Finding Susan (5 page)

Blake was a born cop – even when he was a kid and he and Jim Tourney and Susan and Kate would play out in the woods, if they stepped over a line it would be Blake who stood in the way.
 
He kept them restricted.
 
No vandalism, no rock throwing.
 
And the irony was that Blake wasn’t a killjoy.
 
He remembered the time little obnoxious Timmy Waits followed them into the woods, it was Blake who got the rope and secured him to a tree, to “protect him from bears.”

He grabbed a beer, which was about the only resident of his refrigerator other than some bread and the rudiments of sandwich making.
 
He liked to think of himself living simply, but the truth was that in the last three years he’d hardly lived at all.
 
It was back in Seattle where he’d done his living, as a detective in the missing persons bureau, missing child division. It was often heart-breaking work: the intensity, the pity, the apprehension, and then, more often than not, the job had to be turned over to the homicide division.
 

And then there were the ones you screwed up.
 
Those were the ones that haunted you.
 

Blake downed his beer, but didn’t grab another.
 
He would have to be on call tonight.
 
He was on call every night, because when Blake wasn’t working, he didn’t have anything but himself and his memory, the two things in the world he hated the most.

Chapter Three

Kate didn’t smile much when she got home. The whole big place wasn’t just filled with cold reminders of “Miss Havisham”, the name she and her sister had chosen for their unloving aunt, looking coldly on the two children in her charge.
 
It also still had the smell, something that Kate had always associated with her – a sort of soap mixed with ammonia-- permeated everything when they were kids.
 
Even their bagged lunches (which Susan always had to make for them, since Gladys never got up to see the kids off to school) had the taste.
 

It was much fainter now, but still there.
 
More present was an indistinct rotting smell.
 
The house had been ill-treated in the years that Kate had been gone.
 
The front porch groaned and sagged as she walked on it – she was sure the wood there was rotten.
 
And though there was still some light outside, Kate had to turn on a flashlight to see in the house.
 
There were lights in the house, but with the disrepair of everything else she was afraid to use them.
 
A few of the windows were broken, and had been boarded up to keep out the elements.
 

Joe Bob must have done that work.
 
A pity he couldn’t have kept the rest of the house in better repair.
 
Kate was walking through what was once the living room.
 
Dust covered everything, and cobwebs stretched across the room at all angles.
 
It was like the place had been used as a spider gymnasium.
 

Had Susan actually made her way here? Kate tried to imagine what it would have seemed to her, expecting the faux Victorian glory that had been its hallmark when they were children, and instead finding just an overgrown hovel.
 
She would have been crushed.
 
Susan always lived in a dream world that she created, and when it didn’t pan out, which it never could, it always sent her into a tailspin, breaking down any personal progress that she had made in the meantime.
 

Kate figured that was exactly what happened this time.
 
She came here with big dreams of playing house, and when the house didn’t comply, she ran away.
 

And aren’t you running away yourself?
 
Aren’t you running from your work in the city?
The thought was annoying, primarily because it was true.

She’d had a hard time making herself come on into the house when she’d first arrived, but once she’d taken that step, the next seemed easier.
 
She moved into the kitchen, and flashed her light through there.
 
The table where they had endured their silent dinners was still there, but its legs weren’t.
 
Maybe they were in the dining room proper.
 
She could imagine rats deciding that the table didn’t belong in the kitchen, and starting to move it piece by piece.
 
Good for them.

A light switch was on the nearby wall.
 
Kate flicked it on, not expecting much.
 
Why would there still be electricity, after all?
 
She’d packed a couple of camping lanterns to use out in the car.
 
But the lights came on for a second, then something sparked and they shut off.
 
Kate could hear sizzling along the wall, and she slapped the light switch back off.

“Note to self – stop doing anything,” she said aloud.
 
Her voice sounded weak and small inside the massive house.
 
It felt like the entire place was built for its belittling effect – the ceilings were too high, even here in the kitchen, and it looked like the counter was built at an odd height.
 
Oh well – it was Kate’s house now, she could do whatever she wanted with it.
 

And the first thing she wanted to do was leave it and go grab a room in a motel.
 
Preferably one far away from Whispering Pines and big old annoying Blake Spanner.
 

The more she thought about the time they spent together the more irked she felt.
 
He wasn’t even cordial! She wasn’t some twelve year old brat trying to best him at everything anymore.
 
He was better left ignored, she decided.

Then why was she spending all this time thinking about him? That was another question to leave alone, but she knew she wouldn’t.
 
It was part of being a lawyer that she could never let go: questions had to be followed to their logical conclusions, even if she didn’t like the answers.
 
Information was there to be processed and understood, and she didn’t understand why Blake Spanner kept coming to mind.
 

Maybe because the house was so depressing.
 
She stopped in the downstairs bathroom and turned on the faucet as a test.
 
After a few seconds of it chugging like an old motor giving up the ghost, some black stuff masquerading as water sputtered out, and then some brown.
 
Once the leaves came out Kate was bored with the novelty – she just wanted water.
 

After a solid minute of spewing filth, water, clean and good, finally did start to pour.
 
This meant that the showers upstairs and down should work, though she wasn’t certain whether the water heater would.
 
She went back to the front room, ducking twice under complex meshes of webs, and kicked at the knee high pile of mail that had been placed there.
 
