No Safe House

Sixteen Terry

I pushed my legs into the house, let them dangle a second, then dropped in. It was barely a one-foot drop to the basement floor. I surveyed the room with the flashlight. All the things you might expect. Big couches. TV. Dartboard on the wall. Bookshelves jammed with as many DVDs and old VHS tapes as actual books. I shone the light around my feet looking for glass, not wanting to step in it even with shoes on. Shards could get caught in the treads.

But it was impossible to avoid, and broken glass crunched beneath my shoes.

“What is it, Dad?” Grace asked, appearing to me only from feet to knees, her shoes just beyond the window.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just glass.” I got the phone back out of my pocket and put it to my ear as I hunted for the stairs up to the first floor. “You hear me?” I said.

“I hear you,” Grace whispered, still close enough that there was a slight echoing effect in my ear. “It’s making a weird noise, like your voice is repeating. It did that before tonight, when I got out of the house. My phone might be wonky.”

“It should go away once we get farther apart,” I said.

Phone in one hand, flashlight in the other, I found the stairs and ascended to the first floor. The stairs brought me off to the side of the front hallway. One of the drawers on a shallow table pushed up against the wall was half open. I raised the flashlight, cast the beam ahead into what looked to be the kitchen.

It would have been nice to turn on all the lights, but I knew that wasn’t an option. Couldn’t afford to have any of the neighbors spotting me wandering around in there.

“What do you see, Dad?”

“Nothing yet.” The echoing had stopped.

Three hours earlier, I’d been sitting in front of the TV watching Jeopardy! Now I was exploring, illegally, the house of someone I did not know with a flashlight, in the dead of night, hoping not to come across a body.

At that moment I thought of those two retired people slain in their home. What it must have been like for them to find a stranger — assuming it was a stranger who killed them — in their house.

That’s what I was now. I was the stranger. And while I knew I didn’t pose any threat, if I confronted someone in this house, they wouldn’t know that.

I hoped to encounter no one here — dead or alive.

I stood at the entryway to the kitchen, which was combined with a family room. To the right, a large central island, bar stools, all the usual appliances, and then opposite that a high-ceilinged room with skylights decorated with easy chairs, a couch, a fireplace, and a TV angled in one corner.

The kitchen floor was smooth. Some kind of tile, crisscrossed with what looked like a million tiny scratches. I bent down for a closer look.

“Dog,” I said to myself.

“What?” Grace said. “There’s a dog there?”

“No. I was just noticing all the scratches on the floor. Probably from a dog’s toenails. From its claws.”

“Oh.”

The countertops were cluttered with a toaster, Cuisinart, regular coffeemaker, Nespresso coffeemaker, waffle iron, bread maker, pretty much every gadget Williams-Sonoma carried. I lowered the beam, slowly scanned the floor again, saw more scratches. I figured that if Stuart, or anyone else, had been shot, they wouldn’t have ended up on the countertop. There’d be evidence — blood — on the floor. As I rounded the island, getting closer to the window, I held my breath. I had a very bad feeling that there was something around the corner, and I steeled myself for the discovery.

But there was nothing.

I came around the fourth side of the island, the space between it and the stove, and still nothing caught my eye.

“I’ve been through the kitchen,” I said. “I don’t see anything.” No response. “Grace?”

“I’m here. I heard you.” A pause. “Dad.”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a police car going by.”

Son of a bitch.

I killed the flashlight and held my breath.

“Grace?”

“I’m just hiding behind the corner of the house. It just drove by real slow. I think it’s going down to the dead end.”

My car was parked out front. Was that what had attracted some officer’s attention? Had he wondered what it was doing there, the only car on that whole stretch that wasn’t pulled into a driveway? Would he take note of the license plate? Would he stop and do a check of the house?

“You want me to see where he—?”

“No! Grace, just stay where you are.”

“Okay.”

We both waited. I was tempted to run to the living room at the front of the house, peek through the drapes, but with the flashlight off I’d probably end up tripping over something.

“I see headlights coming back,” Grace whispered. “He must have turned around.”

Shit shit shit shit.

“He must be going real slow so — there he is!”

Drive on by. Just drive on by.

“He’s stopping, Dad.”

“Where?”

“He’s... he’s stopped next to your car.”

“Is he getting out? What’s he doing?”

“I can just sort of — It’s not a guy cop. It’s a woman. She’s got the light on inside her car.”

“What’s she doing?”

“I don’t know. Don’t they have, like, computers in their cars?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe she’s running my plate.”

“She’s starting to — I think she’s getting out of the car. Dad, you have to get out of the house.”

And go where? To the car? The cop was sitting on it. Suppose I could escape out the basement window, grab Grace, and cut through the property that backed onto this house? Once the police found the broken window, found out who belonged to the car out front—

We’d be toast. Grace and me both.

“Just sit tight, hon,” I said, trying my best to tamp down the panic I was feeling. Droplets of sweat were forming on my forehead. Even if Grace managed to hide, if that cop walked around the back of the house, saw the open window—

“Wait,” Grace said. “She’s getting back in the car. I think she’s on the radio or something.”

“Is she leaving? Is she—?”

“She’s driving away! Dad, she’s going! She’s going!”

I clicked the flashlight back on, kept it pointed to the floor, and found my way to a living room window. Through some sheers, I saw the Milford police car drive up the street, round the bend, and disappear.

“That was a little too close,” I said.

“Can we go now? Can we get out of here?”

The second time in as many hours that she wanted to get the hell away from this house.

“I’ve only checked the kitchen,” I said. “Before I leave, I’ve got to take a quick look through the whole house.”