Between the Living and the Dead (3 page)

“What window glass?” Ruth asked.

Rhodes looked at the house. It was old, nearly a hundred years old, he thought. Two stories tall, with a covered porch on both floors, at least on the front. Rhodes couldn't see any window glass. The wrought-iron fence was covered with vines and bushes, and trees grew around most of the house, concealing some of the windows. The ones that Rhodes could see all had screens over them. The screens must have been rusted, but Rhodes couldn't tell that in the darkness.

“Your friend Seepy Benton isn't in there, is he?” Rhodes asked.

“So you've heard about his new job,” Ruth said.

“I have. You think he's in there?”

“He hasn't started looking for ghosts yet,” Ruth said.

She sounded doubtful, but Rhodes decided to let it pass. “Have you heard any gunshots since you got here? Seen any flashes of light?”

“No. It's been quiet. Except for the thunder.”

As she said that, thunder crashed practically overhead, and lightning crackled. The wind started to blow, whipping the trees around the house. An aluminum can bounced and clattered along the street.

“Littering,” Ruth said. “Class C misdemeanor.”

“Probably not for just a can,” Rhodes said. “I'll go pick it up.”

As he started for the can, rain began to fall in big drops.

“Forget the can,” Rhodes said, changing direction. “We need to get under cover.”

At one time the gate in the wrought-iron fence had been chained and locked, but both chain and lock had long since disappeared. The gate gave a shrill
skreeek
when Rhodes pushed it open, and he was reminded of an old movie he'd once seen on late-night TV, back in the days when they still showed old movies at odd hours.
Cry of the Banshee
was the title, and it had starred Vincent Price, which would surprise absolutely no one who'd watched a lot of those old movies. As Rhodes remembered it, things hadn't ended well for Price.

Rhodes had to break several vines to get the gate open. If there was anyone in the house, they had to find another way in.

The sidewalk was overgrown with grass, with only a few patches of concrete to be seen. Rhodes jogged to the porch and up the three steps to get under the roof. Ruth was right behind him. She had drawn her service revolver and held it in her right hand. The flashlight was in her left. The wind blew rain onto the porch, and they moved closer to the door. Soggy leaves tumbled around their feet.

“Better watch your step,” Rhodes said. “Some of the flooring could be rotten.”

Ruth turned on her flashlight and shined the beam over the porch floor.

“Looks pretty solid,” she said. “They used good wood in these old houses.”

“Be careful anyway,” Rhodes said. “Check the door.”

Ruth turned the light on the door. There was no screen. The top third of the door had three windows. Two of them still had glass in them. On the bottom of the door, the white paint was flaked and peeling. There was no doorknob. Old doorknobs were collectible, and someone had removed it.

Rhodes reached out and gave the door a push. It didn't move. He pushed harder. The glass rattled in the panes, but the door still didn't move.

“Stuck,” Rhodes said. “I don't think anyone got into the house this way, at least not tonight. We'll have to check the back.”

“I'll go,” Ruth said. “I have the flashlight.”

Rhodes was pretty sure that “I have the flashlight” meant “You're too old and decrepit to be wandering around in the dark because you might get hurt.” Or maybe it meant “If you hadn't been in such a hurry to get under cover, you'd have gotten your own flashlight out of your car.”

It wasn't something Rhodes wanted to think about too much. Anyway, Ruth was better equipped than he was to enter a house where gunshots might have been fired. She had her revolver, and her duty belt held a collapsible baton, pepper spray, and handcuffs. All Rhodes had was his pistol. He bent over and removed it from the ankle holster.

He straightened, glad that he could do it without his bones creaking, and said, “We'll both go. You don't want to go in the house without backup.”

“What if someone comes out the front door?” Ruth asked.

Rhodes touched the door. “It would take a while to get this thing open. If anybody's in there, we'll get them before they can get out. As much noise as we've made out here, I'd be surprised if anybody was still in there.”

Ruth didn't say anything. Rhodes listened for sounds inside, but all he could hear was the wind in the trees and the pattering of the rain against the house.

