“Sounds like a pretty dangerous bunch.”
“Yeah.” Joe grinned. “But at least we know what we’re up against. They don’t.”
CHAPTER 6
WAYNE WESTON’S home in Brecksville had an air of modest elegance. The large brick ranch was impressive, and clearly expensive, but not overly extravagant. A blacktop driveway led past a row of spruce trees. Traces of snow remained in the shadows under the trees, where the sun hadn’t been able to reach. There was a detached two-car garage set slightly behind the house. Everything about the home and yard gave an impression of serenity and safety. The police had searched every inch of the property, but Joe and I agreed that we wanted to see it, to try to absorb a little more of who Wayne Weston was, and how he and his family had lived. As the sun came up that morning and people with normal jobs made their commute to the office, Joe and I arrived at a dead man’s house to soak in the ambience. It was a hell of a way to start the day.
John Weston’s Buick was parked in front of the garage, and I pulled in beside it. Behind the house was a deck with a propane grill and a picnic table. We found John Weston sitting on the picnic table, staring at the remains of a snowman in the backyard.
“My granddaughter made it,” Weston said, his voice thick, as we joined him on the deck. “The day before she . . . before she went missing.”
The snowman had melted slowly, and was hardly two feet high. The carrot nose had slipped as the snow melted and loosened, and now it sat in the grass. There was a pink ski cap perched on the snowman’s head, and the two rock eyes were still in place, staring back at John Weston, seemingly taunting him. I’m still here, the snowman seemed to say, but she’s not.
Weston took his eyes away from it with an effort and handed us a key. “That’s for the front door. You go in, take all the time you need. Look at whatever you want, I don’t care. But I can’t go in that place.”
That place. Like a small child afraid to go down the cellar steps. A child would be afraid of what he might find in the cellar, though. John Weston was afraid of what he knew he would not find in the house.
Joe took the key, and we left the deck and walked back to the front of the house and let ourselves in. The front door opened into an entryway with hardwood floors. A hallway led away to the left, and a small sitting room with a couch, a wooden rocking chair, and an antique sewing machine was on the right. There were a few pictures on the walls, and a small table with back issues of Time, but the room appeared to have been more for show than use. We went right.
Behind the sitting room was the kitchen. We rifled through the cupboards and drawers. The refrigerator was full of food; the freezer had two New York strip steaks and an unopened box of Popsicles. Everything was neat and well organized and gave the impression that the residents had every intention of returning home to their normal lives and routines.
Next to the kitchen was a dining room with an oak table that would probably seat twenty. Past the dining room was a sunken living room with comfortable, well-worn furniture and a high-end entertainment system. This was the room where Weston’s body had been found, but you’d never be able to guess it now. We went over it carefully, turning the cushions upside down and opening the videotape boxes, but it was a formality. The police wouldn’t have missed anything. It was the only way Joe and I knew to search a room, though, and it beat standing around and feeling the emptiness. We finished the living room, returned to our starting point, and went left, down the hall. We had not spoken since entering the house. The silence was a heavy thing. The house seemed to hold a sense of a family; it made you feel as if at any second the door might swing open and a mother’s voice and a child’s laughter would fill the home.
Four doors opened off the hall. The first was to a bathroom, the second to an office with a flat desk, a file cabinet, and two bookshelves. There was a large empty space on the desk, and several electrical cords lay coiled on the floor. Weston’s computer had likely sat there until the police removed it. The bookshelves held some family pictures, a framed program from the ’53 World Series, and some John Grisham and Dean Koontz novels. We started on the desk drawers and the file cabinet.
I took the file cabinet and found two of the drawers completely empty. Others held files containing warranty information on various household appliances, insurance records, old high school yearbooks, equipment catalogs, and numerous other items that bore no relation to Weston’s work. The only file of interest I found held his military papers. His discharge sheet included the specialist’s training he had received, and there was plenty to list. Weston had certification as a combat diver, airborne specialist, long-range reconnaissance specialist, and demolitions specialist. He was qualified as an expert in both handgun and rifle marksmanship. It was a hell of a résumé. My father had frequently boasted about his Marine Expeditionary Unit training, but it couldn’t touch Weston’s.
“Find anything?” Joe asked, looking over my shoulder.
“Just this.” I handed him the file, and we went through it together. Weston had earned some service ribbons, but there were no details about the missions. That’s how it goes with special operations soldiers. He’d received an honorable discharge.
“Pretty impressive,” Joe said. “But it doesn’t help us much. Nothing worthwhile in the desk, either, unless you need Scotch tape or pencils. This card was on the desk, though. Check out the initials.”
He passed me a plain white envelope with Weston’s address on it. The postmark was from early February, just a few weeks before Weston died. There was no return address. Inside was a simple but elegant piece of stationery with a gold border. Someone had written an inscription with a black fountain pen: “Many thanks on yet another job well done. It had the intended effect.” There was no explanation of what the “it” was, nor what effect the “it” had created. The note was signed with the initials J.E.H.
“Hubbard?” I said.
Joe shrugged. “I have no idea what his middle initial is, but it’s possible. Let’s hang on to the note. Maybe we can check the handwriting out.”
“And if it’s Hubbard’s writing?”
“Then it’s still worthless, but at least we know who to blame.”
We moved on to the next rooms. Joe took the master bedroom, and I went into Elizabeth Weston’s bedroom. It was a bright room with pink walls and lots of stuffed animals. The bedspread had kittens on it. A large plastic dollhouse stood in the corner of the room. Everything about it was happy and innocent. The window looked out on the backyard, and I could see John Weston, still sitting on the picnic table staring at the snowman his granddaughter had made. The sun was out now, and the snowman was glistening as it continued to melt. Weston watched it, and I thought that he could at least have the satisfaction of watching it disappear slowly. To him, that probably meant something right now.
A piece of fishing line was tied to the curtain rod, and from it a small, heart-shaped crystal prism hung in the window, reflecting the sun and distorting the light, bathing the white curtains with rainbows. I took it in my hand and ran my thumb over the chiseled surface, then removed the fishing line from the curtain rod and put it in my pocket. It was a spontaneous decision, and I wasn’t sure what had provoked it. I just wanted to be sure I never forgot this room and this little girl.
I went through the closets and the drawers, moving quickly, pushing past clothing, board games, and toys. I slammed the last drawer shut without finding anything and sat on the edge of the bed, exhaling heavily. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. I didn’t want to breathe in this little girl’s room. Maybe, if I didn’t breathe, I could walk back out and tell myself that I’d never been inside, it had never been real, a five-year-old was not missing, her father was not dead.