She had brought all the cleaning equipment she owned with her except a vacuum cleaner. Everyone had a vacuum cleaner, whether they used it or not.
Other than that, she had come prepared; there was no telling what supplies he had on hand.
The smell was so bad she could detect it on the porch. Why had she not noticed it from outside that first night? She was surprised the neighbors didn’t complain. Inside, it was even stronger.
A mouse had died under her refrigerator once and Helen had not been able to move the appliance to get the corpse. This house smelled like that, sickeningly sweet. Disgusting. No one should live like this. In a way, Helen thought, it reflected badly on her. She was not doing much of a job domesticating Roger if she allowed him to come home to this kind of thing.
She put her cleaning supplies in the kitchen and looked around. It was as good a place to start as any. Oddly, the sink was clean. The huge restaurant pot that she had last seen covered with cooking scum was scrubbed spotless.
She turned on the tap and the drain belched once, emitting a blast of putrid air before the water backed up and filled the sink. Helen had dealt with clogged drains before; one learned things living alone or else paid an arm and a leg to every repairman in town. She found his tools in a bottom drawer, including a plumber’s wrench. Surprisingly, the wrench was not rusted shut. It had been oiled and maintained, and the bolt on the sink trap had marks on it as if it had been opened frequently. He must have had trouble with the sink before. It surprised her that Dyce had dealt with the problem himself, however. He didn’t seem the handy type.
Helen turned off the water, placed her bucket under the trap to catch the spill, and began to work. Dyce had stored nothing in the cabinet under the sink except a heavy cleaver. Helen removed the cleaver and felt the flooring give spongily. She tapped it. It sounded hollow. There was obviously a space under the bottom of the cabinet. The kind of place a small animal could get trapped and die, perhaps.
The linoleum covering came off in one piece. The flooring seemed solid, but when Helen touched it, the boards moved slightly, as if they were not nailed down. One of them had a recess where a knot had been. Helen put her finger in the recess and pulled up on the board. It came out easily and underneath it she saw the first bone.
Steadying himself against the bed, Dyce drew on his pants and slipped his feet into his shoes. He stuck the socks into his pocket to be put on when he had more time to do it one-handed. His blood on the shirt had dried to an orange-brown. He buttoned it as quickly as he could, the unpracticed left hand fumbling and skipping some buttons. Shrugging on the jacket, Dyce stood and waited for the dizziness to pass.
A nurse glanced at him on the way down in the elevator, took in his bloody shirt, his stubbled cheeks with four-days’ growth of beard, his bruised face, and thought whatever she thought but said nothing. Dyce could not worry what people thought of him now; he could only get away from this place as quickly as he could manage.
A security guard glanced at him and then away; the fat lady behind the information counter didn’t even deign to look at him.
The sun surprised him and left him blinking. For some reason he had thought it was raining and cold. There were no keys in his pocket, no money in his wallet, and he didn’t know where his car was. It didn’t matter; he couldn’t use the car in any event since they would soon be looking for it. As soon as the calm one, Becker, began to think. There was only one reason to ask his mother’s maiden name. They knew something: They had sensed his pattern, perhaps not all, but some, and some was too much. In days, or minutes, Becker would be back. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they weren’t going to put it together, perhaps Dyce was safe, but it was a chance he couldn’t take.
He turned and walked away from the hospital, going down a long hill to the main road below. He didn’t know where he was going, but then neither did anyone else. The main thing now was not his destination, but his escape.
“You’ll replace this?” Tee asked, detaching the police seal from the front door. “I mean, of course you will. How long you going to be?”
Becker had never seen him so agitated.
“I’m not going to hurt anything, you know that.”
“I know that.”
“If you don’t feel comfortable about this. Tee, you don’t have to let me in.”
“I know you won’t hurt anything. I know you know what you’re doing. I know when the state boys show up in the morning, they’ll never know I let you in.” He paused. “Right?”
“Tee, the house is sealed by the order of the state police, but it’s in your jurisdiction, too. You can break the seal if you want to.”
“I know this.” Tee remembered Captain Drooden, who had slapped the seal on the door only hours before. Hard-nosed bastard. Threatened to remove Tee’s gonads if he so much as breathed on the house before Drooden’s full forensic team could arrive from a murder scene in Greenwich.
“But you still have a problem with this?”
“I don’t have a problem with it. Quit saying I have a problem. I’m not afraid of Drooden, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“1 wasn’t thinking that. You fear no man.”
“It’s those damned brown uniforms the states wear. Makes them act mean. Drooden doesn’t scare me… What are you going to do in there?”
“Nothing.”
Tee eased the door open but stayed on the porch. He had no desire to go in again; once had been enough. Even now the house was virtually untouched since he and Becker had responded to Helen’s panicked telephone call. Just what damage she had done, he couldn’t say, but he and Becker had touched nothing, even though Becker had prowled like a dog on the scent. The smell of the place was too much for Tee, but Becker had not been bothered and had squatted beneath the sink for fifteen minutes, just staring at the skeletons as if he expected them to stir and speak at any moment. When Becker finally rose, it was to tell Tee to call the forensic people in Hartford, taking the case immediately out of Tee’s hands. Tee had not even considered arguing.
“If you’re not going to do anything, why go in? Or is that a silly question?”
“After Drooden’s men get finished, the place will be sterile. They will have lifted all the fingerprints and sought out all the hairs and fibers, and that’s great, they need to do that, but there won’t be any spirit left. A crime scene feels like a museum after the forensic snails get through with it. It looks the same, but it’s a re-creation.”
“Spirit? Jesus Christ, what are you talking about? You’re not into that kind of thing, are you, John? You’re not talking psychic shit here, are you?”
“I’d prefer not to be talking at all. Tee, if you’d just step aside and then get out of here.”
“Okay, you’re the expert-but what are you going to do?”
“Just sit there for a couple hours.”
Tee shivered. “A couple hours?”
“More or less. It’s nothing mystical, Tee. It’s just an exercise in imagination, but it helps me to be on the scene.”
“What are you imagining?”
“We don’t have to do it. Drooden will probably find out all you need with his microscopes and tweezers.”
“Okay, okay. Go. Enjoy yourself” Tee stood aside as Becker switched on his flashlight and stepped into the house. “And you’ll remember to put the seal back?”
“Go find Dyce.”
“We’re looking. He’s walking wounded, how far can he get? We’ll have him in no time.”
But Becker was already concentrating on the house. He didn’t seem to notice as Tee closed the door.
Thank God, Tee thought, that I’m just a Clamden cop. An exercise in imagination? Sitting in a house for a couple hours where we’ve found God knows how many bodies under the floorboards? What kind of imaginings could that inspire?