“He’s not there anymore,” Frank said. “He finished his job there a week ago.”
“So it’s Mercer Place then,” Caleb said wearily.
“Yeah.”
Caleb drew in a slow, despairing breath. “Dear God, I hate to go get a guy at home.”
They pulled up to the house on Mercer Place a few minutes later. It was a small, wood frame structure that looked as if it had been fully restored. The white, freshly painted exterior gleamed brightly in the late-morning sun, but the interior was utterly dark, and the adjoining driveway was empty.
“I don’t see any movement in there,” Caleb said as he eyed the front of the house. “Looks like nobody’s home.”
“We don’t have enough for a warrant,” Frank said.
Caleb looked at him. “Can you dig up anything else right quick?”
“No.”
“Just have to wait till he comes home then.”
“We could look around outside,” Frank said.
“Okay,” Caleb said. “But let’s make sure nobody’s there before we go poking around in the yard.”
The new wooden steps did not creak at all as the two of them walked up on the front porch.
“This guy’s really fixed this place up,” Caleb said as he took up his position at the left side of the door. He paused a moment, then knocked.
No answer.
He waited a moment, then knocked again.
No one came to the door, and no sounds came from inside the house.
“I think he’s gone,” Caleb said.
“Yeah.”
They walked down the stairs together, then split up, Frank heading around the left side of the house, Caleb around the right. The foundation was low, and as he moved along the side of the house, Frank could easily look through the windows as he passed. The front room was sparsely furnished, but everything was arranged with an eye to neatness, order, a sense of well-used space. There was a plain blue sofa and matching chair, a knotted rug, and a slender wooden rocking chair. Through the dark air of the interior, Frank could see Caleb’s large face as it stared into the same room from the other side of the house. He smiled quickly, then pointed to the rear, and the two of them made their way toward the back of the house.
The next window was much smaller and the shade was drawn halfway. It was the bathroom, and Frank moved past it quickly and on to the third window. It was a bit higher from the ground, but he had no trouble seeing over the ledge. It was a neatly arranged kitchen, larger than he had expected, with shelves along the front wall, facing a polished white stove and refrigerator. Again, he could see Caleb’s face as it stared at him from the other side of the room. For a moment it seemed to fade slowly, then break apart like a piece of crumbling statuary, and Frank squinted hard to bring it back together.
“Nothing strange around here,” Caleb said, as the two rejoined each other in the back yard.
“No,” Frank said. “Nothing at all.”
“Bedroom’s on the other side of the bathroom,” Caleb added. “Just a bed, all made up, and a closet with the door open.”
“Anything in it?”
“Only what you’d expect. A bunch of clothes.”
“So he probably still lives here,” Frank said.
“Yeah. That’s the one good thing about it.”
Frank glanced around the back yard. There was a small building near the back fence. It looked as if it had once been a garage.
“Let’s check that out,” he said.
It was a small wooden structure and one side had been peeled of its paint, as if someone were stripping it for a new paint job. Shades had been drawn down over the two small windows along either side.
“Shades are open at the house,” Caleb said quietly. “Why not here?”
Frank stepped over to the door. He looked at Caleb. “What do you want to do?”
“Step back, Frank,” Caleb said without hesitation. Then he raised his leg and slammed it against the door. The whole building shook as the door banged open and slammed against the inner wall.
It was utterly dark inside, and for an instant Frank hesitated to go in. He could feel death like a thick smoke in the air around him, and as he finally stepped into the interior darkness, he felt as if life itself were cracking like dry earth beneath his feet, dissolving into dust.
“Find the light,” Caleb said.
Frank moved quickly to one of the small windows and threw open the shade. A shaft of silver light swept into the room.
Caleb opened a second shade, and the air brightened around them, revealing a neatly ordered artist’s studio. Several large canvases leaned against the far wall. A sculptor’s bench stood in the center of the room, and a plaster model of a naked woman rose from it like a small, half-finished monument. And to the right, blocking one window, but showered with light from another, was an enormous painting. It was of a young woman dressed in a willowy veil. Her sleek white legs were vaguely visible through her clothes, and as Frank’s eyes slowly rose, he could see her pale white thighs, then her small rounded breasts, and up along the tapered neck to a face rendered so beautifully that he suddenly realized that he had never seen its true radiance before.
“Angelica,” he said wonderingly.
Caleb turned toward the painting. His lips parted softly, but he said nothing.
“She was here,” Frank said, almost to himself. “She came here many times.”
“Yes,” Caleb said.
Frank drew his eyes from the painting. There was a tall wooden armoire next to it. He walked to it and pulled open its double doors. It was full of clothes, the frilly lace and soft velvet, the red satin blouse and the black leather skirt. He could smell the fragrance of Angelica’s body on the cloth. It was a soft, subtle musk that struck him as the last sad remnant of her life on earth. He felt his hand reach out to caress the cloth tenderly, then stopped himself and turned to Caleb.
“I’m going to wait for him,” he said. “I don’t care how long it takes.”
“Me, too,” Caleb said. He shrugged. “I ain’t going no place but the grave.”
They walked out of the shed and carefully closed the door behind them. Then they returned to the car and drove it a few yards away, turned around and headed back up the street. There was a narrow alleyway not too far from the house, and they backed just far enough into it so that they could watch the house without being seen.
The bright light of midday slowly turned to gray as the afternoon deepened into night. Far in the distance, they could see a band of storm clouds moving slowly toward the city.
“Going to be another toad-stringer,” Caleb said. He looked at his watch. “Been here five hours.”
“You can go home if you want to,” Frank said.
Caleb shook his head. “Nah, not yet.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s my ass that’s complaining,” he said with a smile, “not my old bulldog heart.”
An hour later the first sounds of thunder rolled over the city. Jagged streaks of lightning blazed out of the darkness, and a few minutes after that, the rain swept down upon them in thick, windblown sheets.
Caleb leaned toward the dashboard and peered toward the house. “Well, we still won’t have no trouble seeing him.”
“No, we won’t.”
Caleb leaned back in his seat, and released a long slow sigh. “Retiring next year, Frank, did you know that?”
“No.”
“Life’s funny. You get too much of one thing, and not enough of something else. Now this stakeout shit, that’s something I’ve had too much of.”
Frank’s eyes drifted over to the house. “I sometimes think of quitting.”
Caleb looked surprised. “You do? How come?”