Page 82 of Forever Dead

He took the bat.

The shotgun stayed where it was. Harold had spent too many years around firearms to carry one into an old house because some teenager might be sleeping off a six-pack upstairs. A bat would make the point without turning stupidity into a funeral.

He shut the tailgate and headed toward the porch.

“Anybody in there?”

No answer.

Harold climbed the three steps. The open door shifted slightly with the wind.

“You’re trespassing,” he called. “So, if you’re in there, get your ass outside and we’ll settle this without the sheriff.”

Silence.

Harold waited, but nothing moved inside.

“Last chance.”

He struck the side of the farmhouse with the bat. The crack of wood against clapboard carried across the yard.

“That wake you up?”

Still nothing.

Harold muttered under his breath and approached the door. There was no splintering around the lock. No damage to the jamb. The brass latch worked when he tested it.

Someone had either used a key or found the place unlocked.

A black combination lock box was fixed beneath the porch rail for rental guests. Harold bent and thumbed in the four-digit code. The small door opened.

The house key hung where it was supposed to.

Harold stared at it.

Peter changed the code after every booking. The cleaner used a separate key, and Harold carried another on his truck ring. Nobody else was meant to have one.

He removed the key, checked it as though it might somehow explain the open door, then returned it to the box.

Three days earlier, Harold had locked the house himself. He remembered because the front latch had caught badly in the cold. He had lifted the door by the handle, turned his key, and tugged twice afterward.

The habit went back to the farm. Gates, sheds, fuel stores, house doors. Lock them, test them, move on.

This door had been secure.

The old latch could be picked without doing much damage, something Harold had told Peter to replace more than once. However they had done it, someone had opened the door since his last visit.

Harold pushed it wider with the end of the bat.

“Coming in.”

The front hall appeared empty. The farmhouse smelled like old timber and closed rooms. Peter had paid to have the place cleaned after the last guests, and the woman Harold hired had left everything as it should be. The narrow rug lay straight. A small table stood beneath the wall mirror. Two framed prints remained level.

Harold entered. The floor creaked beneath his boots.

“Anybody here?”

No response.