“Rain's slowing down,” Rhodes said.

“Okay,” Ruth said. “Let's go.”

“You first,” Rhodes said.

Ruth was already on her way down the steps, the flashlight beam floating over the drenched weeds as she made her way around the house. Rhodes followed, the cold rain soaking his already wet shirt and getting through his shoes to soak his socks as well.

The back of the house was different from the front. The fence was still standing, but the wide gate was off its hinges and lying in the weeds. An old rusted-out Dodge pickup stood there as if it were planted, sunk into the ground almost up to the wheel hubs. The tires, practically indestructible, still clung to the rims, and they'd be around for a long time to come. The truck's hood was up, and Rhodes suspected that the engine was gone. The skinny hackberry tree growing up through the engine compartment was a clue.

The tracks through the crushed weeds were a clue to something else.

“Somebody's been here and gone,” Ruth said, shining the light along the tracks. “Not too long ago, either.”

So maybe there had been someone in the house after all, and even though it was clear that a vehicle had left the backyard, they couldn't be sure that there wasn't someone still inside.

The back door was missing a top hinge, and it hung open at a slant. Ruth directed the flashlight beam into the interior. Rhodes couldn't see anything other than what appeared to be an empty room. They approached it with caution, keeping well apart from each other. When they were closer, Ruth was able to illuminate more of the room. It was small, probably an enclosed porch.

Ruth went up the steps, stood at the top, and let the beam roam over the inside, which looked completely bare. She glanced at Rhodes, who nodded. He was pretty sure that anybody who'd been inside was long gone, if not before he and Ruth had arrived, then shortly after the squealing of the gate and the pushing on the front door. It wouldn't to do take chances, however.

Ruth stepped inside the doorway and walked through the small room to stand on one side of a door leading into another room. Rhodes followed and stood on the opposite side of the door, all too aware of the way his clammy clothing stuck to his body.

“Me first,” Rhodes whispered. “Put the light on the ceiling.”

Ruth turned the flashlight up toward the ceiling of the larger room, giving it some partial illumination. Rhodes went through the door with his pistol at the ready. He saw no one, and no one shot him, so he told Ruth to come on through.

She did and moved the light around the room, which had obviously been a kitchen. The old cabinet doors were all open, and some of them had fallen into the floor. So had a couple of drawers. The cabinets and drawers were empty except for some scraps of browned newspaper that had been used as shelf liner. The stove and sink were gone. The refrigerator was still there, being too old for anyone to steal. Its door was missing. It could have been removed as a safety measure, or maybe someone had thought of a use for it and taken it. Spiderwebs hung from the cabinet doors and in the windows.

The floor was covered with cracked and buckling linoleum. The linoleum was covered with dirt and littered with trash: a few fast-food sacks, soft drink cups and cans, and a couple of candy wrappers. Transients might have spent a night in the house from time to time. Or maybe someone else had. The story about the house being haunted was usually enough to keep people away.

The place had the musty smell that all old deserted houses did, but Rhodes detected another odor in the air, too.

“You smell that?” he whispered.

Ruth nodded. “Gunpowder.”

Just as she spoke, one of the fast-food bags rustled and something scampered across the floor, rustling through other bags as it ran. Ruth didn't move, but Rhodes twitched. He thought it was a testimony to his own iron nerves that he didn't blast away at it with the Kel-Tec.

“Mouse,” he said.

“I know,” Ruth said. “Probably a lot of them in here.”

“Beats staying outside in the rain,” Rhodes said, thinking that the mouse didn't know how lucky it was not to have been blown away by a volley of 9 mm slugs.

Three doorways led out of the kitchen, one to the front of the house and to what Rhodes supposed had been the sitting room, one on the left to what must have been a dining room, and the other to what had probably been a bedroom.

Rhodes inclined his head to his left and said, “Door number one?” He nodded toward the one that opened into the sitting room and said, “Or door number two? Or,” nodding to his right, “door number three?”

