He had no idea what was really going on. The only one who could clear things up was the woman downstairs, seated on that flowered sofa, staring into the fireplace, wearing a dress more suited to summer than this bone-cold winter night. He could give her tea, calm her down, get her talking, convince her to let him take her to the sheriff.
He’d nearly reached the stairs when he heard another noise. It was above him.
CHAPTER
2
AN ATTIC. He’d heard the creak of footsteps overhead, as if someone were walking from one board to the next, carefully, slowly, so as not to fall, trying to move as quietly as he could. Savich got his brain focused and calm. So some fool was in the attic, trying to scare the bejesus out of him. The same fool he and the woman had heard before. He hadn’t gone out a window after all.
Angry now, Savich forced himself to stillness. He kept staring upward, waiting for another footstep to pinpoint where the man was, but there was nothing, only the quiet of an empty house.
He saw the attic pull cord nicely camouflaged against a window, down at the end of the long hallway. He trotted to it, unlooped it, and pulled it down. The stairs slipped smoothly down from the ceiling, their lowest rung touching the hallway carpet.
Darkness poured down. He pulled out his Swiss Army knife with its penlight and switched it on. It was better than nothing, though not much.
He climbed the stairs, every sense heightened. He kept his feet firmly planted on the wooden ladder when his head and chest cleared the attic opening and looked around him as far as the meager light from the penlight would penetrate. It was black as Sean’s pirate eye patch, with no windows to let in the moonlight. He remained on the ladder, unwilling to climb all the way into the attic. It was too dark and he knew himself vulnerable, even with his SIG. He continued to flash the penlight around him, but its range was so limited, he couldn’t make out anything more than ten feet away.
Finally, he spoke. “Is anyone up here?”
There was no sound, not a whisper of a sound. The air itself seemed old and dead, like breathing inside a mausoleum. He circled the penlight again.
He stopped once again, listened. “Is anyone up here?”
There was nothing, not even the scurrying of a mouse to disturb the thick layer of dust that was part of the air itself.
Suddenly, there was a loud whooshing sound, like something was sucking up all the air in its path. It seemed to come from all around him. It was something large, something black, moving like a dozen flapping wings, and it slammed hard into him, hurtling him backward. He lost his balance and fell back down through the opening, his feet not finding purchase on the ladder. He landed on his back on the carpet. He lay there just a moment, his brain stunned into inaction, wondering what damage he’d done to his body.
He had to get it together. Whoever had struck him could strike him again in the next instant. He aimed his SIG upward and listened, but he heard nothing at all from the black hole above his head. Slowly, still listening, he rolled to a sitting position and queried his body. He was aware of the lights around him, steady and bright. He seemed to be all right. He slowly rose, stretched, and stared up again into that black hole, wondering what had hit him. If not a person, and he was pretty sure it hadn’t been a man, then there were few logical choices. Bats, he thought, he’d probably disturbed a whole lot of bats. What would bats be doing in a beautiful house like this one? For the life of him he couldn’t think of anything else it could have been. And maybe the bats had made the noise. Perhaps bats were common up in the Poconos, particularly in the winter, when the cold drove them inside, to places where it was dark and warm.
Enough was enough. He strode to the top of the stairs, paused one final time, listening, fingers tightly wrapped around his SIG.
He had to get her to talk to him, had to calm her, it was the only thing left to do. He took the stairs two at a time and rushed into the living room, his mouth opening to tell her he hadn’t found anything.
The living room was empty.
He pulled out his cell phone, dialed Sherlock before he realized it hadn’t worked the last time he’d used it. But she answered immediately.
“Dillon? What’s up? You having problems with the car?”
“Sherlock, I’m glad I reached you. The last time I tried to use the cell, it was dead. Something’s happened.”
A brief pause, a touch of panic in her voice, then, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I promise, but something’s happened.”
“Tell me.” As quickly as he could, he took her through it. When he told her about something knocking him out of the attic, he kept his voice as calm as he could.
