CHAPTER 26

“Are you sure we couldn’t have done this in the daytime?”

Tim was whispering. Not so much because he had to, but because something about skulking around outside the dark house of a dead man in the middle of the night just seemed to naturally make a person do it.

Dom and Denny had insisted on coming along also and, to tell the truth, I was glad they were with me.

Stevie had lived in an old fieldstone-and-wood, one-level cabin that his father built in the 1950s along the river. Stevie and Sue Ellen grew up here, and I had spent many happy hours playing with them, in and around it, as a child and into my teens. What I’d enjoyed most was jumping off the wooden dock out back and swimming in the Kithane River that ran behind the property.

The place had seemed like a plot of paradise to me back then. The house I grew up in with my mother, a trinity rowhouse, was wedged tightly between neighbors, fronted with an uneven brick sidewalk patrolled by pigeons and an asphalt street sentried by stunted, sad, and shadeless maple trees. Here by the river was a different world, with its open spaces and palette of common yellow throats, blue-winged warblers, orange-breasted Baltimore orioles, and other brightly colored river birds nesting, feeding, and singing their songs in the flourishing weeping willows and river birches that lined the river’s banks.

Tonight, with sounds muffled by a low mist crawling up from the river and creeping out from under the raised foundation of the house, it just seemed spooky.

“The last thing I needed...” I started in a whisper before I caught myself and continued in a regular tone, “was for one of the neighbors to see me and call the police. From what I remember, they’re pretty sparse around here, but they are protective of each other’s property. I just figured night would be best.”

We probably should have prepared a little better. Tim brought along a flashlight. However, we hadn’t bothered to check the batteries, which seemed to be on their last legs because the beam was pretty weak. The light even went out a few times and needed a good shaking and pounding on the bottom of the battery casing to bring it back to life. Dom could only contribute a camping lantern to the cause, and it served little purpose beyond encircling our party in light, providing no illumination outside about a one foot radius. We had to move as a tight little group to avoid stumbling. Hopefully, we would find a better flashlight or some batteries at Stevie’s for the walk back.

“Do you think we’ll discover anything? I mean, the police must have already been all over the place by now,” Denny said.

“Maybe, maybe not. But even if they have been here, Stevie was always real good at hiding things,” I answered. “If he had something he didn’t want you to find, you weren’t going to find it without a little luck. Like, everyone seems to think he was selling drugs but I haven’t heard that anyone actually found any. So if he was, he must have squirreled the drugs away where no one could find them. I figure the same might be true for anything that he was using to blackmail somebody, if indeed he was blackmailing someone.”

“Oh, this is great. We don’t know if what we’re looking for actually exists and we have no idea where to look for it,” said Tim, just as the beam from his flashlight went out. “Damn, and we probably won’t even be able to see what it is if we do find it,” he added as he slapped the battery casing again.

Dom stopped suddenly and reached out to stop Tim’s pounding.

“Shhh. Did you see that?” he asked in a hushed voice. He raised the lantern toward the house but it provided no better visibility, and, in fact, made it harder to see outside our circle.

“What?” Denny asked.

“I’m not sure but I thought I saw a flash of light inside the house--moving real quick-like,” he answered.

“I didn’t see anything. Did you Tim?” Denny asked.

“No, but I was fiddling with this damn flashlight. Do you hear anything?” he answered.

We stood silent, listening, but the night was quiet around us.

“Maybe it was reflection of our lights in one of the house’s windows,” I said.

“Maybe it was a cat. Did Stevie have a cat?” Dom asked.

“A cat with a flashlight?” Denny replied.

“Anybody there?” Tim called out.

“What are you doing? Now he knows we’re here.” said Dom.

“We don’t even know there is a ‘he’ here, do we,” Tim answered. “And if there is, it’s better to let him know we’re here than surprise him. Remember what happened to Wes?”

“Actually, he surprised me,” I said, for some reason feeling the need to set the record straight.

“Whatever,” Tim replied. “My point is that surprises are not good.”

We had stopped about ten feet from the front porch. I had the feeling that the guys were now wondering whether this was a good idea or not. I was wondering myself, but this was my idea so I reached over and took the lantern from Dom.

“You guys wait here. I’ll go check it out,” I said, stepping out from the group tentatively.

“No, we’re all in this together,” Tim said. He began to follow me, as did the others, but I couldn’t help noticing they let me stay out in front a few feet.

There were three steps that led up to the front porch. I reached the bottom one and began climbing.

“What if the door’s locked?’ Dom asked.

“Well, when we were growing up, there were always two little gnomes on either side of the front door, and there was usually a spare key under the one on the right,” I answered as I reached the porch. I held the lantern out and saw the two gnomes standing guard at the doors. “They’re still here,” I said.

I waited until the others had joined me on the porch before I went forward, set the lantern down next to the gnome on the right, and tilted the figure to the side. There was no key.

“Damn, it’s not here,” I said.

“Then what are we going to do?” Dom asked.

“Well, we can always smash a window and one of us can crawl in and open the door from the inside,” I answered.

“That’s breaking in?” Dom replied. “That’s against the law. We could get into trouble.”

“What did you think might happen?” Denny asked him. “We are sneaking around here in the middle of the night like common burglars.”

“I dunno. I thought Wes had a key or something,” he answered.

“Quiet you two. I’ll go around back first, maybe there’s a way in back there,” I said to them.

“Or maybe, the door is unlocked and we can walk right in,” said Tim, who had gone to the front door and turned the knob. He pushed the door open a crack to make his point. “After you,” he said to me, pointing the way with the dim beam of the flashlight.

