protruding key. Joe reached out and turned the key, and a bell rang somewhere in the house. The key probably cost fifty bucks more than a button. Class.
“Hell of a place,” I said, thinking about the big price tag and the small mortgage and the wife that worked as a library aide.
Joe didn’t say anything. No one came to the door. He reached out and turned the brass key again, the bell grinding away as he did it. This time, when the bell died off, another sound replaced it. A high, shrill wail. It went on and on. Joe looked at me, brow furrowed, eyes concerned.
“What the hell is that?”
The wail picked up in pitch, a sustained cry of anguish. I stepped forward and twisted the knob. Locked.
“He’s got a kid,” Joe said. “Maybe she’s throwing a tantrum or something.”
Even as he said it, the sound changed, the wail becoming a soft shriek, then disappearing into a series of rapid, choked sobs. An electric chill rode down my backbone at the sound, all my muscles going rigid. There is someplace deep in the brain that recognizes the emotion behind a human noise, spreads it to the listener, and the emotion I was now feeling was terror.
“What the hell’s going on?” Joe said for a second time, but I was walking away from him, moving around the side of the house. There’d been a car in the driveway, and whoever drove it in probably hadn’t walked all the way around to the front door. There’d be a side entrance.
There was one, just a few steps away from the Honda. The knob turned this time, and the door opened. I stepped inside with Joe behind me, found myself standing in a narrow room with a coatrack on one wall and a few pairs of shoes on the floor. The room smelled of fresh bread and incense or candles, something with a vanilla scent.
“Hello?” I called. “Is everyone all right?”
That was when everything that had been restrained in the wailing noise broke loose, and it became a scream. The sort of scream that dances through nightmares and horror movies and hopefully never touches your real life.
I ran toward the doorway, my hand creeping back toward my spine before I remembered that I was unarmed. The narrow coatroom emptied into a fancy kitchen with a granite-topped island and brand-new appliances. As I shoved around the island and moved toward the screaming, I noticed a block of knives on the counter and paused long enough to grab one. It was a simple kitchen knife with about a six-inch blade, but I felt better with it in hand. Whatever had provoked that scream couldn’t be good.
Out of the kitchen and into the living room, with Joe behind me. The scream reached a hysterical level, a pitch that made me want to cover my ears and run in the opposite direction. Maybe that was the idea. I stood in the middle of the living room with Joe and looked around. The scream was here with us, but I couldn’t see anyone. It seemed to be coming from the couch, but the couch was empty.
I stepped over to the big blue couch, grabbed one end with my free hand, and tugged it away from the wall.
A young blond girl, maybe fifteen, was cowering behind the couch. She was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, her knees pulled up to her chest, protecting her. Her face was paler than the cream-colored wall behind her head, and her eyes were like nothing I’d ever seen before, not even in my days as a narcotics detective when I’d been face-to-face with people in the throes of drug-induced convulsions and fits. Her eyes held nothing but terror, and I was so frozen by them that I didn’t even realize she was fixated on the knife in my hand until Joe took it away from me and threw it across the room.
“Stop,” he said to the girl.
I don’t know how he did it with just one softly spoken word, but she stopped. The girl went silent and stared at us, her chest heaving, and only then did I notice the blood on her shoes.
It was fresh, still sticky, but only on the ends of her shoes, as if she’d dipped her toes into it, like someone testing the temperature of water in a swimming pool. Joe saw it, too.
“Where is he?” he asked, understanding something that I hadn’t begun to consider yet.
She didn’t speak—couldn’t speak, probably—but she lifted a shaking hand and extended her index finger, pointed it at the floor.
“Basement,” Joe said, and stepped away. I went with him.
There was an open door at the other side of the living room, beside a staircase that led up to the second level. Once we were closer, we could see carpeted steps leading down. I noticed a few tacky crimson smears on the carpet. She’d come up this way.
Joe went down first. I followed, wishing he hadn’t taken the knife from me. My heart was thumping, my hands clenched into fists, my muscles tense. We reached the bottom of the steps and came out in a finished basement room with another couch and television, a bookshelf on the wall. Everything looked normal. Joe was still looking in that direction when I turned right and went around the wall.