“She’s gone. I imagine she’s run away again. She was so terrified, so hysterical, that I couldn’t get anything out of her. We’ve got to find her. I don’t know if she’s still in danger, but she believes she is. It’s cold outside and she didn’t have on a coat, she wasn’t even wearing a sweater. She could freeze to death.”
“Dillon, I think you should go to the sheriff’s office in Blessed Creek. I remember passing it, right there in the middle of Main Street. I’ll be there with Sean as soon as I can. I’m going to call the sheriff, ask him to meet us at his office. You be careful, Dillon, drive slow and careful, keep your eyes open for that woman. Don’t worry. We’ll get this all figured out. I love you.” He could hear Sean singing away in the background. Now, that sounded normal. He smiled.
Ten minutes later, Sherlock climbed out of Jimmy Maitland’s old jeep, which he left at the cabin for his boys’ use. She was worried about Dillon, feeling more scared than usual, perhaps because they were on vacation and this was so unexpected. With Sean asleep in the backseat, snoring little puffs of cold air, she could let the worry show on her face. She stood a moment, looking into the sheriff’s small office, with its single light shining in the wide front windows. She saw an older man with a thick shock of white hair, fiddling with a coffeemaker. Good, he had to be the sheriff. He’d taken her seriously.
Sheriff Doozer Harms stood in the middle of his office, his back to his coffeepot, his arms crossed over his beefy chest as he watched a man pull up behind the woman’s jeep. The man opened the jeep’s passenger side, unfastened the child’s car seat strap, and lifted out a sleeping boy. They all huddled close, then turned, as one, toward his office.
The man pulled his I.D. out even as he stepped into the office. “Sheriff Harms? I’m Agent Dillon Savich, FBI, and this is my wife, Agent Lacey Sherlock. We have a problem and we need to move quickly. My wife is the one who called you.”
“Yes, she did,” said Sheriff Harms as he looked them over. Well, well, two FBI agents, and they were husband and wife, even had a little kid. What was this all about? Agent Sherlock had told him only that her husband had something important to tell him. Doozer wished he was finishing the Bud Light he’d left on top of the TV, and began tapping his foot.
He’d been the sheriff of Blessed Creek for nearly thirty-two years. He figured he’d heard every tourist problem anyone could think of, even if the tourists were FBI agents. But he knew the importance of being polite, knew how to listen even if he was thinking about how much he’d like to be home watching the 76ers.
He shook hands all around, patted the little boy’s head, and pulled out two chairs. “What seems to be the problem, Agent Savich? Your wife said it was urgent that you see me.”
“It’s a woman, Sheriff, she ran out in front of my car, waving her arms, hysterical, yelling that a man was trying to kill her.”
Sheriff Harms didn’t say a word, just leaned a bit closer, his eyes on Savich’s face. He hadn’t heard anything like this before. “Where is she, Agent Savich? This woman?”
Savich told him what had happened, including the bats that had knocked him off the attic ladder and onto the second-floor corridor.
“Bats,” the sheriff said, then nodded for him to continue.
“It’s the only logical explanation I can come up with. We’v
e got to hurry, Sheriff. You need to get your deputies together so we can search around the house. She ran away again, and I’m very worried for her safety. She believes a man is trying to kill her, and whatever’s going on, something’s just not right.”
“I can see that you’re worried, Agent Savich. You spoke of driving her back to her home. Where was her home?”
Savich was ready to throw Sheriff Harms through the front window. Time was not on their side. She was out there on this dark night, it was cold, and she had been so disturbed he knew she’d do something stupid. He could see her huddling in the thick trees, shuddering with cold, crying, her hysteria building until maybe the man would find her. Or maybe she’d just die of fright without his help.
“She lives in a big house on Clayton Road. We have to hurry, Sheriff,” Savich said, rising. “It’s about a fifteen-minute drive.”