Ruth moved toward door number two, which was the one the mouse had fled through. Rhodes thought that was a less than excellent choice, but maybe the mouse had moved on. Ruth waited on one side of the door until Rhodes had positioned himself on the other side.

They stood there and listened. Rhodes heard the trees brushing against the sides of the house and the wind rattling the windowpanes and whining through cracks in the walls. The rain had stoppped.

Rhodes didn't think anyone was in the house with them. He hadn't heard the sounds of anyone moving, and nobody had tried a shot at the flashlight. Or at the mouse. They had to follow procedure, though.

“Let's do it the same way,” he said, and Ruth directed the flashlight beam upward again.

Rhodes slipped around the door and into the dark room, sweeping his pistol side to side, but there was no one to shoot at, and the mouse was either gone or in hiding. The room was empty of furniture, but something lay in the middle of the floor. Rhodes had a bad feeling that he knew what it was.

“Come on in,” he said, and Ruth entered the room, shining the flashlight around. The beam stopped when it came to the lump in the floor, which wasn't a lump at all.

It was a man. He was quite still, and Rhodes was sure he was dead. Ruth turned the light on the man's face, and Rhodes sighed.

“You know who he is?” Ruth asked.

“Yeah,” Rhodes said. “I do.”

“You don't seem surprised to find him like this.”

“I'm not,” Rhodes said.

 

Chapter 3

Rhodes used his cell phone to call Hack and request an ambulance and the justice of the peace. Hack was naturally curious, but Rhodes didn't give him a chance to ask any questions. The cell phone was fully charged, but the battery held only so much juice.

“I'll send 'em,” Hack said, and Rhodes could tell the dispatcher's feelings were hurt.

“I'll tell you about it later,” Rhodes said. “We're busy right now.”

“Right,” Hack said, and broke the connection.

The ambulance was just a formality, as the man lying on the dirty floor was dead. There was no doubt about that. The JP would make the declaration, and the EMTs would remove the body. That's what he was now. The body. It didn't matter that Rhodes had seen bodies before, and it didn't matter that the dead man hadn't been an upstanding citizen. Now he was just the body. There was something sad about that, every single time.

“We have ten or fifteen minutes,” Rhodes told Ruth, shaking off his brief melancholy. “I'll take some photos. You should probably do the same.”

Both of them used their cell phones to take pictures of the crime scene and then e-mailed them to the sheriff's department. Rhodes didn't think they'd be of any help, but it was procedure.

“We should check the rest of the house,” he said when they were finished with the photography.

“You want the upstairs or the downstairs?” Ruth asked.

“I'll go up,” Rhodes said. “You stay down here. Don't let anybody mess up the crime scene any more than you have to. I'll get the front door open so they can come in that way.”

“What about a flashlight? We could use some gloves, too.”

“I'll get them from the car,” Rhodes said. The cell phone had a flashlight, but he preferred the real thing, and they needed the latex gloves to handle any evidence they picked up.

He went into the little entry hall in front of the sitting room. It took a good bit of tugging to get the door open, but he finally managed it. He jogged out to his car. The rain had stopped, but Rhodes's socks still felt squishy inside his shoes, and the wind pressed his cold, wet clothes against him. He got the gloves and flashlight from his car. When he returned to the house, he pushed the door shut again, but wet leaves had already blown inside. Rhodes didn't think anyone was likely to complain.

The stairway to the second floor was in the hall, and Rhodes focused the flashlight on it.

“Watch out for mice up there,” Ruth said.

“Nobody likes a smart aleck,” Rhodes said.

He handed her a pair of latex gloves, and she put them on. He put on his own pair of gloves and gave the stairs another look. The steps were dusty and dirty, but they appeared to be solid. Old houses like this one were built of wood that easily held its own through the years and were much sturdier than the ones being built now.

Rhodes didn't think anyone had used the steps in a while, but he went up to make a quick search of the four upstairs bedrooms, just to be sure. He found that they were all much the same, small, square rooms with a few strips of wallpaper hanging off the walls or lying on the floor. A good bit of the old woven backing still clung to the wall.