Ash’s place looked like the ATF’d been through it. The door’d been kicked open, the jamb splintered. I was careful goin’ through it. Inside, the front room’d been tossed an’ scrambled. Any place you could think to hide anythin’ was open an’ emptied or smashed an’ dumped out on the floor. Even the stereo an’ CD player was in pieces. Ash’s furniture was early American, an’ he had a couple nice antiques. They were all up-ended; most were broken. His papers was in a pile with the desk turned upside down on top. The braided rug’d been heaped at one end of the room. Enough of the pine floorboards’d been pried loose to make a hole a man could put his head through. I made a mental note to look into it as soon as I was sure there was nothin’ in the house would jump on me if I got down on all fours.
I went on to look in the kitchen an’ found the same general situation. Everything’d been opened an’ dumped out, from cabinets to tin cans. Somebody with more guts than brains’d even taken a ax to the aerosol cans, someone who’d read—in one of those Build-Yourself-a-Arsenal magazines—’bout cans with hidden compartments. I stayed outta there to avoid trackin’ the flour an’ smashed eggs around.
The bathroom an’ bedroom were the same. Stuff dumped out in the sink an’ tub, in the toilet, an’ on the floor. The closets’d been emptied, the light fixtures broke, pi’tures took off the walls, even the wall outlet covers were off. A kitchen chair’d been dragged up under the open trap door to the attic space. I was real cautious puttin’ my head up there, but I needn’t a been. Somethin’ had been up there—all the ceiling insulation was tore up. But that was all I saw—that an’ dust motes dancin’ in the sunbeams sneakin’ through the attic vent louver.
I went back out the front, an’ made a quick tour of the yard. I didn’t see no one so I guessed it was safe to go back in an’ stick my head in the crawl space. There was nothin’ there but pea gravel an’ spider webs. I come up for air an’ went outside for a think.
Ash’s front porch view was finer than he deserved. I sat on the weathered steps an’ admired it. The sky was bluer than Nina’s eyes an’ dotted with ripe-cotton clouds. The air smelled a little like cut grass an’ old compost. An old burr oak tree held the line between the grass an’ woods, an’ a pair of little birds chased a big old crow from outta the tree clear outta the yard. A red-winged blackbird was singin’. The grass was a week’s worth taller’n last time I seen it, but it was summer sweet an’ shimmerin’ in the breeze like ripples on a green lake. There was some dandelions still bloomin’ like bright splashes of yellow paint on the grass, but most were blown an’ gone. The bright sunlight made the shadows on the porch an’ under the trees look black an’ mysterious.
I tried to guess why Ash’d leave all this—even supposin’ he’d killed the missionary. It’d been more in his nature to brass it out, not run ’til the warrant was served. His boat was gone, an’ his fishin’ gear. There wasn’t a gun or a cartridge in sight. If he’d cleared out for good, it made sense that he’d take those. But why leave everythin’ else? Why not sell it, or give it to his kin? An’ who smashed the place? An’ when? An’ why? An’ what the hell was I supposed to do about it? I must’ve gone over it for fifteen minutes without thinkin’ of anythin’ useful.
Eventually I did the right thing. I got out my camera an’ took pi’tures. Then I dusted damn near everything with fingerprint powder. I got maybe half a dozen prints. After photographin’ ’em in place, I lifted ’em with tape an’ saved ’em on cards, each labeled an’ dated. ’Fore I went back to the office to write my report, I dropped the fingerprint cards off at the state cop shop so they could run ’em through their computer. Then I stopped at Rooney’s to report in person. Ben listened to the whole story without comment. Martha give me tea an’ sympathy.