“Just a moment, Agent Savich. You said she was gone when you came back downstairs?”
“Yes, I’d left her in the living room, told her not to move an inch. I was coming back down to give her some hot tea, hoping to calm her down, to get some sense out of her.”
“She didn’t tell you who this man was who was trying to kill her?”
Savich shook his head. Sherlock said, “If my husband says this woman is in danger, Sheriff, she’s in danger. Do you think we can get out to that house, begin a search for her?”
“You said it’s a big house on Clayton Road?”
Savich wanted to coldcock the old guy, but since this was a local situation, no matter he was at the center of it, he held to his patience. “Yes, on top of a small rise on the left side of Clayton Road; it’s a narrow road off Route 85. All the downstairs lights are on, so it’s like a beacon.”
Sheriff Harms began fiddling with a tooth-chewed pencil on top of his desk. “Would you say it’s no more than a half mile off Route 85 on Clayton Road?”
“That’s right. Maybe twelve, fifteen minutes from Blessed Creek. Look, Sheriff, time is running down. If I have to call in the Philadelphia Field Office to get some action, I will, but it will take time. I don’t think this woman has much of that left. We’ve got to get out to that house and find her.”
Sheriff Harms slowly rose, leaned forward, his palms flat on the desktop. “You’re talking about the Barrister place, Agent Savich. Biggest house around these parts, you’re right about that. You said the woman lived there?”
“Yes, of course, she lived there. It’s a lovely house, really big, but nice and warm, cozy. There was a fire burning in the living room fireplace. No one was there, no husband, no help, no one. I searched the place top to bottom.”
“After the bats knocked you out of the attic, you came back downstairs? And she was gone?”
“Yes. Maybe she heard me crashing out of the attic and it terrified her. She must have run outside to hide in the woods.”
“What did the woman look like, Agent Savich?” Sheriff Harms spoke slowly, his faded blue eyes intent on Savich’s face.
“She was about thirty, thin. Her hair was long, straight, dark, parted in the middle. I don’t remember her eye color, but her face was very pale. She wasn’t dressed for winter, I can tell you that, which is part of why I’m concerned.”
Sheriff Harms said, “That was an excellent description, Agent Savich. Now, we can go out to the Barrister place and look around. We can shine big lights all through the woods, make a lot of racket—but the thing is, that’d be a waste of time.”
“I don’t see how, Sheriff.”
“Well, the fact is, Agent Savich, the Barrister house has been abandoned for well nigh thirty years now. There’s no one there, hasn’t been for half my lifetime.”
Sherlock said, frowning, “Thirty years? You’re saying that no one’s lived there for that long a time?”
“Yep. I know the Barristers still own the place, since the taxes are paid on it every year, but they all left.”
“No,” Savich said, rising, leaning over the sheriff’s desk. “No. You’re thinking of a different house. Look, Sheriff, I didn’t dream this. The woman was as real as you are. I’ve described her to you. We’ve got to go out there; we’ve got to find her and help her.” He turned on his heel, said over his shoulder, “Sherlock, I want you to take Sean back to the cabin and wait for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“You want me to come with you, Agent Savich?”
“That would be up to you, now wouldn’t it, Sheriff?”
Sherlock stood by the front door of the sheriff’s office, rocking Sean, who was bundled up in his winter jacket and gloves. “Why don’t we all go?”
All of them piled into the sheriff’s big black SUV. Ten minutes later, without Savich saying anything, the sheriff pulled off of Route 85 onto Clayton Road. It was dark and cold, the black clouds thick overhead. There was the smell of snow in the air, not rain. Savich supposed he expected the woman to come running out on the road again, waving her arms madly—wearing that skimpy dress. She could freeze to death. She could be dead already. The man could have been hiding outside, at a safe distance, watching to see what would happen. If so, he could have seen her run outside, and followed her.
He didn’t believe for a minute that the Barrister house, the one Sheriff Harms said was deserted and abandoned, was the house he’d been inside.