She tried to ignore the sound of tiny little insect feet scuttling from their hiding places inside the pile, and looked for a gas bill.
 

It was resting next to its friends the phone bill and the electricity bill.
 
Bright red letters were printed on all the envelopes, saying things like “Final Notice” or “Repossession Imminent”.
 
Funny that most things still seemed to be working.
 
Still, it was comforting to know that she would still have to pay for all the utilities, even if things didn’t work.
 
Aunt Gladys had left behind a healthy sum of cash as well as the house, but most of it had gone to pay off the inheritance tax.
 
If she wanted to actually get this place up and running, she’d have to dig into her own coffers.
 

Kate sat down on a small pillow of junk mail on the floor and shone the light up on the high ceiling.
 
A light fixture was there, but she wasn’t about to try and turn it on.
 
The whole place might go up.
 
She would need an electrician, maybe a plumber, a gas man...
 
and she hadn’t even given any consideration to her accommodations.
 
Maybe she’d be right here on the floor with the bugs and the mail.
 
She opened the front door to let the last rays of external light shine in.

There was precious little illumination out there, but it did brighten the gloom a little bit. It also gave Kate a good view of her car.
 
It was a cute little PT Cruiser she’d bought just a couple of years ago, and she had much more affection for it than any man she’d had the misfortune of dating since.
 
All of San Francisco was starting to sour in her mind, just like Whispering Pines had once.
 
The back seat of the car was piled high with bags and trunk, a reminder that this trip back home was as much a retreat as anything else.
 

I’m no different from Susan
, she thought.
 
Running when the going gets tough.

But why back to Whispering Pines? There was less work here, certainly less stimulation, and, if Blake Spanner was any indication, the pickings here in Whispering Pines weren’t going to be any more impressive.
 
Boy, Blake had gotten on her nerves.
 
That must be the reason she kept thinking of him.
 

***
***
***

“Is that a duck?”

Kate lifted her head from her pillow, her speech half slurred by fatigue.
 
It was about two in the morning, and she’d gotten maybe an hour’s worth of sleep since getting to bed at ten.
 

To think some people went to the country for peace and quiet! Crickets were fiddling right outside her window, the mosquitoes buzzed too.
 
June bugs bashed against the screen that blocked the bedroom window (thank God her old room was facing away from the road, where no rocks had found it.) Most unnerving were the coyotes howling out low and frightening songs, and their equally maddening responses.
 

Lower and stranger were the frogs, but it was the duck that finally made Kate sit up in frustration.
 
She glanced out the window, and caught a quick glimpse of the white feathered nuisance just outside the door before it disappeared, quacking all the while.

In her high-rise apartment in San Francisco, she was above a lot of the noise of the city, and if she was bothered by aviary, it sure did not quack.
 
The thing should be asleep, Kate reasoned, or maybe roasting on a spit or flying south or...

She gasped as she saw a light flicker on the ground, a lantern-held candlelight that shuddered in the wind.
 
It moved along the brush, but whatever hand held it was hidden in the overgrowth.
 

Kate caught her breath, then forced herself to relax.
 
It was surely nothing - with the house so close to the woods, a man out there probably had just lost his way.
 
Once he saw the road and could reorient himself, he’d be able to head back to where he was going.
 

But wait. He seemed to be coming this way. Suddenly, he dashed across the clearing towards the house, but just before Kate could see who it was, the flame he carried was doused.
 
The world was so dark out there - Kate could barely make out shapes and movements.
 
For just a moment, the cacophony of nature was holding its breath to see what would happen next.
 

Her heart was beating like a drum. Was this real? Or was she still half asleep and dreaming?

“It’s nothing, you big crybaby,” Kate said, her breath coming fast.
 
And then she heard the subtle scraping down the stairs, and the unmistakable creak of a door.
 
Footsteps tromped down beneath her.
 
Someone was in the house.
 

Paralysis hit.
 
Kate was so frightened she couldn’t move.
 
She wanted to pretend she was somewhere else.
 
But she wasn’t, and she knew that.
 
She also knew she couldn’t very well wait in her bed for the intruder—obviously an axe murderer after all. Carefully, trying to hold back the scream that wanted to climb up her throat, Kate stepped down on the carpeted floor.
 
The bedroom she’d had as a child did not seem to have changed since she was gone except for the dust, and she could still find her way around the place in the dark without banging up her shins.
 

She tiptoed to her purse. Downstairs, she heard heavy boots and the sound of metal clanging.
 
She opened her purse and spilled its contents onto the floor, where it would land quieter.
 
A panoply of junk fell out, including a small taser gun she’d purchased and never used, and her cell phone.
 
She grabbed them both.
 
One roll of lipstick tumbled down along the ground and rolled underneath the small dresser, tapping against the wall as it landed.
 

Kate bit her lip at the tiny noise.
 
The sounds of the outside seemed to have drowned away.
 
The only things that stuck were the cold that clung to her like a child and the intruder downstairs, moving as carelessly and noisily as a pig in slop—as though he had no idea anyone might be there. Another terrifying sound--like a high-pitched gibbering or squeal.
 
Then a loud SMASH, and the squealing stopped.
 

Kate opened her cell phone and powered it on.
 
It came to life with a loud beep which stopped her heart for an instant.
 
She was sure the man downstairs had heard it.
 
He was quiet too - there was no noise in the house at all.
 
Then she heard metal clang, and something heavy was whumped down on the ground.