Vanish

TWENTY-SEVEN

The private road cut through stands of oak and pine and hickory. Chips of sunlight filtered through the canopy, dappling the road. Deep among the trees, little light shone through, and in green shadows thick with underbrush, saplings struggled to grow.

“No wonder the neighbors didn’t hear anything that night,” Jane said, gazing at dense woods. “I don’t even see any neighbors.”

“I think it’s just ahead, through those trees.”

Another thirty yards, and the road suddenly widened, their car emerging into late afternoon sunshine. A two-story house loomed before them. Though now in disrepair, it still had good bones: a redbrick facade, a wide porch. But nothing about this house was welcoming. Certainly not the wrought-iron bars across the windows, or the NO TRESPASSING signs tacked to the posts. Knee-high weeds were already taking over the gravel driveway, the first wave of invaders, preparing the way for encroaching forest. Wardlaw had told them that an attempt at renovations was abruptly abandoned two months ago, when the contractor’s equipment had accidentally touched off a small fire, scorching an upstairs bedroom. The flames had left black claw marks on a window frame, and plywood still covered the broken glass. Maybe the fire was a warning, thought Jane. This house is not friendly.

She and Gabriel stepped out of the rental car. They had been driving with the AC on, and the heat took her by surprise. She paused in the driveway, perspiration instantly blooming on her face, and breathed in the thick and sullen air. Though she could not see the mosquitoes, she could hear them circling, and she slapped her cheek, saw fresh blood on her hand. That was all she heard, just the hum of insects. No traffic, no birdsong; even the trees were still. Her neck prickled-not from the heat, but from the sudden, instinctive urge to leave this place. To climb back in the car and lock the doors and drive away. She did not want to go in there.

“Well, let’s see if Wardlaw’s key still works,” said Gabriel, starting toward the porch.

Reluctantly she followed him up creaking steps, where blades of grass grew through seams between the boards. On Wardlaw’s video, it had been wintertime, the driveway bare of vegetation. Now vines twisted up the railings and pollen dusted the porch like yellow snow.

At the door, Gabriel paused, frowning at what remained of a padlock hinge that had once secured the front entrance. “This has been here a while,” he said, pointing to the rust.

Bars on the windows. A padlock on the door. Not to guard against intruders, she thought; this lock was meant to keep people in.

Gabriel jiggled the key in the lock and gave the door a push. With a squeal it gave way, and the smell of old smoke wafted out; the aftermath of the contractor’s fire. You can clean a house, repaint its walls, replace the drapes and the carpets and furniture, yet the stench of fire endures. He stepped inside.

After a pause, so did she. She was surprised to find bare wood floors; on the video, there had been an ugly green carpet, since removed during the cleanup. The banister leading up the stairs was handsomely carved, and the living room had ten-foot ceilings with crown molding, details that she had not noticed while watching the crime scene video. Water stains marred the ceiling, like dark clouds.

“Whoever built this place had money,” Gabriel noted.

She crossed to a window and looked through the bars at the trees. The afternoon was slipping toward evening; they did not have more than an hour before the light would fade. “It must have been a beautiful house when it was built,” she said. But that was a long time ago. Before shag carpets and iron bars. Before bloodstains.

They walked through a living room empty of furniture. Floral wallpaper showed the wear of passing years-smudges and peeling corners and the yellow tinge from decades of cigarette smoke. They moved through the dining room and came to a halt in the kitchen. The table and chairs were gone; all they saw was tired linoleum, the edges nicked and curling. Afternoon sun slanted in through the barred window. Here is where the older woman died, Jane thought. Sitting in the center of this room, her body tied to a chair, tender fingers exposed to the hammer’s blows. Though Jane was staring at an empty kitchen, her mind superimposed the image she had seen on the video. An image that seemed to linger in the sunlit swirl of dust motes.

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Gabriel.

They left the kitchen and paused at the bottom of the staircase. Looking up toward the second-floor landing, she thought: Here is where another one died, on these steps. The woman with the brown hair. Jane gripped the banister, her hand clasping carved oak, and felt her own pulse throbbing in her fingertips. She did not want to go upstairs. But that voice was once again whispering to her.

Mila knows.

There’s something I’m supposed to see up there, she thought. Something the voice is guiding me toward.

Gabriel headed up the stairs. Jane followed more slowly, her gaze focused downward on the steps, her palm clammy against the railing. She came to a halt, staring at a patch of lighter wood. Crouching down to touch a recently sanded surface, she felt the hairs lift on the back of her neck. Darken the windows, spray these stairs with luminol, and the grain of this wood would surely light up a spectral green. The cleaners had tried to sand away the worst of it, but the evidence was still there, where the victim’s blood had spilled. This was where she died, sprawled on these steps, this very spot Jane was touching.

Gabriel was already on the second floor, walking through the rooms.

She followed him to the upper landing. The smell of smoke was stronger here. The hallway had drab green wallpaper and a floor of dark oak. Doors hung ajar, spilling rectangles of light into the corridor. She turned into the first doorway on her right, and saw an empty room, walls marked by ghostly squares where pictures had once hung. It could be any vacant room in any vacant house, all traces of its occupants swept away. She crossed to the window, lifted the sash. The iron bars were welded in place. No escape in a fire, she thought. Even if you could climb out, it was a fifteen-foot drop onto bare gravel, with no shrubs to break the fall.

