I was staring at Lance’s sidearm as we drove the patrol car across town to retrieve the warrant—an insignificant hoop at this point—but a necessary step. It was after eleven when Lance left me behind in the patrol car, the engine running, to retrieve the papers, but he was back before I could miss him. He dove in, buckled up, and we were off to the Carringtons’ house in due haste.
On the seat between us, I tapped at a small metallic box that contained a few swabs and empty vials, a couple of larger cylinders that I hoped to use to collect samples from the home. Neither Lance nor I spoke as we drove on through the night, the evening slipping away in moonlight and star wheels, frost nipping at the ends of our noses even as we turned up the heater vents, the mercury dipping toward five below zero outside.
No one of sound mind was driving and the roads, vacant and roughshod, seemed to crumble beneath the tires as we moved silently through the night. We drove past the Indianapolis Speed-way, over exit ramps, across certain sideshow lots littered with the vestiges of Christmas lights and moving parts of Santa sleighs and reindeer, and eventually into the Carringtons’ neighborhood. None of the neighbors’ homes were lit, the cold taking them to bed or pulling them toward the lure of a glowing television screen, and all was silent and bereft.
Lance eased the patrol car into the driveway. “Let me get at the lock,” he said. “We have tools.” He didn’t expect me to stay long in the car alone, and exited quickly to make haste with the front latch. My memory retreated to Sheila Carrington, a diagram of the house forming a kind of diorama in my mind. It was dark—and for a moment I shuddered at the thought of entering the house again.
Sitting there in the darkness I noted that a light snow had started to fall—beautiful, translucent flakes, large as hoarfrost. The air, dry and frigid, gave the snowflakes a brittle appearance, and as they settled upon the windshield of the patrol car I could see them glistening in the faint, angular light from the street lamps. It was a soft snow, mostly air falling on air, but seemed to pick up steam as the weight of the precipitation began to settle over the ground and shimmer against the darkness.
I could see that Lance had made quick work of the lock and, when he opened the front door and turned on the porch light, I slipped out of the car and gingerly made my way across the front sidewalk to the steps, taking Lance’s hand as he led me into the surprisingly warm interior. I dusted a few snowflakes off of my shoulders after I closed the door. Inside, I could smell antiseptic mixed with less familiar odors coming from the kitchen. I stepped into the hallway and turned on the lights. Rooms blossomed into brightness and, after Lance closed the front door, I realized I was the one leading the expedition, of sorts. “What’s next?” he asked.
“I want to show you something,” I said, noting on the face of the grandfather clock that it was now eleven thirty. I led Lance down the hallway into the bedroom. The bed, much as I had left it the day I removed Sheila Carrington’s body, was mussed and incomplete. “He was too sick to make things over,” I told Lance. “She had died here on the bed. Too weak to move.”
“He never made it home,” Lance reminded me. “You said you were probably the last person to see him alive.”
I nodded, a shiver running down my spine as I considered all of the places I needed to look. I took out a steno pad, made notes . . . and snapped photos on my cell phone. There were over-the-counter pain killers on the back of the sink—a short row of other remedies that the Carringtons may have tried, to no avail. Inside the medicine cabinet I discovered the usual: old tubes of antibiotic ointment, a jar of Vicks, another tube of Ben-Gay, lost past-potency prescriptions of various assortment, a few Nicotine patches that Sheila Carrington may have tried. There were also band-aids, strips of gauze, antiseptic tape, an ancient vial of merthiolate that, around the edges, was bleeding crimson. Nestled on the bottom shelf, I also noted a plethora of bismuth tablets, antihistamines, and several orphan aspirins—like polka dots against a strip of electrical tape that was securing a connection to the cabinet light.
I made notations quickly, shot a few photos. Lance stood next to me, supportive but bored. “Anything in particular?” he asked.
