“I want to walk around the house to make certain everything outside is okay before I check inside.”
“Shouldn’t we just wait for the police?” I glanced over my shoulder as I followed him into the front yard. “What if we mess up footprints or something?”
He stopped and looked down at the parched dingy orange subsoil studded helter-skelter with stones and pebbles of all sizes. Then he looked at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I acknowledged. “Too hard for prints.” I glanced over my shoulder again.
“He’s gone, Anna. He was just a penny-ante thief looking for whatever he could get his hands on, maybe even the guy who’s been robbing the site.”
“Wearing gloves and a stocking mask? Shooting at innocent people? I don’t think so.” I studied him. “And neither do you.”
He smiled slightly as we rounded the last corner and found ourselves in the backyard once again. Gray went to the backdoor opening. Ignoring the lack of steps, he pulled himself up and into the house.
“Don’t you dare leave me out here alone.” I reached to pull myself up, but he turned and grasped my hand. He lifted me effortlessly.
“It’s dark in here.” I’m very good at stating the obvious.
“Darker,” he corrected. “Let your eyes adjust.”
Dusk sent its silver light through the many window openings, and I had to admit Gray was right. It wasn’t as dark as I’d first thought. Soon I could make out the rooms, the studs dividing them awaiting the electricians and plumbers before the insulation and drywall went up.
We looked carefully around the kitchen, the great room, the den, the bath, the pantry, the dining room and the living room. Aside from a couple of sawhorses, an aluminum extension ladder lying on the kitchen floor, several plastic-protected windows stacked in each room, a litter of nails and sawdust, and a ladder leading to the basement, the place was empty. The eerie silence pulled at me, making me shiver in spite of the fact that the temperature was still well above eighty.
I cocked my head as I heard a soft plop, plop, like the dripping of a faucet with a bad gasket. “Is the plumbing finished upstairs?” I pointed to the black opening to the second floor.
Gray tilted his head and listened. “That’s strange. It’s not even begun. I’m going to check the basement, and make sure nothing’s dripping down there.”
I watched him step onto the ladder propped against the hole where the cellar steps would go. Talk about dark and eerie. I shuddered. No way was I going down there. Bad as alone was, it was better than black and scary. “I’ll just wait here.” I motioned to the front hall where I stood.
He nodded and, pulling a penlight from his pocket, stuck it between his teeth. “Be right back.” Slowly he disappeared.
I walked to the front door and looked out. The police were nowhere in sight. I looked at the rapidly darkening sky, the only light the faintest of rosy glows in the west. I felt the gloom behind me deepen and press.
I turned and looked back at the front hall. It was spooky without Gray’s company, especially since the mysterious drip, drip, dripping echoed gently in the silence.
Frowning, I walked slowly around the hall, trying to find the source. I was convinced it wasn’t in the basement. Sure, sounds echoed in an empty house, but this was too loud to be coming up from downstairs. I jumped when a drop struck me on the outside of my left upper arm. I felt liquid run down and drip off my elbow. Another drop hit me.
I stepped to the side and looked up. I was beneath the place where the hall stairs, when they were built, would end at the second-floor landing, but it was too shadowy up there to see anything.
“Gray,” I called down the cellar steps. “I found where the drip is coming from.”
“Be right there.”
I went to the front door where the last remaining light showed the dark trail running down my arm. I dabbed at the wet stuff, then sniffed. My stomach pitched. There was no mistaking that sweet metallic odor.
“Gray!” I wasn’t even embarrassed about the panic in my voice
“Yeah?” His head appeared, followed by his shoulders and torso as he emerged from the basement.
“B-bring your little light over here. Shine it on my arm.”
He did so. “You scratched yourself.”
I shook my head. “That’s the drip.”
But it’s—”
I nodded.
“Where did it come from?” He used the tail of his ruined shirt to wipe my arm clean.
I pointed. “I was standing there.”
His swung his penlight, and the beam picked out a red puddle on the floor, drops plummeting from above to splash in the viscous pool. A footprint repeated across the floor, getting fainter and fainter with each step until it was almost non-existent when it stopped at my left shoe.
“Oh, no! I stepped in the blood!”
“Yeah, but the question is whose blood?”
He trained the beam overhead, and a woman’s pale hand appeared, flung out over the opening. Gray and I looked at each other in dismay, knowing that where there was a hand, there was a body attached.
And the drip, drip, drip of the blood continued.
THREE
“We’ve got to get up there!” I cried. “Maybe she’s still alive.” Though remembering the man with the gun, gloves and mask, I doubted it.
Already, Gray had grabbed the ladder lying on the kitchen floor and after extending it, leaned it against the opening at the end nearest the front door, away from the hand. He climbed quickly, and when he stepped off onto the second floor, I started up. I swallowed frequently, terrified of what I was about see.
Help us, Lord, if we can help her. And help me to hold myself together.
I found Gray on his knees beside the body of a woman wearing shorts and a yellow knit top. She lay on her stomach with her head slightly turned, one arm flung over her head, the other curled at her side. If it weren’t for the pool of blood that spread from her head across the plywood subfloor to the opening where it dripped, she might have been sleeping.
Gray had his fingers on her carotid artery, seeking a pulse. He looked at me and shook his head.
“Did you try her wrist?” I swallowed several more times against the sights and smells. And to think, I’d always prided myself on my cast-iron stomach.
He nodded. “Nothing there either.”
“Maybe we should turn her over to check some more?”
Gray stood. “No. We’d be tampering with a murder scene if we did.”
I shuddered. Murder scene! Shades of CSI. Lord, I teach intermediate school. I don’t do murder.
Gray and I climbed down the ladder in silence. In the front hall Gray placed our second call to 911. The mention of blood and a body brought help much more quickly than a report of a departed masked man. Officers descended, lights flashing, radios squawking, climbing from several cars. Even though Gray stated clearly that the woman was dead, an ambulance was part of the full response team as was a fire engine, even though there was no fire.
“She’s on the second floor,” Gray said. “Right by the stairwell opening. We left the ladder we used in place for you.”
The EMTs headed to the house immediately, equipment in hand. Two policemen followed. Other officers checked the grounds of not only the Ryders’ house but nearby sites. Two others, one an older officer clearly in charge, the other a young woman,