“Jane,” she heard Gabriel call.

She followed his voice, moving across the hall into another bedroom.

Gabriel was gazing into an open closet. “Here,” he said quietly.

She moved beside him and crouched down to touch sanded wood. She could not help mentally superimposing yet another image from the video. The two women, slender arms entwined like lovers. How long had they huddled here? The closet was not large, and the smell of fear must have soured the darkness.

Abruptly she rose to her feet. The room felt too warm, too airless; she walked into the hall, her legs numb from crouching. This is a house of horrors, she thought. If I listen hard enough, I’ll hear the echoes of screams.

At the end of the hall was one last room-the room where the contractor had touched off the fire. She hesitated on its threshold, repelled by the far stronger stench of smoke in this room. Both broken windows had been covered with plywood, blocking out the afternoon light. She took the Maglite from her purse and shone it around the dim interior. Flames had scorched walls and ceiling, devouring sections all the way down to charred timber. She swung the Maglite beam around the room, past a closet missing its door. As her beam swept past, an ellipse flashed on the closet’s back wall, then vanished. Frowning, she swung the Maglite back.

There it was again, that bright ellipse, briefly flickering across the back wall.

She crossed to the closet for a closer look. Saw an opening large enough to poke a finger through. Perfectly round and smooth. Someone had drilled a hole between the closet and the bedroom.

Beams groaned overhead. Startled, she glanced up as footsteps creaked across the ceiling. Gabriel was in the attic.

She went back into the hallway. Daylight was rapidly fading, dimming the house to shades of gray. “Hey!” she called. “Where’s the trap door to get up there?”

“Look in the second bedroom.”

She saw the ladder and scrambled up the rungs. Poking her head into the space above, she saw the beam of Gabriel’s Maglite slicing through the shadows.

“Anything up here?” she asked.

“A dead squirrel.”

“I mean, anything interesting?”

“Not a whole lot.”

She climbed up into the attic and almost banged her head on a low rafter. Gabriel was forced to move at a crouch, long legs crab-walking as he inspected the perimeter, his beam slowly scanning the deepest pockets of shadow.

“Stay away from this corner over here,” he warned. “The boards are charred. I don’t think the floor is safe.”

She headed to the opposite end, where a lone window admitted the last gray light of day. This one had no bars; it did not need them. She lifted open the sash and stuck her head out to see a narrow ledge and a bone-shattering drop to the ground. An escape route only for the suicidal. She pushed the window shut, and fell still, her gaze fixed on the trees.

In the woods, light briefly flickered, like a darting firefly.

“Gabriel.”

“Nice. Here’s another dead squirrel.”

“There’s someone out there.”

“What?”

“In the woods.”

He crossed to her side and stared out at the thickening dusk. “Where?”

“I saw it just a minute ago.”

“Maybe it was a passing car.” He turned from the window and muttered, “Damn. My battery’s going.” He gave his flashlight a few hard raps. The beam briefly brightened, then began to fade again.

She was still staring out the window, at woods that seemed to be closing in on them. Trapping them in this house of ghosts. A chill whispered up her spine. She turned to her husband.

“I want to leave.”

“Should have changed batteries before we left home…”

“Now. Please.”

Suddenly he registered the anxiety in her voice. “What is it?”

“I don’t think that was a passing car.”

He turned to the window again and stood very still, his shoulders blotting out what dim light still remained. It was his silence that rattled her, a silence that only magnified the drumming of her heartbeat. “All right,” he said quietly. “Let’s go.”

They climbed down the ladder and retreated into the hall, past the bedroom where blood still lingered in the closet. Moved down the stairs, where sanded wood still whispered of horrors. Already, five women had died in this house, and no one had heard their screams.

No one would hear ours, either.

They pushed through the front door, onto the porch.

And froze, as powerful lights suddenly blinded their eyes. Jane raised her arm against the glare. She heard footsteps crunch on gravel, and through squinting eyes, could just make out three dark figures closing in.

Gabriel stepped in front of her, a move so swift that she was surprised to suddenly find his shoulders blocking the light.

“Right where you are,” a voice commanded.

“Can I see who I’m talking to?” said Gabriel.

“Identify yourselves.”

“If you could lower your flashlights first.”

“Your IDs.”

“Okay. Okay, I’m going to reach in my pocket,” Gabriel said, his voice calm. Reasonable. “I’m not armed, and neither is my wife.” Slowly he withdrew his wallet and held it out. It was snatched from his hand. “My name is Gabriel Dean. And this is my wife, Jane.”

“Detective Jane Rizzoli,” she amended. “ Boston PD.” She blinked as the flashlight suddenly shifted to her face. Though she could not see any of these men, she felt them scrutinizing her. Felt her temper rise as her fear ebbed away.

“What’s Boston PD doing here?” the man asked.

“What are you doing here?” she retorted.

She didn’t expect an answer; she didn’t get one. The man handed back Gabriel’s wallet, then he waved his flashlight toward a dark sedan parked behind their rental car. “Get in. You’ll have to come with us.”

“Why?” said Gabriel.

“We need to confirm your IDs.”

“We have a flight to catch, back to Boston,” said Jane.

“Cancel it.”