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If Barbara had been forced to describe it in one word, Psycho would have been the one that sprung immediately to mind.
Tucker squinted up at the house. “Never liked this place.”
“I can see why.”
“Belonged to Nathan’s grandparents. When they left, it was rented out as a guest house for a while.”
“People paid to stay here?”
“Not your idea of a vacation?”
“I’d think twice about taking a shower, that’s for sure.”
They climbed out of the truck and crunched through the snow. A rusted and dented old Dodge pickup was parked outside. Barbara realized now why the building seemed so gloomy. It was devoid of the fairy lights and Christmas decorations that adorned the rest of the buildings in Deadhart.
They climbed the porch steps. The wood creaked and sagged but held their weight, for now. All the curtains in the house were drawn. Not even a glimmer of light from within. Tucker raised his hand and knocked twice on the door. They waited. Nothing. Tucker raised his fist and knocked again. Still no signs of movement from inside.
“Let’s check out the back,” Barbara said.
They walked around to the back of the house. If anything, it was in a greater state of disrepair than the front. Obviously, no one ever used the back door, as drifts of snow had piled up high in front of it. Old furniture had been discarded in the yard, along with a child’s bike. Again, all the windows were shielded by thick curtains.
“Mr. Bell certainly likes his privacy,” Barbara said.
“Yeah, but from whom?” Tucker said, looking around. “Nothing out here but moose and bears.”
They returned to the front of the house and climbed back up the rickety steps. Barbara hammered on the door a few more times. Still no response. She looked around in frustration. “Guess there’s nothing more here we can—”
Tucker reached out and twisted the front door handle. It clicked open. He glanced at Barbara. “We should check everything is okay, right? Especially with a killer around?”
Barbara looked back at the open door. There was no real evidence that anything was wrong here. Nathan was probably just sleeping off a hangover. But then, she thought about the Doc.
“Okay,” she said.
They walked inside. The hallway was dark, and it smelt. Barbara wrinkled her nose. Stale alcohol and cigarettes, but something else, less definable. The smell of a house shut up for a long time. Damp, mold, disuse. And it felt cold. Barbara couldn’t see any heaters in the hall. Her breath was puffing out in plumes.
“I’d say it smelt like something died in here, but it doesn’t feel like this place is even lived in,” Tucker said.
The big man had an uncanny ability to read her mind, Barbara thought. She pulled out her flashlight and shone it in front of them. Three doors led off the narrow hall and a stairway to their left ascended into darkness.
“Mr. Bell?” Barbara called out. “Police!”
Nothing but the dead, cold silence and the smell.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s check out downstairs first.”
Tucker nodded tersely and Barbara eased open the living-room door to their right. It stuck and scraped across the wooden floor.
A sagging sofa and a battered leather armchair slouched around a coffee table littered with empty cans and an overflowing ashtray. The fireplace was dead and cold. A large flatscreen TV dominated the space. Barbara had been in her fair share of low-income homes, and one thing they all had in common was a massive television. She didn’t judge. When your life sucked so much you had to sit on packing crates and cook on a camping stove, the bigger your escape from reality needed to be.
“Whoah!” Tucker said, staring at the TV. “That is big.” He walked over and peered around the back. “And where’s the rest of it?”
“Twenty-five years of technological advances. TVs get bigger, phones get smaller and everything gets thinner…apart from the people using them.”
He shook his head. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
They walked back into the hall and entered the next room along. The dining room. Or at least, that was probably its original purpose. Now, it was crammed full of stacked furniture, plastic crates and boxes, an old oak table barely visible beneath the detritus.
“Looks like a house clearance in here,” Tucker said.
