Dusk leached what pale gray light remained of the winter afternoon. Fog curled.
A trooper and a deputy sheriff stood at the top of the apartment’s stair landing, the trooper’s hands cupped to his eyes as he peered into the apartment door’s window, lit by a light from inside.
Rath bounded up the stairs as his revolver dug into his lower back. The lawmen turned to him, hands going to their sidearms.
“I’m her father!” Rath shouted, winded.
The two men’s hands remained on the butts of their weapons as Rath stood just below the landing. “I called this in,” he said. “Frank Rath.” The deputy’s eyes brightened with recognition and he removed his hand from his sidearm. His coarse mustache was black as shoe polish. The trooper, Rath’s age with an impeccably trimmed ginger goatee flecked with silver, kept his hand on his weapon.
“She’s in there with him,” Rath said, his voice cracking.
“You called this in, sir?” the trooper said. Being a step above Rath, the trooper stood a good foot taller, his position of command undeniable. “No one inside called 911?”
Rath stepped onto the landing, forcing the trooper to take a step back. The trooper recognized Rath now. Preacher’s recent early parole had caused a hum of outrage in regional law enforcement, and the Mandy Wilks and Mad Doctor cases Rath had helped solve had made headlines. Photos of Rath had been part of several stories.
Rath’s revolver jabbed into his lower spine. He needed to keep at an angle so the revolver remained concealed. It was legal, but being armed would escalate the situation.
“If you called, we can’t just break in,” the trooper said. “We need probable for a locked building.”
“You have probable. And you needed to be inside an hour ago.” Rath tried to shoulder between the two men, but the trooper stepped in his way. “I pay the damned rent,” Rath lied. “Break it down. She’s in there with Preacher.”
“Preacher?” the trooper said. “You think he’s in there? Preacher?”
“I know he is. Didn’t Grout tell—”
“Get it,” the trooper said to the deputy.
The deputy hurried down the stairs to pop his cruiser’s trunk, hustled back up with a door ram.
“Stay outside,” the trooper said.
Rath wanted to break the door down and rush in there himself, but he understood his need to stand down, for now.
“Out of the way.” The trooper drew his sidearm as the deputy rammed the door just below its knob, the weakest part of the structure.
The door splintered; the deputy rammed it again.
The door’s lock broke, and the door swung open.
Canaries shrieked.
The trooper charged inside, shouting: “State police!”
The deputy strode in behind the trooper, weapon drawn.
The canaries flapped and fussed as the two cops swept to the kitchen, then down the hallway.
Rath reached for his revolver and stepped into the apartment.
“Police!” the trooper shouted from the back.
Rath looked around. A laptop computer sat open on the scarred pine trunk in front of a flea-market futon. The screen saver faded in and out with photos of Rachel and Felix.
The trooper said from the back, “What the hell.”
Rath grasped his revolver, took a shooter’s stance.
The air grew brittle with the tension of imminent violence.
Rath eyed the crawl-space door set in the wall beside the futon. It was open, a crack. Just enough for someone to see out from inside.
Rath licked his dry lips.
He stepped toward the door, revolver trained on it.
The canaries chittered frantically.
A feather floated in the air.
Rath reached for the crawl-space door.
A voice behind him demanded, “Stop.”
Rath didn’t move, eyes locked on the crawl-space door.
The deputy stepped into Rath’s line of vision, shook his head fiercely, his sidearm drawn but its muzzle aimed at the floor at Rath’s feet.
“Depart the premises.” The deputy wagged his sidearm toward the door. “And holster the firearm. Understand? Don’t make me arrest you.”
Rath eased the .22 down. He could not know if his revolver or something the deputy had witnessed in the back room spurred the deputy’s grave bearing.
“Until you tell me what’s back there,” Rath said, “I’m not moving.” His lower back, along the erecta spinae, ignited with a cauterizing pain he’d thought he’d left in the past.
From the rear of the place, the state trooper appeared. His face was all wrong.
Exasperated.
He holstered his weapon, stared Rath dead. “You sure your daughter was here?”
Rath raised an eyebrow at the crawl-space door, to indicate the door was open a crack.
“The place is cleared,” the trooper said as he nodded to Rath that he understood, trained his weapon at the crawl-space door. He nodded to the deputy, counted three on his fingers.
The deputy threw open the door and swung his weapon on it. He peered inside the space.
“Shit.” He turned to Rath. “Nothing. Boxes.”
“I heard the birds,” Rath said. He needed to get out of there. But to where? He took his phone out and tried Rachel’s cell. Voice mail. “Call me,” he pleaded, “now. Please.”
“Birds?” the trooper said.
Rath waved a hand at the caged canaries. “When Preacher called, I heard those goddamned things.”
“What is this about, sir?” the deputy asked.
Rath apprised them of Preacher’s call, leaving out Preacher’s sickening lie about Rachel.
“Didn’t Grout tell you?” Rath said.
“Dispatch just said a break-in was in process. Grout couldn’t reach me. But there was no evidence of such when we showed. You sure it was those birds?” the trooper said.
When Preacher had implied he was watching Rachel, intimated he would hurt her with his ugly lie, Rath had heard birds. He’d assumed they were Felix’s canaries. Who wouldn’t have? Maybe he’d been right, Rachel and Preacher had been here, except Rath was too late.
“Sir?” the trooper said. “You sure you heard these birds?”
“No,” Rath said. “But—”
The trooper gazed at the apartment’s ruined door, his concern now clearly whether he’d get his ass chewed for busting down a door he had no legal right to bust down.
Rath’s cell phone rang, startling the canaries into discordant birdsong.
PRIVATE.
Preacher’s ID.
Rath stared at it, his muscles locked with the grim certainty of whose cold voice would greet him.
“Answer that, sir,” the trooper said.
PRIVATE.
“Answer it.”
The phone would kick to voice mail in another ring.
“Answer it. Or I will.”
Rath answered.