Quicksilver(30)

She reached through the gap, felt for the deadbolt thumb turn, and found it. I followed her inside, continuing a crime spree unprecedented for a Mater Misericordi? boy.

With a penlight taken from a jacket pocket, hooding the lens, she swept the kitchen with the beam. Judging by the dirty vinyl-tile floor, the overflowing garbage can, the crusted dishes, and the open pizza box that contained two moldy slices, whoever lived here had no interest in housekeeping and no fear of disease.

“What’s that sour smell?” I asked.

“Stale pot smoke. Somebody does a lot of weed.”

The refrigerator was stocked with a variety of cheeses and lunch meats and at least forty bottles of Corona. A small bowl contained four eyeballs.

We stared at the eyeballs in silence, and then I said, “I don’t think they’re real eyeballs. I think what they are—they’re one of those gross candies that kids like. If they were real eyeballs, they would’ve been pried out of someone, so they wouldn’t look as perfect and neat as these.”

“You’re right,” she said, whether she thought I was or not, and she closed the refrigerator door. She stood listening, turning her head left and right. “The best thing with an attack dog is to move slowly, don’t challenge it. For sure don’t turn your back on it.”

Because I was still convincing myself that the eyeballs were the equivalent of candy that looked like green snot and candy that looked like worms, and all the other grotesque candies with which children proved their courage, I needed a moment to absorb what Bridget had said. “Attack dog? There’s an attack dog?”

“Maybe. I’m not sure. We’ll see.”

She walked out of the kitchen, debris of some kind crunching under her feet.

Following her into the hallway, where the hardwood flooring was as dirty as the vinyl in the kitchen, I said, “What’ll you do—shoot it if it attacks?”

“I would never shoot a dog.”

“But a really bad dog—”

“There are no bad dogs, Quinn, only dogs that people have taught to do bad things.”

“That’s sweet, probably even true. But maybe it’s been trained to kill.”

“I think if I was going to be killed by a dog, I’d have a presentiment of it,” she said. “And I haven’t.”

“Yeah, but what about me?”

“We’ll see.”





|?14?|

In the hallway, Bridget opened a door, revealing plank stairs descending to a cellar. In Arizona as in Nevada and California and other places in the American West, most homes do not have basements but are built on concrete slabs, a sensible practice in earthquake country and in states where land is plentiful. Exceptions include multimillion-dollar estates that feature large home theaters and wine cellars and enormous garages for automobile collections, where windows aren’t wanted. The home we’d broken into wasn’t one in which a billionaire oligarch would stash Ferraris in twelve different colors.

She flicked a light switch, revealing drywall with water stains and fractal patterns of mold riotous enough to command a million dollars from a collector of abstract expressionist paintings. On the second step, three cockroaches were engaged in what might have been a ménage à trois. Startled by the light and embarrassed to be caught in their depraved conjugation, they scattered down the stairs, seeking dark crevices where they could hide in shame.

“It’s down there,” Bridget said.

“What is?”

“What we need.”

“It’s been a hard day. What I need is sleep. I’m not going to sleep down there.”

Descending the stairs, she said, “The night is young, Quinn. It’s not even nine o’clock yet.”

She left me in the wedge of pale light from the cellar, with a length of dark hallway to my left and another to my right, with the possibility of an attack dog not disproven. Fear of being thought cowardly by a beautiful woman is a major reason why men go to war, get in cage fights, wrestle alligators, and subject themselves to ballroom dancing lessons. I followed her down the stairs. Half a league, half a league Half a league onward All in the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred.

The stench in the cellar was unlike anything I had encountered before, a mélange of rotting flesh and sewage and spoiled milk and baby puke and maybe half a dozen toxic chemicals. My gorge rose four or five times, as if something that lived in my throat wanted out, and I successfully swallowed it. My eyes watered, and my nose burned as it would have if I’d inhaled rubbing alcohol, and the thick air had a flavor so vile that I regretted having taste buds.

Gagging like a cat trying to expel a hair ball, I said, “What the hell?”

Trash was stacked everywhere—old wooden crates, splintered chairs, broken lamps, a couple of buckets with sprung handles, a bicycle without tires, cardboard boxes containing disordered heaps of beer bottles, several baby dolls with limbs missing—but I couldn’t see anything organic that might be rotting.

“It’s not a natural stink,” Bridget said. “They concoct it and saturate the space with it. I’ve encountered it before.”

“Why would they do that?”

Scanning the room, she said, “Well, so that no one will think there’s anything of value here, so no one can bear to linger.”