Cut and Run(11)

Headlights slashed across the front of the trailer and flickered against the yellow crime scene tape wrapped around stakes positioned around the home. For an instant she couldn’t move. When the cabdriver cleared his throat, she paid him, grabbed her backpack, and got out of the car. The evening heat hit her, and she thought about friends back east who were convinced dry heat was better than 100 percent humidity. She fished her phone from her pocket and turned on the flashlight.

Taking long strides across the dusty yard past Jack’s late-model truck, she stepped over the tape and climbed the front steps past the lawn chair now roped off with red crime scene tape. She shone her light on the chair and its red, white, and blue woven straps and then on the cracked, sunbaked stained deck. Both were covered with blood.

The Ranger said Jack had been found in that chair, which ironically she had shipped to him two years ago for his birthday. She imagined him sitting in it, smoking a cigar, and then she pictured him in it screaming in pain and dying.

She pushed all the thoughts from her mind and read the orange seal placed over the doorjamb by the forensic examiner. It was dated yesterday and signed by someone named Ridgefield. The front doorknob and the wooden doorframe were covered with fine black fingerprint dust. On the deck beside her sat an overturned tented evidence marker.

She’d investigated enough scenes like this and wasn’t intimidated by the DO NOT ENTER warning and the consequences listed in small print below it. She reached in her pocket, removed two of the black latex gloves always crammed in each of her jackets, and slipped them on. Using keys Jack had given her, she unlocked the door and broke the seal.

Careful not to touch the powder, she stepped into a dark interior that smelled of cigarette smoke, air freshener, and bourbon.

She switched on the overhead light, dropped her backpack by the door, and unholstered her gun. The place was trashed. A forensic team had come behind whoever had ransacked the place to dust windowsills, the refrigerator door handles, the broken picture frames scattered in the center of the room, and some of the now-crumpled and torn pictures. Jack had never liked strangers on his property, and this invasion added the final insult.

“I’m sorry, Jack.” She tucked her phone in her back pocket.

Jack had called her a week ago, told her he’d stocked the refrigerator with a six-pack of Corona, her favorite. The call had been out of character, and when she had asked how he was doing, he had insisted everything was fine. She had instinctively known he wasn’t fine and had promised herself a Texas vacation very soon.

One way or the other he must have known he was on borrowed time and that his call would be enough to ensure a visit from her. She reached for a cold beer, wedged the cap under a drawer handle, and with a quick jerk, popped the top off.

As she took a long pull, she returned to the broken picture frames, picked up one, and shook off the broken glass. It was a picture of her christening. The next picture she spotted featured her with Santa. A third captured the moment she’d taken one of her first steps. In this space, she was frozen in time as toddler, when she, her mother, and Jack had all lived together.

She crossed to the bedroom to find the mattress upended and sliced. The end table was overturned and the lamp smashed. More black powder everywhere, and evidence tents placed by one of Jack’s pocketknives, his rotary phone now on the floor, and a newly shredded army-issue Bible he’d never gotten around to reading.

She holstered her gun and set her beer down on a dresser before straightening the table and setting the phone and Bible back on top. She pushed the bed frame away from the wall and peeled back a section of shag carpeting to expose a one-foot-square hatch. Jack had shown her the hiding place years ago. “This is where you look if I die, kid.”

She rooted around the small opening and pulled out a zip-top bag filled with twenty gold coins, a Sig Sauer, a spare set of keys to his truck, and a brand-new smartphone. She grabbed the keys, gun, and phone and set them on the nightstand before she returned the gold to its hiding place, closed the hatch, and replaced the carpeting.

When the bed was back in place, she dragged the mattress back onto the frame and dumped the blankets and sheets on it.

She sat on the edge, reached for the gun, and pulled back the slide just enough to confirm there was a round in the chamber. She tucked the Sig into her belt, picked up the beer, and took another long swig before reaching for the smartphone.

“Very tech savvy of you, Jack.”

Her old man might have been able to take a car apart and put it back together, but he had been hopeless with computers and smartphones. As long as she’d known him, he’d always had a rotary phone. She turned on the smartphone and discovered it was password protected. Knowing Jack was a creature of habit, she typed in the numbers that corresponded to Macy—6229. The phone opened. If that hadn’t worked, her next bet would have been 5225 for Jack. And her third bet would have been the year she was born, 1988.

As she searched the screen, she found no emails or, God forbid, texts. There were no apps that weren’t standard with the phone or any kind of call history. “So why the phone, Jack?”

She double tapped the home button and discovered the Maps app and Photos app were running. She opened the Photos app first and saw the image of a post office mail receipt. Jack had sent a package to her by third-class mail on Friday. She’d not received it in Saturday’s mail and guessed it was still floating through the post office system. “Curiouser and curiouser, Jack.”