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BJ called Detective Schein’s home from her office phone at Wild Capers. Left a message saying she wanted to see the farmhouse tomorrow afternoon.
The tires on her car squealed a little when she turned on Caulfield Lane off of Claude Street. She thought she’d never get rid of the cop after the writers meeting.
Why the hell did he question me about the contents of my excerpt? Handcuffs? Really? Who the fuck does he think he is?
She drove to the end of the short road where Virgil Wentzel’s house was cloaked in silence. Veered off the driveway toward a cluster of trees. Still angry, she managed to close the car door without breaking the window.
Walking fast to the front door she dug around in her purse for the house key she’d taken off a corroded nail in the kitchen wall at the farmhouse. Gasped. Frantically hunted everywhere, including her car.
Did I leave the damn key in the desk drawer at Sonnier’s house?
If she did she was out of luck. Sonnier lived in a large neighborhood. She’d surely be heard or seen if she were to break into his house.
Dammit all to hell. Why did I give Sonnier’s key back to the cop when I did? He seemed to have forgotten that I had it.
BJ observed the broken dormer windows.
I wonder?
She jogged around to the back yard. Withdrew the penlight in her purse, shined it on each window. Examined the bathroom window more closely. The outdated slide lock faced in the opposite direction of the other windows.
She checked the others, just to be sure.
At the bathroom window she put the penlight in a tight pocket of her skinny jeans, dropped her purse on the ground. Equally spaced her outstretched hands against the pane. She pushed upward, but was met with resistance.
She guessed that over the years the foundation might have shifted the windows out of rectangle. Or the sash and tracks had become swollen or cracked making a tighter fit. Or...? She traced the wood frame with the beam of her penlight to learn whether or not the damn thing had been painted shut.
A rustling swish. She shut off the light. Strained her hearing to catch the sound again. BJ crept to the end of the house, and poked her head around the corner. She sneezed, suddenly and loudly, sending unknown critters skittering back into the darkness.
I don’t have time for this.
She guided the light down one side of the bathroom window again. No paint. Too bad, in a way. Paint would be easy to remove. Nothing she could do about structural damage. Keeping the light on, she tucked the handle of the penlight in her pocket.
Standing on the tips of her toes like a ballerina, she flattened her hands against the glass and pushed hard with an upward thrust. A short grunt, either from her or the wood frame, the window rattled upward a couple of inches. Her hands hurt, but after several more tries she had the thing opened wide enough for her to squeeze through. Good thing she was small-boned.
She remembered the bathtub was directly beneath the window only after she fell in and lightly thumped her head against the inner edge. “Ouch, dammit.” Knew nothing at all about a spider until it fell off of, or out of, the faucet. It quickly disappeared.
“Where did it go?”
Was it desperately trying to crawl up the slippery porcelain to reach its hiding place?
“Or did it hitch a ride on me?”
BJ scampered out of the tub. Twisting, turning, squealing with the sound of a piglet, she thwacked her body repeatedly in an effort to knock off the spider she was positive had gotten on her. She grabbed the wig off her head, and shook the living daylights out of it. Quickly snatched the penlight out of her pocket and accidentally turned it off. Repeatedly clicking it before it finally came back on, she rushed to the grimy mirror over the sink.
“Ova da zinc,” she’d heard her sous chef say a time or two. She stopped checking her reflection. A smirk lifted the corner of her mouth. The fear drained out of her.
Sink? Drain? You’ve taken this madness to a whole new level.
She examined the tub with the light. There it was. A big ole hairy thing, hiding near the bottom of an old brown striped shower curtain that had been shoved to the end by the faucet. She closed the window as best as she could while avoiding the spider.
Leaving the penlight on, she wandered into the living room. Tried not to let the sounds of things scurrying in all directions unnerve her. Tried not to turn on the houselights.
She shined the beam on the wall next to her. Cockroaches scurried every which way, searching for the darkness. She immediately played the light across the ceiling, flattened a protective hand on top of her head. Quite a few bugs, but nowhere near as many as the wall. There’s definitely a hell of a lot more of them than there were the last time she was there. Damn things reproduced at an alarming rate.
She directed the light to her computer table. Winced at the sight of small droppings of fecal matter. Mice? In the middle of the filthy mess was something she never knew she’d forgotten. A sheet of paper with the names and addresses of every television station in Lake Charles, Louisiana was folded in half and tucked under the keyboard. She recalled how angry Frank became after hearing his surname linked to a serial killer.
“Served him right.”
BJ reached out to unplug the equipment and quickly pulled her hand back. Using the penlight, she whacked the cords a few times to bounce the bugs off. Calculated the size and weight of the equipment. Thought about how to carry it all out of the house in one trip.
She no longer had a use for the computer. For now, she’d gotten everything out of Louisiana she was going to get for her story, so there wasn’t any reason to continue sending bogus emails to herself from that address.
But just walking off and leaving everything as it was made her uneasy.
How long before the damn computer’s traced back to me?
“I need to find a half full dumpster somewhere on the other side of the city.”
She carried the monitor at arm’s length to the kitchen, set it on the floor to unlock and open the rear door. Poked her head out, made sure she was still alone before setting the heavy piece in the yard. Hurried back to retrieve the hard drive, keyboard, and the printer. Damn bugs totally freaked her out. Had she disturbed them enough they were now preparing to retaliate en masse?
About to lock the door she thought of the lamp, the phone, and the sheet of plastic she’d used to keep her fingerprints off the folding table while also giving her a clear window to see if bugs were on the underside.
She put them with the other things.
A mental picture of the infested equipment sitting in her car was disturbing. If bugs were hiding inside, in particular tiny newly hatched ones, she’d rather have them running loose in the trunk than in her back seat.
She closed the trunk lid gently to keep from shaking bugs out of the computer stuff, being reminded of that time when she bought an old 13-inch TV at a flea market. Before going home, she had stopped at a store and bought a clear plastic bag. Sealed the TV inside, and let it sit for a week to make sure there were no bugs in it. Smart idea. The thing had more than a few.
BJ instantly came up with a better plan to get rid of the computer stuff forever. A better place, rather, to dump it where no one in his or her right mind would have the nerve to search.
“The swampland of Chalmette.”
* * *
An oncoming car sped out of Caulfield Lane with their brights on, temporarily blinding Officer Wentzel as he drove his patrol car across Claude Street. He believed he caught a glimpse of blond hair, though, when the driver turned onto Claude in the opposite direction.
He wasn’t good at identifying every make and model of cars like most guys could. By the time he found a safe place to make a U-turn and go back to Caulfield the driver was long gone.
Jacob debated about sharing his observations with Northcutt and Cantin. Would it prove, once and for all, he has what it takes to become a detective?
Nope.
He seriously doubted they’d come looking for him to question him about his vague descriptions of a car and a blond, so he put the thought out of his head.
In its place a sneaky plan on how to change the course of the investigation, whereby he’d be the first to solve the mystery troubling the department, played itself out in his mind.