Fear itself

5

Dorie steered the Toyota through the wide, empty suburban streets of Rancho del Vista, past cookie-cutter colonials with wide, empty suburban lawns.

“Speaking as a plein air painter, if I lived around here, I’d starve,” she said. “No damn ranchos, no damn vistas.”

“Yeah, but at least there’s plenty of parking.” Pender was navigating with the aid of a point-to-point map Dorie had printed out from MapQuest.com, which had recently been voted one of the top ten “Sites That Don’t Suck” on the Internet. “Okay, left on Guerrero…right on Oaxaca…” The streets were all named for Mexican states-so the gardeners would feel at home, according to the local wits. “And…here we go, twelve-eleven Baja Way.”

The driveway was empty, but Pender had Dorie drive past and park on the street, two houses down. She started to scoff. “C’mon, Pen. What are the chances he was even here in the first place, much less-?”

He cut her off long before she got to the second place. “You painter, me FBI,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt and donning his new Panama, which he had to take off in the car-insufficient headroom. “Until I’ve established with one hundred percent confidence that he’s not in there, I’ll run the show. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Wait here.”

“Yes, sir!” replied Dorie, who was not entirely unfamiliar with the better-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission theory herself.

Mailbox stuffed. Driveway empty. Blinds drawn, upstairs and down. Front door locked; garage door locked. Pender walked around back. The landscaping was minimal, the fences low-not much privacy here at Rancho del Vista, despite the spacious lots. There was a patio, backed by a floor-to-ceiling picture window, but the curtains were drawn. He put his ear to the glass: not a sound inside the house.

Nobody home, thought Pender, trying the patio door, which was also locked. It happens-that’s the drawback of dropping by unannounced. But he continued his circumambulation, and when he came around the front of the house again, he saw Dorie at the end of the driveway, chatting with the mailman. She waved him over.

“Ted, tell Special Agent Pender what you just told me.”

“FBI, hunh? What I told your partner, I was off Monday, but I come back yesterday, Saturday is still in the box, along with Monday. Now, this guy Carpenter, he’s kinda weird, doesn’t like to answer the door, keeps it on the chain if I need a signature or something, but I’ve been on this route five years now, and in all that time he has never not emptied his mailbox. I was gonna give it one more day, then report it in. We’re supposed to report stuff like that-you’d be surprised how many dead people get found that way.”

“A sad comment on our times,” said Pender. “Thanks for keeping your eyes open.”

“I don’t need to report it, then?” asked the letter carrier.

“Not necessary,” Pender replied. “My partner and I can take it from here.”

Pender jimmied the patio door with the lockpick he’d been carrying in his wallet since his days as a Cortland County sheriff’s deputy. In another five days, after his retirement had officially taken effect, carrying it would be at least a misdemeanor bust in most states. Not that entering the house on Baja Way without a warrant wasn’t, he thought, sliding the door open.

But in a quarter century with the FBI, Pender had never willingly turned his back on a virgin crime scene-if this even was a crime scene. If it wasn’t, he could be in and out in five minutes, no harm done and nobody the wiser. As for Dorie, if she wasn’t going to follow instructions, it would obviously be better to have her where he could keep an eye on her. “Stick close, walk in my footsteps, and don’t touch anything.”

“Can do.” Without being consciously aware of it, until a week ago Dorie had had her life arranged so that she’d rarely had to walk into a strange house or an unfamiliar room until someone had vetted it first (you never know, could be a mask on the wall: booga booga!). Now she was starting to regret her newfound boldness. It wasn’t just the musty smell of the soaked carpet that had her spooked, it was Pender’s manner, the hushed but commanding tone of his voice, the grim set to his jaw, the wary tilt of his head as he started up the carpeted stairs, which were also squishing underfoot-somehow Dorie’s affable, comfortable, slow-moving Pen had turned into an FBI agent before her very eyes.

“Wait here,” he told her when he reached the top of the stairs.

“Pen, what’s that smell?” Stuffy, as if the rooms hadn’t been aired out in months. Or, no, not stuffy, more like sickly sweet, like old melon rinds in the garbage.

But he’d already disappeared into one of the bedrooms. Wait here? thought Dorie. Alone? You’d have to handcuff me to the banister. She followed him through the door, saw him standing in an open doorway on the far side of a bedroom. When he turned around, Dorie could tell from the look on his face that for a moment there, he’d forgotten she was even in the house. She started toward him-he met her in the middle of the room and put his arms around her to stop her from going any farther.

“You don’t need to see what’s in there,” he said softly.

“Is it Nelson?”

“It was.”