Kassie marched along the road, ignoring the curious looks of the stroller moms. She was tall for her age, but still looked too young to be out of school this early in the day. Lowering her face to the floor, she pressed on. The curiosity and censure of middle-class moms she could handle – running into a police officer would be a different matter entirely. Besides, she only had a brief window before the school secretary called her mother, so she had to work fast.
West Town was busy as usual, the sidewalk clogged with affluent shoppers and smartly dressed toddlers and their carers. Kassie had to keep her wits about her as she wound her way through this well-heeled human traffic, but her progress was swift and soon she was standing outside Jacob Jones’s modest home.
The suburban villa in front of Kassie was lifeless – the curtains drawn, lights extinguished, the front door shut and locked. This popular, upmarket street was the kind of place where you were likely to encounter security-conscious curtain-twitchers, so Kassie didn’t linger, heading down the passageway at the side of the house. She tried the French windows at the back, then the side entrance to the utility room, but both were secured.
On further investigation, however, she found a side window that would suit her purpose. It had only a single, flimsy latch – no bolt lock – so Kassie didn’t hesitate, ramming her elbow through the glass. She had done this before and knew that a short, sharp blow lessened the chance of injury. Removing her arm and dusting off the glass, she was pleased to see a large hole in the window. Sliding on a pair of woollen gloves – inappropriate given the warm, spring weather – she slipped her hand through the hole and gently lifted the latch, before opening the window and clambering inside.
Moments later, she was standing alone in the hallway. Her heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and once again she questioned the wisdom of coming here. She had nearly turned back a number of times, given the trouble she risked landing herself in, yet here she was.
She passed through the ground floor rooms quickly – she didn’t expect to find anything here – then moved upstairs. She had entered the house as quietly as possible, hadn’t wanted to announced her presence, but still she half expected Jones’s fiancée to come hurrying down the stairs, demanding to know what she was doing there. But the house was as quiet as the grave, the lonely creak, creak, creak of the floorboards Kassie’s only companion as she crept along the upper landing.
Teasing open the door to the master bedroom, she peered inside. It appeared to be empty, so she walked briskly through it, running her hand over the satin coverlet on the king-size bed, before passing into the walk-in closet. This too was uninhabited, so she passed on to the guest bedroom. This was undisturbed, as was the study, and as Kassie descended the stairs to the hallway, she began to worry. Had she risked a whole heap of trouble for nothing?
She stood stock still, perplexed and angry, pondering her next move, when her eyes alighted on another door. A door which was slightly ajar. Crossing the hallway, she tentatively took hold of the handle and inched the door open. Immediately a draft of cold air hit her, as she took in the dusty flight of stairs leading down.
Kassie arrowed a look back down the hallway, as if fearing ambush, but all was still, so she returned her attention to the staircase. Feeling on the side of the wall, she located a hook, which had presumably once had a flashlight or similar hanging from it, but there was nothing there now, so pulling out her iPhone Kassie hit the flashlight app and stepped inside.
The first thing that hit her was the smell. Musty, rotting, unpleasant. Putting her sleeve over her mouth and nose, she took in her surroundings, her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom. The dust on the stairs had been disturbed recently, but it was hard to tell when. Should she tread on the faint footprints to conceal her presence here, or should she leave them be? Opting for the latter, she started to descend, keeping her feet as close to the edge of the stairs as possible, to minimize her trail.
One step, then another, then another. Kassie’s heart was in her mouth and she had to will her legs forward. Her flashlight was powerful, but its range limited. She could only pick out parts of the cellar and was unnerved by the eerie shadows that the flashlight’s beam threw on to the walls. On she went, convinced that at any moment she would discover a scene of butchery, hoping her nerve would hold when she did.
She had reached the final step and carefully stepped down on to the cellar floor. Her chest felt so tight now that she almost couldn’t breathe. She knew exactly what she would find here and part of her wanted to turn and run. But Kassie was no coward. She had come this far, so now with a sudden movement she swung her flashlight beam across the cellar floor. She gasped, put her hand to her chest … but there was nothing there. The room was deserted, devoid of human presence, a quiet repository for high-school yearbooks and aged sports gear.
Crunch.
As she stepped forward to investigate further, her foot crushed something. Bending down, she was surprised to see small shards of glass littering the floor, sparkling like diamonds as her light swept over them. Confused, Kassie widened the range of her beam and now she spotted a flashlight lying partly concealed under the lip of a cardboard box. Using the toe of her sneaker, she rolled it out of its hiding place. As she’d suspected, the glass face was broken, the bulb too.
Her heart skipped a beat. Obviously, there were innocent explanations for the presence of the broken flashlight – Jacob had dropped it perhaps and been unable to find it in the darkness – but Kassie instantly dismissed them. Suddenly, for reasons she couldn’t fully explain, Kassie knew that this was where it had happened.
This was where Jacob Jones’s fate was sealed.