Blind Spot (40 page)

He propped the last shovel up against the shed wall and took a break. Leaning one hand against the edge of the workbench, he dragged his coat sleeve across his forehead and then across his upper lip and mustache. He’d worked up a sweat; he liked that. He unbuttoned the coat, yanked it off, and dropped it over one of the stools. Searching the ribbed walls for more tools in need of sharpening, his eyes landed on the collection of axes hanging from the pegboard.

Forty-four

Am I losing my mind?

For the remainder of the drive, the two of them didn’t talk. While Garcia kept the radio off and concentrated on driving, Bernadette kept her head turned away from him and stared through the passenger window. She was embarrassed she’d had a breakdown in front of her boss, and feared her outburst had endangered her career more than any of her previous gaffes on the job. Even before the big scene, Garcia’s attitude toward her and her sight had been all over the board: Curious. Supportive. Skeptical. Resentful. Now there was evidence his underling could see dead people and dead dogs. She didn’t know how he was taking this latest bit of news. Not well, she suspected.

Dead people. Dead dogs.

Had she really conversed with a ghost? Touched him? Had sex with him? Would he come to her bed again—invited or not? Those questions made her head spin, but the others were no less dizzying: Was Augie a benign spirit or something malignant? Why did he know so much about her? How had he been able to warn her about the wake? Would other phantoms start materializing in front of her? How was she supposed to use this ability? Was it God who gave her this, or Satan? She knew the answer the Franciscan would give her. She could almost hear him now, in that judgmental voice:

You’re sleeping with the devil, daughter.

The biggest, most troubling question she kept asking herself:

Am I losing my mind?

As they entered the town of Dassel, she quieted the screaming in her mind and broke the silence inside the car. “Is it coming up?”

“Yeah.” Garcia’s eyes were glued to the north side of the road. “Two-story house with woods on either side of it. Enclosed front porch. I’ll know it when I see it.”

“It’s after Dassel?”

“But before Darwin, home of the largest twine ball rolled by one man.”

Relieved at his small talk, Bernadette grinned. “What?”

“It was the biggest twine ball
period
until some asshole town in Kansas hopped on the bandwagon. Still, Darwin’s twine ball is the only whopper rolled by
one
guy.”

“He still working on it?”

Garcia: “He died.”

“Maybe he’ll pay me a visit next,” she said dryly.

Garcia steered around a semi that had stopped in front of him to make a left. “Do you need to talk?”

“No. No. Don’t worry,” she said, stumbling over her words and regretting her feeble joke. “My head’s back in the game.”

Garcia pointed through her window. “Good, ’cause that looks like the place. Joint’s lit up like a Christmas tree.”

Her head swiveled to the right. She looked over her shoulder as they passed a farmhouse with lights on in nearly every window. “He’s afraid of the dark,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” she said.

Garcia slowed and steered the Grand Am to the right, pulling it off the highway and out of sight of the house. The car bumped onto a narrow strip of weeds that bordered the woods. He put it in park, punched off the headlights, and shut off the car. “I say we leave the car here and hike through the woods. Enter the place from the back.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Garcia took out his gun and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “As soon as we see what we’re dealing with here, we’ll call for backup.”

She took out her Glock and checked it. Slipped it back in her holster. “Still not convinced we’ve got the right psycho?”

“Not sure
I’ve
got the right house.” Garcia opened his door, jumped out, and started digging under the driver’s seat.

She opened the passenger door and hopped out. “That’s the only problem? There isn’t something else you want to say to me?”

He pulled out his flashlight, stood up with it, and clicked it on. “I’ve come around. You’ve obviously got something going on. An expertise or a power or whatever the hell you want to call it. We’ve got the right man. Was all your work.”

“All
our
work,” she said, closing the passenger door.

They entered from where Garcia had parked the Pontiac, heading north into the woods. Garcia took point, keeping the flashlight ahead of them, and aimed down. The ground was spongy and smelled of rain and moss. Struggling to keep their path straight, they stepped over logs and weaved between evergreens and hardwoods. After twenty minutes of trudging in near blackness, they figured they were deep enough and turned east, toward the house. When they broke through the trees, they found themselves next to a small body of water, its shoreline encircled by reeds and weeds and tall grasses. The two agents hunkered down next to each other. Garcia punched off his flashlight. They were on the far side of a pond behind Quaid’s house. The windows in back of the house, glowing as brightly as those in the front, were reflected in the surface of the water. From across the pool and to their left, they spotted a metal shack that took up nearly as much real estate as the house. A light attached to the back of the shed also shone on the pond surface and illuminated that end of the shack.

