I pulled out my phone. I took a picture. I left.
As I was walking down the path, I saw a man standing in the doorway of a house on the other side of the street. I changed course and walked over to him.
“Are you supposed to be in that house?” he said.
“Yes. You live here?”
He nodded. He was early sixties. Gray hair thinning over the top, the mild eyes of a man who watches, and thinks, and is content to live that way. “Terrible, what happened.”
“Which was?”
“Well, you know—the murders.”
“You think Bill did it?”
He opened his mouth, hesitated. I knew what he needed to hear from me.
“I don’t,” I said. “I think Gina and Josh had another caller that night.”
“I didn’t see anyone,” the man said firmly. “And I don’t know anything, really. I…well, they’ve lived here over ten years. I saw them every day, near enough, one or the other, sometimes all. Wave, say hi, you know. Not a week before it happened—three, four days—I saw the two of them go out one night. They were arguing about something, bickering, kind of. Not loud, but right there in the street, as they walked to the corner. Happened once in a while. You understand what I mean?”
I did. “Thank you. That’s very helpful.”
The man nodded again, folded his arms, and slowly returned indoors, still looking back at the house.
I headed a further block south down Federal and knocked on the front door of something that might have once been a Craftsman bungalow worth preserving. After a very, very long time, a light went on behind it. I was mildly surprised by this—it was only early afternoon and, by Seattle’s standards, barely overcast—until the door was opened and I saw it was very dark inside, almost as dark as the Anderson house had been.
She stood in front of me now. Perhaps eighty, bent over to half my height, her face like an apple that had been left in the sun for a summer. When she looked up, her eyes reminded me of the windows in the building I’d stood outside in Belltown that morning, reflecting nothing but the clouds behind my head.
“Mrs. McKenna?”
“Yep.”
“You mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Nope.”
“You told the police that on the night of the fire up at the Andersons you saw someone coming down the street, see what had happened, then run away. That right?”
“Nope.”
I hesitated. “Did you say ‘No’?”
“Yep.”
“My understanding was that—”
“Didn’t see ‘someone.’ Saw Bill Anderson. You understand me now?”
“Yes I do.”
“Good. What’s your point?”
I looked across at the front of your house. “You always have your drapes drawn like this? Day and night?”
“Keeps out the light.”
“I can see how that would work. So, if you don’t mind me asking, how were you able to notice Mr. Anderson as he passed by on that evening?”
The old woman looked up at me suddenly, and her eyes were no longer reflective. You could see something inside now and tell that it was still very much alive.
“You one of them?”
“One of who?”
She stared hard at me a moment longer, shook her head. “I can see you’re not. Okay, so. I keep a watch. Especially at night. I hear someone walking up or down the street, I take a look. Someone’s got to. Keep a watch. Always. ’Round these parts it’s me.”
“Keep a watch for whom, ma’am?”
“You know. Those fellas no one can see. So I hear footsteps. Sound familiar, but I think I’ll check anyhow. Move aside the corner of the curtain, just a little. See it’s Bill. He’s okay. I don’t mind Bill. He walks a few yards past, and he stops. Stands there staring. I cain’t see what he’s looking at. But he starts to back away, and he turns and runs. I haven’t never seen Bill run before. Twenty minutes later you got sirens and what-all else.”
She coughed, violently and without warning, making no effort to cover her mouth but letting the dislodged materials rocket out and hit the ground. When she was done, she shook her head wearily.
“Don’t catch cancer, son. It’s a pain in the ass. Need anything else? I got a show to watch.”
I walked back to the crossroads, stood on the sidewalk there watching falling leaves while I smoked a cigarette. I wouldn’t want to count on Mrs. McKenna in court, but she didn’t come across as completely unreliable either. Even without the experience of being in the house, the conversation with the guy living across the street might already have started to change my mind. Couples living in long-term abusive relationships, the real heavy hitters, rarely exchange harsh words in public. Out in the world, everything’s fake peachy or icy polite, an occasional flash of angry eyes but no more. Their real business is private, an indoor sport. Add this to what Fisher had told me and maybe Bill Anderson hadn’t whacked his wife and child. So the question became who did.
That, and where Anderson was now.
I wasn’t kept waiting long at the station, which surprised me. Either they were having a quiet day or perhaps he was just intrigued.
Blanchard took me into a different room from the one where I’d sat with a hangover three days before. This room looked like it might be his office. It was certainly messy enough.
“I wanted to apologize,” I said.
“That sounds nice.”
“You were right. About my wife. She had just forgotten my number, and she was right there at home.”
He nodded. “So everything’s cool?”
“Right as rain.”
“That’s good. Well, you didn’t need to come here, but I appreciate it.”
“Actually, I wanted to pick your brains on something else while I was here.”
“That figures. Shoot.”
“What do you know about the Anderson murders? Up near Broadway, three weeks ago?”
He looked surprised. “Nothing. Well, two people died hard, word is the husband did it. No more than that.”
“Anderson is listed as a missing person?”
“No. As the suspect in a double homicide. Which is a different department, as you know.”
“You buy that? Him killing them?”
“It’s not a case I know anything about. The-husband-did-it is normally how it breaks down, as you’ll also know. Why—you got a different perspective?”
“I’ve just been up there,” I said. “Talked to a couple people.”
Blanchard frowned. “Are congratulations in order? You join SPD and make detective the same day? I’m a little surprised I didn’t hear about that.”
“Just a private citizen,” I said. “Talking with other private citizens.”
“Uh-huh. So what’s your interest, citizen?”
“Personal.”
“And what do you think you’ve discovered, in this new hobby of yours?”
“I don’t think Anderson killed them.”
“Uh-huh.” Blanchard started doodling on the pad in front of him, small looping spirals.
“The only eyewitness says she saw Anderson approaching the house after the fact. Okay, she’s not a great advocate, but she can’t be ignored. I talked to someone else who confirms the Andersons as a functional couple, which I gather is the general picture. If you take away the notion of some long-overdue boil-over, then I can’t find a reason for this happening. Can you?”
“You realize there was an eighty-thousand-dollar policy on Gina Anderson?”
“Didn’t know the figure. But that’s a bullshit motive. He didn’t even own a gun.”
“Far as we know.”
“There’s no prior, no flags, no indicators.”
“Come on, Jack, you were on the job. You know how it is. These people are like sleepers. They get up and go to work, day in, day out, have cookouts in the yard, fishing trips with the neighbors. Just like regular human beings. Then one night it turns out they’re a pod person after all, the thing inside comes out, and bang—it’s a whole different world and there’s blood on the walls. Eighty thousand is more than enough, especially if there was something else going on in his life.”