I picked up the lantern and held it out in front of me as I moved past Tim and slowly pushed the door open. The way I remembered the layout of the house, it was built in a variation of a shotgun house, with a large front room, a long hallway with bedrooms and a bathroom to either side, and a large kitchen in the back of the house. This was probably a result of Stevie’s father familiarity with the style growing up in poor neighborhoods in and around New Orleans. It might also explain, I guess, why the house was raised a few feet off the ground, though that might just as well have had something to do with concern of the nearby river flooding over its banks.

I entered the front room and reached out to my right along the wall for the light switch, or rather the old-fashioned push buttons that were common when Stevie’s dad built the house. I found the switch panel right where I remembered it would be and pushed the bottom button in. Nothing. I pushed the top button in. Again, nothing.

“Damn, I guess the power’s been turned off,” I said over my shoulder to the others as I moved deeper into the front room and they followed behind. I held the lantern up but could really only make out shapes of furniture to the right. Tim’s flashlight provided little better vision, although it did illuminate an old desk off to the left against the wall between the windows.

“I’ll check for a flashlight or batteries in the desk. Tim, why don’t you and Denny go on back down the hallway and see if you can find anything in the kitchen. I think there was a fuse box back there. Hell, even some candles would be better than these things we’re using.”

“Sure, let’s go,” Tim said, and he led Denny off.

Dom stayed close behind me as I made my way over to the desk. It was an old oak roll-up desk, and I remember Stevie’s mom telling me more than once that it was the only piece of furniture, a family heirloom from her father’s side, that she and Stevie’s father had brought up from the South when they moved to East Hastings looking for work and a place to raise a family. She was not a prideful woman, but she loved this desk. It was open and I put the lantern gently, and with a bit of respect, on the desktop.

“Must have been creepy, living out here all by himself,” Dom said.

“I doubt it, I mean, he was used to it--the sound of the river rolling by, the crickets in the summer, the stillness in the winter. Besides, he had electricity so the place wasn’t this dark, and he could play his music into all hours of the morning without a neighbor complaining. No, I bet Stevie loved living here.”

Even in the dim light, I could see that the police had most likely been here looking for something. Envelopes and personal papers that had been in the cubby holes in the desk organizer were strewn about the desk top and the drawers were left partially open, as if someone had hurriedly rifled through them then moved on without closing them completely. One thing about Stevie was that he liked things to be in their place. He never would have left his desk like this.

I did a quick search of the drawers on my own, but found no batteries or candles or even matches. It wasn’t any use trying to look through any of the stuff on the desks or in the drawers in the poor light of the lantern. Framed photographs hung on the wall above the desk. I lifted the lamp to see them better and, even in the dimness, I could tell they were pictures of the family, some which I remembered from when I used to hang about the place.

Among them was a stiffly posed wedding photograph of his parents with his mother sitting primly in a chair in her simple white wedding dress, bouquet held in her hands on her lap, and his father, in high collar and what might have been the only suit he’d ever owned, standing honorably to her side, his hand gently resting on her shoulder. I recalled thinking every time I used to look at that picture how neither one looked particularly happy, yet not particularly sad, each just having an expression that seemed to say that this is the way things are, now let’s get down to business. And so they lived, no-nonsense people, but they were very kind to me.

“Eureka!” I heard Denny shout from the kitchen. “Let there be light.” I looked in the direction of his voice and heard the sound of a switch being locked into position. A light filled the kitchen and floated down the hallway a bit back toward us.

“We also found a pack of C batteries to boot. That old Stevie certainly was prepared,” Denny said as he approached, his flashlight on and at full light now. “Find anything?” he asked as he entered the room, turning and directing his light to where I had left the lantern on the desk. “What a mess. So where’s the nearest light switch for this room?” he asked.

“Right here,” said Tim, who had followed Denny into the room. He pressed the wall light button and an old floor lamp by the desk came on.

Now in fuller light, we could see that not only had the desk been rifled through, but the trash basket beside it had been dumped and crumpled paper and other debris was strewn on the floor. Books had been pulled from the bookcase that stood along the facing wall to the right of the desk and flung about injudiciously, some lying on their front or back covers, others spread-eagled and page face down, their spines upraised. It didn’t seem to be the kind of mess the police would make in a search.

Dom turned to me. “Looks like we’re not the only ones trying to find something here. Do you think somebody beat us to whatever we’re looking for?” he asked.

“Well, we won’t know until we don’t find it, right Wes?” Denny injected and the sarcasm was apparent. He turned off the flashlight and went over to the desk, putting it next to the lantern. He turned that off as well.

Tim went over to the bookcase, bent down, picked up a book, and placed it back on the shelf. “What kind of a person would do this to a book?” he asked. He picked up another.

“Um...guys.” It was Dom’s voice, but it had a shakiness to it.

I looked over at him. He stood with his back to us and raised his hand, directing our attention to an overturned sofa on the other side of the room.

“Oh shit. Guys!” he said more forcibly. “Oh shit.”

I moved next to Dom as I followed the path of his pointing finger. There, in the corner, was a body lying on the floor. The sofa blocked the upper portion of the body, but I recognized the boots. It was Puddy Salvatore.

Tim came over. “What’s going on--oh my God--who--what--”

He never got to ask another question because, at that very moment, the front door flung open with a fury.

“Nobody move!”

It was Danny Sullivan. He really didn’t have to worry about any of us making a run for it. We were frozen by the sight of the dead body. And, besides, in his right hand, his gun pointed at us.