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Conklin added, “Three of these houses don’t have any windows facing the garden in back; one of them has a single window facing it. Number six. When I was in the garden the first time, I noticed that window. Nicole Worley told me that the building was boarded up. If someone is squatting there, he could be our perp.”
As we talked, the fine mist turned to rain.
We discussed who was going to do what. Conklin asked Cindy to get back into the car until we could clear the scene. She reluctantly agreed, then Conklin and I went up the steps to the front door.
I knocked, Conklin called out, and then I rapped on the door with the tarnished brass knocker. When no one answered, Conklin tried turning the knob, but it was frozen solid, the door possibly bolted from the inside.
After a few words with Cindy through the car window, we headed for the backyard and bushwhacked through the waist-high weeds and thistles that had grown thickly between numbers 4 and 6.
The rear aspect of the brick houses was forbidding. Each blind, windowless wall had a back door and a set of steps descending from it, and only a few feet in front of those steps was the looming ten-foot-high brick wall that blocked the view of the garden.
The back doors of 6 and 8 were boarded up, but as I neared number 6, I noticed that weeds had been pulled from around the steps and thrown off to the side. I poked around a little more, saw that the sheet of plywood at the door wasn’t nailed to the frame. It was simply leaning against it.
“Someone’s been in and out of here recently,” I said.
Conklin went up the steps and pulled the plywood away from the door, then banged on the door with his fist.
“Police. Open up,” Conklin said. “Or we’re coming in.”
Chapter 77
NO SOONER HAD Conklin opened the door than I heard someone coming through the weeds behind me. I whipped around to see Cindy, her chin stuck out, rain streaming off her face.
“I need to be here. I can’t cover this story from the car.”
“This story could be nothing,” I hissed to my bulldog friend. “Despite your breaking the da Vinci code, this could be an empty house and a dead end —”
“I know.”
“— or it could be dangerous,” I said.
“I’ll watch my step.”
“Could be a gang of crackheads living in here.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve gone into a crack house. Anyway, you’re both armed.”
It was futile, but I looked at my partner and said, “Please tell her, Rich.”
He put up his hands. “Not me.”
“If anything happens to you,” I said to Cindy, “Rich and I are going to be fired. Me first, of course. And then we’re both going to hate ourselves forever.”
Cindy laughed. “Give me a break.”
This was Cindy: no gun, no training, no official status, and yet the only way to stop her was to get a circus elephant to sit on her chest.
I wasn’t kidding about the consequences of letting Cindy into the house, but I was done arguing. Conklin pulled his gun and went in through the doorway. I let Cindy follow him and I brought up the rear.
The hallway was lit by the dull light coming in through the open back door. There was a narrow wooden staircase just ahead of us, and the floor above us was dark.
Conklin and I turned on our flashlights and began to climb. The stairwell was clean, odor-free, and I didn’t see graffiti, rags, needles, or any sign of squatters or druggies. In fact, it looked as though it had recently been swept.
We kept moving onward and upward, and when we got to the third-floor landing, I heard the faintest of sounds.
“What’s that?” I whispered.
“Beethoven,” said Cindy. “Sixth Symphony.”