Bernadette squinted into the night. “There’re a door and two windows on this side of the outbuilding,” she whispered.

Garcia: “The what?”

“That metal shed.”

“
Outbuilding.
Is that a farmer word or what?”

“Funny.” She squinted some more. “I can’t tell if there’s someone inside the shed. Yard light is too bright.”

“I think that’s Quaid’s ride,” said Garcia, pointing to the Volvo parked in the driveway that ran between the house and the metal building.

Bernadette: “Now what?”

“You tell me,” he said. “You’ve been in that house once already. I’ve only seen photos.”

“Yeah.” She paused and tried to think above the din of the croaking. “Let’s get closer. Follow the edge of the water to the back of the house.”

With Bernadette leading the way, the pair bent down and crept to the right, following the pond’s shoreline. The grasses hid all but the tops of their heads.

Garcia grunted behind her. She stopped and spun around, pushing a reed away from her face. “You okay?”

“Almost went down. Slipped on a slimy rock.”

“Probably a frog.” She turned around and continued heading toward the back of the house. She kept her eyes trained on the windows, in case Quaid or someone else peeked through the curtains.

The two of them reached the side of the pool nearest to the house and stopped. They crouched next to each other amid the reeds and weeds. The horseshoe of woods that started at the far side of the pond curled up along both sides of the property, so that there were trees wrapping around the west side of the house and the east side of the metal building. But the inside of the horseshoe—the yard between the pond and the back of the buildings, and the area between the shed and the house—was mowed short and was clear of trees.

Garcia slipped his flashlight in his jacket pocket. “We could beeline it to the back door from here. Hope no one sees us.”

“Bad idea,” she said.

“Dive back into the bushes and follow the tree line?”

“Better idea.”

“It’ll take twice as long, and I’m sick of nature.” He stood up and bolted out of the reeds.

“Maniac,” she said, and went after him.

They both stopped at the bottom of the steps and squatted down as they looked up at the back of the house. The windows along the first and second floors were covered with drapes sheer enough to reveal that the interior of the home was lit, but dense enough to keep them from seeing inside. The only help was a horizontal gap between the curtains covering one window—a square of glass that looked out over the porch. From what Bernadette could remember during her earlier tour of the house—and knowing how farmhouses were laid out and decorated—Bernadette figured it was the window over the kitchen sink. The gap was created by the café curtains. She leaned into Garcia’s ear: “I’ll take the stairs. Try to see in.”

He nodded and told her the obvious: “Be careful.”

Staying crouched, she took out her gun and slowly mounted the handful of steps. The wood creaked as she went up.
Damn frogs,
she thought. Now that she needed their masking croaks, they seemed to have gone silent. She expelled a breath of relief when she reached the porch landing, a rectangle of uneven boards covered by an overhang and railed by weathered spindles.

Two round aluminum trash barrels sat under the kitchen window. One, containing cans and bottles, was uncovered. She peered inside and sniffed. Didn’t see or smell anything suspicious. Anything dead. With her free hand, she lifted the lid of the other barrel. She looked down. By the light coming from the square window, she could see the barrel was empty. Not even a garbage bag inside. She replaced the lid. Standing on her tiptoes, she looked up at the window. She was too short to see through the gap, especially with the barrels blocking her way and keeping her from getting closer. Moving the barrels wouldn’t help—and would make too much racket.

Bernadette holstered her gun and crawled on top of the garbage-barrel lid, staying on her knees. She steadied herself by resting her palms on the trim at the bottom of the window. As she sat up on her knees, she felt the lid beneath her start to pucker and give way. She leaned on the window ledge to relieve the weight on the lid. Peeking through the break in the curtains, she saw the kitchen with all the lights on, but no people inside. Holding her breath, she put her ear to the glass. Heard no voices or music or television.

She spotted a doorway leading to another room, but had trouble seeing beyond it. She knew, from her earlier look inside the house, that it led to the dining room. Anything on the counters? Nothing but canisters on the counter opposite the sink. Now she could get a peek at what he’d dumped inside the sink, what he’d almost destroyed. She raised herself a little higher and flattened her face against the glass to get a view of the sink. What she saw resting against the porcelain made her stomach churn. One word came to mind:
Monster.

Forty-five