“We should see the house any minute now,” the sheriff said. It seemed to Savich that there were more ruts in the road than he remembered, the asphalt crumbling in many places, as if it hadn’t been tended in a very long time. No, he was wrong, he was mis-remembering. That beautiful big lighted house would come into view at any moment. Yes, there, another hundred feet and the small rise appeared, on the left, and on top of the rise was the house, trees closing in around it from all sides. He didn’t remember the trees being so close.
There were no lights shining out of the first floor of the house now, none at all. It looked like a huge black hulk, crouched atop that rise. Someone had come back and turned the lights off, or the power. A small voice in the back of his brain asked why.
“This is the Barrister house,” Sheriff Harms said, as he pulled to a stop in front of the big, dark house. “Is this the place where you brought the young woman, Agent Savich?”
Savich didn’t say anything. He pulled on his leather gloves as he slowly got out of the SUV and walked to the front of the house. He paused a moment, unwilling to accept what he was seeing. He walked up the wide wooden stairs that led to the covered porch which extended the full width of the front of the house.
Suddenly the moon came out from behind the black clouds, and he saw the house clearly for the first time.
It was the same house he’d been inside an hour before, but it wasn’t, not really. This house looked deserted, dilapidated, as if it had been neglected for many years. Trees pressed in toward the house, some of their branches whipping against upstairs windows. There were boards nailed over downstairs windows, broken glass scattered on the porch. There was even graffiti on the wall next to the front door.
The house was dead, had been dead for a very long time. His heart pounded as he looked at the front door that was barely hanging onto its hinges, studied it, and accepted what he saw because there was simply no choice. He closed his eyes a moment, seeing the woman clearly in his mind’s eye, realizing how very pretty she’d been, not having noticed it at first because she’d been so frightened.
He turned and walked back to the car.
Sheriff Harms said as he turned on the engine, “Her name was Samantha Barrister. She was murdered here back in August of 1973.”
“I want to see a photo of her,” Savich said.
Sherlock took his hand, held it tight.
TWO HOURS LATER, Sherlock awoke to find Dillon standing by the bedroom window, staring out at the falling snow.
She got up and walked to him, and wrapped her arms around his back.
“Did I wake you?”
“No. You’re thinking about her, aren’t you
, still trying to find logical reasons for what happened.”
“There aren’t any. It’s driving me nuts. Even though I’ve been over and over it, I guess I can’t get around the fact that I’ve experienced something, well, I guess you’d have to call it otherworldly.”
She kissed his shoulder. “Then perhaps it’s time to simply accept it.”
“But the reasonable part of my brain doesn’t want to.” He turned and pulled her into his arms, buried his face in her hair.
“There’s another thing, Sherlock, something I just remembered. I called you when I had the blowout. It wasn’t ten minutes later that she came running out of the woods. I insisted on calling for help, but I couldn’t get through on the cell phone. But then later, at the house, after she was gone, I called you and it worked just fine again.”
She held him more tightly. “It’s possible the signal was better there.” She paused a moment, touched her fingertips to his jaw. “I just remembered something else, Dillon.”
He wasn’t going to like this, he knew he wasn’t.
“You called me at about eight o’clock.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“The second time you called me, it was only about a quarter after eight.”
He sucked in his breath. “No,” he said, “no, that’s just not possible. That would mean that all of what happened—no, that’s ridiculous. I spent a lot of time with her, even more time just searching that house. No, I can’t accept that all that happened in fifteen minutes.”
“Maybe we’re both wrong about the time. That’s the most reasonable explanation.” She hugged him again, touched her fingertips to his cheek. “It’s very late. It’s snowing. Sean will be up and raring to go in less than four hours. We’ll have time to discuss this tomorrow; you can decide what to do then.
“There’s a reason she came to you, Dillon. You’ll have to act. But sleep is the best thing for you now.”