28
AFTER HIS RUN-IN with Whiteside in the diner, Danny had gone for a walk. Along Main Street first of all, from one end to the other. So many places closed up, stores long gone. Guns and sporting goods, pet supplies, a bar, ladies’ fashion, home furnishings, a men’s store specializing in Western clothing, a pair of boots with spurs painted on its sign along with a Stetson hat. All of them falling into decay, their windows whited out or boarded up.
The few locals on the street had given him second looks. They’d have given him more, if they hadn’t assumed he’d blown in with the press. He had nodded and smiled, given polite greetings. Some were returned, some were not.
At the end of the street he came to the bridge that he’d driven across an hour or two ago. He walked along the narrow sidewalk to its center and looked over the railing. The river below had withered to a sluggish red stream at the middle of a wide basin, cracked reddish-brown earth all around. Dying, like the town itself.
Danny made his way back to the town side. A row of houses, mostly empty, faced out onto what would once have been a lovely view of the river. An alleyway cut behind them, bordering their rear yards, and branched back toward the rear of the boarded-up stores that lined Main Street. From this end he could see all the way down, right to the wall that enclosed the sheriff’s station parking lot. Halfway along, hot air rippled from the vents at the back of the diner. A dozen properties between here and there, most of them unoccupied. Any one of them suitable for entering tonight, for a place to sleep. He’d try the furniture store first; they might have something left in storage that would be comfortable to lie on. In through a rear window or door, maybe a skylight. Danny was skilled at these things.
He retraced his steps out onto Main Street, looked up and down to see if anyone had noted his coming and going. Then he jogged across to the other side of the street, found the alleyway that mirrored the one he’d just emerged from. This time the alley was truncated by the southern wall of the town hall, its grounds fenced off. He counted in his head. The guesthouse should be eight buildings down. He started walking.
The pine fence stood out from the others; it was the only one that had been freshened with wood stain anytime in the last few years. A row of garbage cans stood alongside a gate. He stepped back and looked up. The house looked tired, but better than its neighbors. All the windows intact, everything still nailed together.
One more look in all directions, then Danny tried the gate. A hole just big enough to slip his hand through and feel the padlock on the other side. No matter. He went to one of the garbage cans, noticed dusty boot prints on its lid. Someone had used it to stand on, maybe get a better view of the house. Danny did the same, then hauled himself up and over. He landed silent as a cat on the other side. A good-sized yard, but parched dry. What was once a lawn had been baked solid. A vegetable patch on one side still held a few living things, but mostly too shriveled to feed anyone.
Danny stood still and listened for a moment, his ears alert for cries of alarm at his intrusion. No one had spotted him. He crossed the yard and climbed the few steps onto the back porch, with its wicker chairs and swing seat. A closed screen in front of an open door. He placed his body between the door and the window, edged closer to the glass, peered inside.
A small television set played the local news, the screen showing images of this very street. He couldn’t quite make out the newscaster’s breathless voiceover. At the table, an elderly woman chopping up tomatoes.
Shit, Danny thought.
He was about to turn and go back the way he’d come, when the woman’s head jerked up. Danny froze, and so did she. Then he heard the jangle of a bell from somewhere inside the house, and the woman rose from the table and exited the kitchen.
Danny took the emery board from his pocket and slipped it between the screen door and its frame, flipped the latch, and entered the kitchen. A ceiling fan moved warm air around the room, a steady hum above his head. He closed the screen again and crept to the open door leading to the hall. Voices out there, resonating beneath the high ceiling. Danny eased through the door, ducked into the space beneath the stairs, as far into the shadow as he could squeeze himself.
Listening, he heard a man’s voice, hard and insistent, the old woman’s protesting. Then the man being taken to a room, before the old woman climbed the stairs above his head. Danny waited in the dark, hearing another conversation upstairs, followed by two sets of footsteps descending.
He pressed himself into the shadows beneath the stairs as the old woman passed on her way back to the kitchen. A few more seconds as he listened again, voices in the room along the hall. Then Danny slipped out of the alcove and moved to the foot of the stairs. He climbed the two flights to the landing above, checked each of the doors.
All but number three were locked. He went inside and waited.
More than twenty minutes passed before he heard Audra approach her room.