She looked to the kitchen: two amber-colored glass pots of mixed vegetables and potatoes sat on the stovetop; a loaf of French bread waited beside a cutting board; a bottle of wine that had yet to be opened stood at the far end of one counter.
Everything looked like a meal was in the process of being completed, except no power indicators glowed on the range’s settings panel and no steam rose from the two pots. Melissa couldn’t confirm it from where she stood, but she guessed a main dish of some type lay uncooked inside the stove.
She strained to see deeper into the house, looking for further irregularities that signified the kitchen scene evidence of an unnatural transgression. The far end of the dining room opened into either an entry hall or a living room, but that area vanished into a deep, concealing blackness.
Resuming her search, Melissa warned herself not to jump to conclusions. There could’ve been any number of reasons for what you just saw. Just because someone takes off before starting dinner doesn’t mean that a crime’s been committed. Besides, a big place like this must have some kind of security service looking out for it.
The thought caused her to stop in mid-stride. What the hell am I doing out here? Just look at yourself, lurking around like some paranoid lunatic! And all because of a stupid phone call. I must really be losing it. Imagine what the owners of this place would think if they come back and find me slinking around their backyard.
She shook her head at her unprofessional conduct during the last hour and fearfully wondered if the stress of her job had finally caught up with her.
Turning, she glanced back at the house and focused on a darkened ground-level window located between two evenly trimmed bushes. She spotted a small sign in the upper right corner.
“Ten bucks says that’s a security company’s ID sticker.”
She directed her light at the emblem.
And it illuminated a face staring back at her through the glass!
Melissa flinched and drew her weapon—
The shape dodged out of the light’s beam.
—then sidestepped away, moving out of the window’s line of sight.
She gasped. Crouching, she craned her head to see around the bushes now blocking her view, trying to find a way to approach the window without exposing herself.
She replayed the moment in her mind, trying to pull details from her memory. There hadn’t been much to see other than a head, but the look of the person’s face—the sight that prompted her to draw her gun—stood out clearest in her brain.
Maybe it had been a trick of the light reflecting off the glass, maybe a shadow cast by one of the bushes, but what she saw looked like the face of a dead person.
Melissa shuddered when she recalled it. She’d seen enough lifeless bodies in her time to recognize the difference between the real thing and a mask: the waxy skin; the depthless eyes; the frozen muscles. Death had its own face, and she knew it well.
But if the person in the window had been a corpse…
Who the hell was holding it?
She knew all too well her suspect liked displays.
Weapon ready, she ducked around the nearest bush and tried to see if anyone had returned to the window. They hadn’t.
“Crap!” Now the person could be anywhere in or out of the house.
First thing you have to do is get out of this open yard, she thought.
But against her better judgment, she found herself creeping closer to the window, staying at an angle, her Smith & Wesson held forward. She eased up within mere feet of the glass, then clicked on the flashlight and pointed it into the basement.
She crouched low and peered inside.
The space looked like either a basement storage room or a laundry area of some type. Exposed cinderblocks and dark-gray concrete made up the walls and floor. She panned her light around and spotted a large white box-freezer positioned against the far wall.
She immediately recalled a portion of Frank’s book that detailed the finding of similar freezers in Kale Kane’s barn—eight, to be exact—each of which had been found to contain dozens of body parts, depending on how they’d been butchered.
She aimed her light at the floor. A mess of store-bought meats, plastic-wrapped fish, bagged vegetables, and canned juice mixes were strewn around the cooler’s base, all sitting in a puddle of water. Judging by the food’s condition, the pile had lain unattended for hours.
She swallowed hard, attempting to gulp down her fear.
Bringing the light up again, she centered its beam on an odd mark left near the freezer’s lid.
A handprint.
A bloody handprint.
There’s the probable cause you were looking for.
Melissa withdrew from the window, retracing her steps around the house—keeping watch for movement in any of the other windows, taking it slow around the corners—and hurried to her car. She opened the driver’s side door and squatted down behind it for cover. She pulled out her cell phone.
The small phone beeped to life with one touch, but when she pressed the first number, its light-up display responded with a flicker, flashing a horde of electronic gibberish across its screen. A second later, it went blank.
Oh, that’s terrific, Melissa’s brain screamed. Now what? I don’t have a radio in my car, and the nearest phone must be at least a five-minute drive away. There and back, the person will surely be gone by the time I return. So, what are my options? The nearest phone is the one inside—
She looked up from behind the car.
The Damerow house. The front door.
It stood open.
CHAPTER 27
Frank’s flashlight beam cut through the moist night air like the Reaper’s scythe, illuminating the names of the dead in the Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery outside the town of Loretto.
He’d already swept the light across the small graveyard twice, yet not one plot of land below any of the tombstones appeared recently filled.
Kane isn’t here.
Abandoning the night for the lit interior of his Blazer, he climbed behind the wheel and studied each of the three outdated maps of Minnesota he’d brought, crosschecking them with the newer ones on his computer. Even with the global positioning system on his laptop and other technical equipment he’d installed in the vehicle, his quarry eluded him.
“Where are you, dammit?”
He’d already checked three local burial grounds, and not one held a plot for anyone named Kale Kane. Even if Catherine had gone to the extent of having him buried beneath a marker declaring him as someone else, there still hadn’t been any new burials in any of the local cemeteries. Not in this area, at least. He hadn’t spoken with anyone to confirm the fact, but each of the cemeteries he’d inspected had been small enough so a simple check of the ground sufficed.
But it has to be here.
Frank knew it the moment he arrived in Judge Anderson’s neighborhood. His previous bout of déjà vu had proven correct, and when the cluster of newer homes came within sight, he realized the second of Melissa’s two crime scenes sat atop the same land Kale Kane had grown up on.
Frank had been there before, when he questioned Kane’s parents about a rusted orange van registered in their name. The van had been spotted outside a small pawnshop in White Bear Lake, where someone sold a silver pendant that belonged to one of the missing women. A description of the victim’s jewelry comprised one of the few details Frank had released to the press, and the shop’s owner phoned in his discovery the moment the seller left the store.
Frank remembered the sense of high-octane anticipation he experienced on the drive to the business—and the feeling of defeat when he discovered the pawnshop’s security camera had failed to record the transaction, capturing only static for the duration of the seller’s visit. He’d gathered other bits of information to investigate, namely the ID the seller used to pawn the pendant, but the real break came when he stepped outside to leave and noticed a drive-up bank across the street.