“Nothing jumps out at me,” I said. I reached into my coat pocket for rubber gloves and squeezed my fingers into them. I glanced down at the floor where, after Sheila’s death, Phil Carrington lay slumped and vomiting against the toilet. I removed one vial from my kit, sunk it delicately into the toilet, and removed a water sample.
“Really?” Lance said.
“Might as well start with the head source,” I noted. “Stranger things have happened.”
“What’s next?” Lance wondered.
I led him back down the hallway toward the living room, took in the décor, the basic living conditions. “She kept a clean house,” I said aloud. “Or they didn’t spend much time in here. Maybe she hired a cleaning service. Nothing seems to be out of place.”
“What about the kitchen?” Lance asked. He was staring ahead, his gaze fastened on the plethora of cakes and pies still spread across the granite countertops. Nothing had been moved.
“I think you should get a cleaning crew in here in a day or so,” I said. “This stuff will start to go bad. Or perhaps I can ask Milt if he knows someone who could help out. They had friends. We just want to make sure the environment is clean first.”
Lance propped himself in a corner of the kitchen opposite the refrigerator and watched me as I gathered the samples. Primarily, I focused on the food that it looked like the Carringtons had sampled at some point. There were a few missing wedges of pie, an uncovered plate of beautifully decorated sugar cookies—green Christmas trees, sugary snowmen, blue bells, red angels. A pineapple upside-down cake also looked suspiciously appetizing, and I portioned a sample into one of the vials.
Opening the cupboards, I also discovered some opened bottles of liquors, unwashed wine stems, and an opened tin of designer popcorn—a parmesan mixture with nuts and peppercorns that had been manufactured locally. Likewise, a large bowl of mixed fruit—apples and apricots, oranges and grapefruit—formed the centerpiece of this trove, but all the fruit seemed to be gathering was fruit flies and I looked past it.
“What are you hoping to find in here?” Lance asked eventually.
I was still focused on visible food, but as I reached for the refrigerator door I admitted, “I’m not sure. It may be nothing. It may be something.”
“They obviously weren’t lacking for sweets,” Lance observed. “There’s no way they could have eaten all of this before it went stale.”
“Therein is the rub,” I noted, staring down into the bowels of the fridge at some rather sparse shelves. Surprisingly, outside of a half gallon of two percent milk, some non-dairy creamer, a crisper full of head lettuce, and some leftovers wrapped in foil, the fridge was virtually empty. I pulled samples from each of the leftovers, labeled them with a felt-tipped marker, and added them to my growing collection in the sample kit.
Lance had retreated into the living room. He was looking out the window.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Probably nothing,” he said. “Just thought I saw something.”
“What?”
“Probably a bird. Hey, but it’s still snowing. Really coming down now.”
I checked the time and went back to my labor. Closing the refrigerator door, I felt the first tinge of weariness tug at my eyelids. “Let me check the freezer,” I said.
Lance grunted.
I opened the freezer door up top and noted, once again, that the Carringtons seemed obsessed with their own product. Inside, nearly loaded to the brim, several bags of their company ice were stuffed into the guts and in the door. There was one opened bag and a small metallic scoop. I shoveled a few pieces of the ice into a vial and labeled it.
Lance had given up on window watching and had stepped into the kitchen again. He yawned. “Any chance we can get home soon? I’ve got an early start tomorrow, and so do you.”
“I’m about done,” I told him, closing the lid on the sample kit. “Blanch should be able to analyze these.”
Lance drew up next to me and glanced around the premises. He didn’t say much, but had a far-away look in his eyes. When he looked at me again, I could see that he was tired. He was wanting to say something, but needed a little coaxing.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
Lance smiled, his eyes drifting toward mine. I didn’t want to make him stay any longer. It was time to go home and take our respective places next to each other . . . and sleep.
“I’ve seen most everything over the years,” Lance said, “but I have to admit that these in-home visits creep me out. Kind of ghostly, don’t you think?”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said matter-of-factly. “There’s only the living and the dead.”