She tried the door.
Unlocked. Probably just like the night before.
So far, so good.
Nerves strung tight, she slipped inside the gloomy interior.
Softly, she called to the dog again, but heard only the steady drip of the kitchen sink. No whine or bark or claws scraping on the floor. The air was unmoving, the scent of old cigarette smoke mingling with a foul odor seeping from the partially opened door of an ancient refrigerator.
A faded floral love seat was pushed against one wall, and a recliner sat in front of an old bubble-screen TV. One corner housed a woodstove, where ash was piled high behind a cracked glass door. And everywhere, on every surface, was clutter. Magazines, books, tools, records, all covered with a thin layer of dust.
She stepped around a stack of old forty-fives and pushed open the door to a bedroom in the same condition as the rest of the house. A double bed with a bare mattress and sleeping bag rested beneath a single window and was surrounded by clothes and more trash. She thought there might be a dresser near the closet, but she couldn’t be sure.
A hoarder’s delight, she thought, spying the single bathroom that looked as if it barely functioned. Rust and rings on toilet and sink, the floor of the shower stained as well.
She saw nothing that indicated why Billy Huber had been killed.
Who had hated him so much to spark such violence?
She kept snapping pictures as she climbed a rickety, low-ceilinged stairway that wound upward to an attic landing, where one door opened with a shove. Had the police even been inside? It didn’t seem so. But they would be. And probably soon. She didn’t want to be caught poking around, and she sure as hell didn’t want to compromise the investigation. But she couldn’t quell her curiosity, and so she carefullysqueezed into the dark room, which smelled of mold. When she used the back of her hand to turn on the light, nothing happened, so she swept the beam of her small flashlight over the small space with its sloped, raw-wood ceiling and water stain running down one wall. The single, small window was covered by a black curtain and the ever-present cobwebs.
But unlike the rest of the home, in this room there was no clutter. No bags of clothes or broken furniture or forgotten books. Instead, she found a small table draped in a black cloth and back-dropped by a dusty mirror. Swathed in cobwebs, reflected in the glass were baby items: a rattle, a yellowed onesie, a bit of hair tied with a ribbon, along with a framed picture of a newborn and a hospital souvenir birth certificate with inked footprints.
She sucked in a breath and read:Caleb Farmer Huber.The baby’s weight, date, and time of birth were listed as well. Her heart twisted, and she swallowed a sudden lump in her throat.
All of the items had been placed around a Bible and a blue ceramic heart.
A small urn.
On an altar.
For an infant.
She forced herself to take a picture, her own ashen reflection caught in the shot. She swallowed hard, feeling the loss of this child, knowing the pain.
Suddenly, Billy Huber’s disinterest in life made more sense.
A cool whisper crawled up her spine, the feeling of being watched.
Ridiculous.
She was alone.
No one else nearby.
And yet … was that the creak of a floorboard downstairs?
The back of her throat went dry, and she froze, straining hard to listen for any sound.
But the house remained still.
Eerily so.
Enough, she thought, and she hurriedly clicked off a series of pictures of the bare room and the disturbing altar, an area frozen in time.
She paused on the landing, looking over the rail, listening and searching the lower level for any sign that someone was inside.
But there was nothing other than the beating of her own heart.