December Park(105)

“I don’t see their cars anywhere. Besides, I didn’t get the impression that this is a place they typically hang out. I think they went in looking for us.”

“Are you sure you weren’t bullshitting about the rifle?”

“I’ll show you where he blew a hole in the wall,” I said, approaching the back door. The boards still hung loosely, just as Adrian and I had left them. The door was shut.

“Do we really have to go in there?” Peter said.

“It’s why we’re here,” I said, climbing the steps. I gripped the knob and shoved one shoulder against the door. It popped open without much effort. “Come on.”

It was like a dream, entering that house again. Indeed, I’d suffered nightmares about it, though I only now remembered them.

Peter came up behind me, looking around at the ruined interior in awe. “It stinks.”

“I think there’s a busted sewer pipe in the basement,” I said.

Stepping over random debris and avoiding the blackened floorboards, I went into the kitchen. Peter was practically piggybacking on me, he was so close.

“Right there,” I said, pointing to the blast hole in the cupboard. The possum’s blood had dried to brownish muck on the wall and the floor. Amazingly, I thought I could still smell gunpowder in the air.

“Holy shit.” Peter shook his head slowly. “Keener’s a psycho. I know we’ve joked about it before, but is it possible he’s the Piper?”

“I don’t think stealth is Keener’s style. The Piper is someone more”—I wanted to say cerebral, but it didn’t quite fit—“cautious. You don’t stay hidden from the cops for the better part of a year by stomping around town in steel-toed boots and spray-painting grocery stores. It’s too obvious.”

“Where are you going?” he called to me.

I hadn’t realized that I had been slowly making my way down the hall toward the basement door. I turned around and saw Peter standing at the opposite end of the hallway. Grainy harpoons of daylight filtered into the room behind him, creating the unsettling illusion that he was semitransparent.

“I need to check the basement,” I said.

“Do you really think Adrian would have gone into the basement by himself?”

“I don’t know.”

I approached the basement door, took a breath, opened it. The stink of the rancid water rushed up and slapped me across the face. They say the olfactory sense is the one connected most closely with memory, and I believe it; by just catching a whiff of that fecal stench, I was back down there in the dark, crouching beside Adrian while heavy footfalls tramped the boards above our heads. My sneakers were submerged in it, my jeans soaked, my heart strumming frantically. I had to take a step back from the doorway to convince myself that I wasn’t actually still down there.

“You all right?” Peter said, joining me. “You look like you’re gonna be sick.”

“I just had a weird thought,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Remember how I said Keener had tried to trick us into coming out? How he’d had his friends drive the cars away while he stayed here, waiting for us? And then he’d come halfway down the stairs?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” I said, my throat suddenly dry, “what if it hadn’t been Keener?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said, only because I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

The house creaked.

“Hey!” Peter shouted down the mine shaft of the open basement door. “Adrian! You down there?”

His voice echoed in the fetid chamber—there . . . ere . . . ere . . .

“I don’t like this place,” Peter said, his voice nearly a whisper. “Let’s get out of here.”

We hurried back through the house, and Peter was out the door first. I followed, shutting the door behind me. After some consideration, I readjusted the two-by-fours and pressed the nails back into the nail holes in the frame.

“Why’d you do that?” Peter asked.

“So we’ll know if someone goes inside,” I said.

“If we ever come back out here, you mean.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Come on.”

We went around the side of the house, absently swatting at wasps that orbited our heads . . . then froze as we stepped out into the overgrown front yard.

A man stood on the other side of the fence, a red baseball cap tugged down low over his face. He wore carpenter’s pants and a gray T-shirt with a faded emblem on the chest. He was looking directly at us. “What are you two doing?”

I couldn’t speak. If his silence could be construed as evidence, I don’t think Peter could, either.

“Angelo?” the man said, his voice cracking slightly. “Angelo Mazzone? Is that you?”

The man pushed back the bill of his hat. Instantly I recognized his face, although I couldn’t place his name.

“Y-yes,” I managed.

“You guys shouldn’t be hanging around out here. It’s dangerous.”

“Oh,” I muttered. In my head, I was gauging the distance to our bikes. The man was closer to them than we were; we wouldn’t be able to get on them without him stopping one or both of us.