There wouldn’t be — Phillip Traynor was gone, either a murderer on the run or the victim of one. David considered the latter a feasible notion, but Jordan was convinced Phillip was her intruder. She hadn’t recognized him, thanks to a little hair dye, contact lenses, and that damaged face. She smiled. Someone else had given him his own medicine, in one instance anyway.
She would do much better.
In her left hand was a small flashlight, in her right the mugger’s commandeered switchblade, but before she used it, she would break as many of his bones as her homemade martial arts training would allow. He was old. She was young. She would prevail.
Not that there was much if any chance he’d still be inside this house. This was merely where she would begin. The police had searched the place, and boxed up and carted off anything they thought might be evidence. But they might have missed something, and anyway, she knew Phillip, or at least the construct of Phillip that the madman had presented, and she might see something, understand something, that the police had missed on their first pass.
Phillip would not be easy to find, and it would be a challenge to get to him before the cops did. Her next stop would be Dr. Hurst, to find out what the psychologist knew about her fellow support group member. Hurst wouldn’t want to cooperate at first, but Jordan had the leverage of Levi’s death, and that this one twisted creature calling himself Phillip Traynor had single-handedly performed half of the violent crimes visited upon that entire support group of hers.
Of course, Phillip might be in the wind — might already be long gone from Cleveland, and yet... he had kept the city his home base through a decade of serial killing, and likely had gone through a succession of identities. That missing coach, Bradley Slavens, was surely one of them. Mark had been close. So very close.
If she was right — if this madman was an eccentric who considered Cleveland his personal killing grounds — then she might be able to get to him before the cops. She would have to be resourceful and clever, because in a matter of days, probably two at most, the juggernaut of CPD and FBI and the attendant media frenzy would roll over her and all her dark hopes, all her violent dreams.
Strips of yellow crime scene tape covered the screen door in back. She yanked them off, discarded them like a child unwrapping a present. The screen door was unlocked and, surprisingly, so was the inner door. The cops seemed to have a naive notion of the ability of crime scene tape to keep out intruders.
She stepped into a dark kitchen, leaving the door slightly ajar behind her. Should those officers sense somebody was in the house, she might appreciate having an escape route ready. Moonlight filtered through small windows above the sink, enough to reveal the kitchen’s blankness — no appliances, no knife block, no personal items at all. She checked the cupboards. Nothing. The police had carted everything off.
This was already looking like a wasted effort, but she pressed on. The kitchen fed into a narrow, dark hallway that led to the front of the house. Inky darkness forced Jordan to move sideways, using a hand on the wall as a guide, edging along. She did not dare use the flashlight until she had determined if the police car out front might detect its use, needing to know where walls and curtains protected her search. Down at the far end, light from outside filtered in through sheer-curtained windows.
Finally, she reached the end of the hall and found herself in a small foyer, living room to her right, stairs to her left, kitchen hall behind her, front door straight ahead. That door, with multiple glass panes, was the curtained source of outside light. She peeked around the thin semi-sheer fabric and saw the police car parked out front. The officers sat in darkness, thanks to that burned-out streetlamp. The only significant light came from the moon.
Why couldn’t they just drive away and leave her to her search? Did they really think their killer would return to the scene of the crime? To the home they had stripped of damn near everything?
God, cops could be stupid. Even Mark, so many missteps...
She went up the nearby stairs, and they creaked under her sneakers. The natural spookiness of a dark old empty house could not be denied, and she felt uneasy going up, some goose bumps rising on her forearms, where the sweatshirt sleeves were rolled back. Couldn’t help it. She was human.
But the upstairs, where she used the flash with care, was a nonevent. Three bedrooms and a bathroom. Only one bedroom seemed ever to have been in use, as it had a Victorian dark wood bed, a single with fancy carving and a matching nightstand. Nice braided rug, too, but otherwise nothing. No clothing in the closet. No books or photos or other personal items.
Even the bathroom showed no signs of use, its medicine cabinet empty, no soap in the clawed tub’s dish. Had the police taken all of this stuff? Or had Phillip cleared some of it out himself? And had he really lived in a house with so many unused rooms?
A noise from downstairs startled her. Had she been wrong? Was Phillip here? Or was that just the kind of grunt and groan you could expect from a structure of this advanced age?
Carefully, flashlight switched off and in her left, the switchblade open and gripped tight in a fist, she went down, one step at a time, pausing to listen. Step, listen, step, listen, step, listen...
Nothing.
Back downstairs, she made her way to the living room, operating only by whatever moonlight managed to infiltrate openings in the filmy curtains. Furnishings to navigate here, Victorian chairs, a matching couch, odd pieces in a sparse yet formal room. As she eased forward, she could make out dark patches on the floor, near the fireplace. Caked blood irregular and black in the moonlight — Mark’s blood. Her stomach tightened. That acrid vomity taste was at the back of her throat again.
Forcing herself, she kept moving in the dim light. Like the kitchen, this room had been stripped of all human vestiges other than the furniture.
Skirting the blood, she looked at the fireplace, with its carved ornate wood trim and bare mantel. No knickknacks or framed photos, but wait... there was something, something the police had overlooked or that had just gotten accidentally left behind. One framed photo, small, not even three by five, facedown on the mantel. Easy to miss.
She took it and held it in the moonlight, and within the little gold-leaf picture frame was a face she knew very well. She knew it because she saw it every night before sleep took her, and she saw it every day when she went to the refrigerator for a bite or a drink, her colored-pencil drawing of the face held to its door by a magnet.
The face of the intruder.
The monster who had slain her family.
And she could see it now, see Phillip in the photograph, looking past the handsome face in the frame into the ravaged face from group, because (for one thing) the eyes, never mind the color, were the same. She should have seen that all along, but now she did, and now she had him.
Maybe she would lose him to the police, but now at least she could point to this picture and say this is him, this is the killer, the rapist, the man who played victim as Phillip, the madman who had murdered Levi, and who undoubtedly struck Mark down right here, when he made the same discovery.
A noise behind her made her turn quickly, and she had the knife tight in her hand. Her night vision was good, and the moonlight helped, too; but she lightsabered the flashlight around anyway.
Nothing.
Was Phillip here? Would he be waiting for her, in that hallway, when she stepped from the living room into the foyer? Was he crazy enough to stick around, lunatic enough to return?
Of course he was. She had so often thought of him as a madman — how could she question it?