With a quiet sigh, Constance slowly reached over and found the paper bag of sandwiches. Plucking it off the counter she began to carefully unfold the top. Egg salad for Christmas dinner, not exactly her first choice.
Still, she had to admit, at least a sandwich should be easy to eat in the dark, and better yet, it wasn’t that MRE.
CHAPTER 25
4:47 A.M. – December 25, 2010
632 Evergreen Lane
Hulis Township – Northern Missouri
Sheriff Carmichael was correct. His wife did make a good egg salad sandwich. In fact, it was excellent. Constance wasn’t sure if she had reached that conclusion because it really was that superb or because she was starving. She supposed it could be a little of both.
Unfortunately, as good as it was, and even though she had eaten it almost five hours ago, the sandwich was still sitting heavy on her stomach. She knew it wasn’t the sandwich’s fault, of course. Most of the blame had to fall squarely on her growing anxiety. She had been waiting all night, and she knew that contrary to what a horror movie might depict, killing and dismembering someone with an axe wasn’t a trivial process. It wasn’t something that could be accomplished quickly. It required a little time and dedication to the task. Since there were only a few hours of darkness left to go before daybreak, she felt sure something should have happened by now.
What was left of the guilty burden for creating the brick in her stomach surely belonged to the half dozen caffeine pills she’d taken over a better than eight hour span. Of course, the lack of sleep they were working to combat certainly wasn’t helping her situation either, so she was caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.
More than one, when she really thought about it.
She was still sitting in the dark, perched on the kitchen counter just as she had been since Skip had left her here. After a while, the close-in stretching exercises had ceased to help much. She could almost feel her muscles seizing up, so she had switched tactics. Now, every fifteen minutes or so, she would slowly flex her knees and rotate her ankles, then stretch her arms to her sides and rotate her shoulders in shallow orbits while arching her back. The latter was the hardest part, given the constrictions of her Kevlar vest. At the very least the limited movement was keeping the circulation going. What she desperately wanted to do was stand up, really stretch, bend, twist, and walk around. She had been sitting still for far too long and she needed to loosen up. She was sure a bit of movement would do wonders for her stomach brick as well.
It would warm her up too.
While the house had started out like a deep-freeze, it seemed as though it only became worse as the night wore on. She could feel the prickly fingers of the coldness clawing at her joints with each passing hour. She was chilled all the way to the core, and she imagined that at this point the only things standing between her and hypothermia were the insulated undergarments beneath her layered clothing and coat, the Kevlar vest, and the thick wool socks on her feet.
Yes, moving around would definitely help.
But she had to stop thinking about it. Moving wasn’t an option right now, so dwelling on it just added to the torture. It was almost like having a really bad itch in a place you couldn’t reach.
Definitely, she had to focus her mind elsewhere. No matter what the sheriff had said, she was sticking to the stealth approach, and that meant sit here and moving as little as possible until it became necessary.
Focus, Constance, she thought. Stay on task.
She sent her eyes searching through the blue, black, and gray shadows, reassessing the status for the thousandth time. The back door was still secure; it hadn’t budged. The shadows in the hallway hadn’t changed, which told her the basement door was still closed, just as it had been all night. While the front door was well out of her view even if she had light, she hadn’t heard the hinges even creak, and all reports from the outside indicated the house was still secure. However, it couldn’t stay that way if this murder happened.
And, if and when the killer somehow managed to sneak past the eyes outside without being seen, and he was bold enough to come through the front, back, or even a window, he would still need to pass through the corridor in front of her to get downstairs. She had no intention of being duped, as had apparently been the case in the past. This was ending here, on her watch.
Constance still had the volume on her radio tweaked to just barely above a whisper, but that shouldn’t present an issue. It was still audible as long as it was next to her, and besides, for the most part it was so quiet in the house she could hear her own heart beating in her chest. She doubted she would miss a call if something went down outside.
She slowly lifted her arm, rolled it in close to her stomach, then slid her other hand over and pushed up her coat sleeve. Cupping her hand around her watch, she pressed a finger along the side. The dial instantly illuminated and glowed back at her. There were still a little over ten minutes left before the next radio check. Also, according to the calendar she’d referenced before leaving Skip’s office, sunrise was at 7:17. That meant only about two and one-half hours until it would start getting light out. Not much time. If something was going to happen, it would have to be very soon.
This whole operation was starting to look like a total bust. Of course, to hear Carmichael tell the story it was as if the body parts simply appeared out of nowhere, so for all she knew they were already down there in the basement, arranged and waiting to be found.
No, she thought. I don’t buy that. We must have spooked the killer this time…
She was still staring at the digits on her watch face as they clicked from 4:47 to 4:48.
That was when she heard the whimper.
At first, she wasn’t certain that she’d really heard anything at all. The wind had been making a habit of sighing and moaning whenever it blew through the trees outside. Now and then the radio had quietly popped or chirped from random interference or someone inadvertently keying up outside. She would always listen intently, but so far the events had amounted to nothing.
That’s probably what this was too. Nothing.
When she thought about it, what she had imagined to be a whimper had really been just a single thin peep, barely perceptible in an audible range at all. It could have easily been the tip of a blowing tree branch briefly scratching against the siding of the house. However, she had to admit that it sounded as if it was coming from somewhere inside, not outside. Of course, that was explained easily enough as well. It could have been a complaint coming from the countertop after having to support her weight in one spot for so long.
Still, Constance held her breath and even tried willing her heart to pause so that no other noise could interfere, then she cocked her head and waited to see if she could hear the sound again.
Nothing.
She continued to wait, listening intently to the silence.
When she could no longer hold her breath, she let it out in a slow, quiet stream, then shifted as carefully as she could. The countertop let out a single thin peep as she moved, and she softly sighed a measure of relief. There it was, and there was the source. No reason for alarm.
She settled back into her motionless state and tried to relax. However, that unreachable itch was back, and she was once again feeling a desperate need to move. With the way things seemed to be playing out, she was now starting to consider throwing caution to the wind and going for a complete change of position. Maybe even standing up for a while. Her right butt cheek was actually starting to go numb from the cold, or maybe from the lack of movement. In truth, it was probably a combination of the two.