“You’ve still got it in your pocket, right?”
“Don’t bullshit me, man. There’s only two other days in my life I can think of that were worse than this one—the day my sister died and the day I lost Jeffrey.”
“You’re a good detective when you want to be.”
“I don’t think that’s going to matter anymore.”
“Then what’ve you got to lose?”
Will walked up the driveway, listening for Lena’s steps behind him. He didn’t really need her help, but Will hated to be lied to. Frank Wallace was knee-deep in this crap, and seemed content to let one of his officers take the fall for his own bad leadership. Will didn’t feel any loyalty to Lena, but the thought of a drunk, crooked cop running this town’s police force did not sit well with him.
Will found the key under the front doormat. He was opening the door when Lena joined him on the porch steps.
He asked, “Have you heard anything about Detective Stephens?”
“No change. I guess that’s good.”
“Why didn’t you call Chief Wallace about the body in the dorm?”
She shrugged. “Like you said, I’m only a good cop when I choose to be.”
Will pushed open the front door. Lena went in first. Her hand was high on her side, a motion she probably didn’t realize she’d made. Will had seen Faith take this same stance many times. She’d been a beat cop for ten years. There were some things your muscles couldn’t unlearn.
The living room was right off the entrance. The furniture was old and sad, duct tape keeping the stuffing in the cushions. The carpet was an orange shag that went into the hallway. Will could feel it clinging to his shoes as he walked back to the kitchen. The carpet gave way to yellow linoleum. Gordon hadn’t bothered to update anything except the stainless steel microwave that rested on top of an old Formica table.
“Dishes,” Lena said. Two plates, two forks, and two glasses were in the drainer in the sink. Allison had shared a meal with someone before she died, then cleaned up after herself.
Lena pulled a paper towel from the roll and covered her hand so she could open the refrigerator. There was a line of blue painter’s tape down the middle. Store-brand sodas filled each shelf. There was no food except for a dried-up orange and a Jell-O pudding cup. Lena opened the freezer. The same taped line split the compartment, but the moisture had weakened the adhesive. One side was stacked full of frozen dinners. The other had a box of Popsicles and some ice cream sandwiches.
Will used the edge of his palm to raise the lid on the kitchen trashcan. He saw two empty boxes of Stouffer’s French bread pizza. “I’ll ask Sara about stomach contents.”
“Tommy would’ve had more time to digest.”
“True.” He used the toe of his shoe to push open a pair of louvered doors, expecting to find a pantry but finding a toilet, small shower, and even smaller sink. The bathroom was by the back door. He assumed this was the toilet tenants used when they rented the garage. It certainly looked like a young man had used the facilities. The sink was filthy. Hair clogged the shower drain. Towels were strewn on the floor. A pair of dingy-looking briefs was wadded up in the corner. There was one sock on the floor, a footie that went up to the ankle. Will imagined the other sock was slowly making its way through Pippy’s digestive track.
Will realized Lena wasn’t behind him anymore. He walked through the dining room, which had a glass table and two chairs, and found her in a small study off the family room. The room looked hastily abandoned. Stacks of papers lined the floor—magazines, old bills, newspapers. Gordon must have been using this as a dumping ground for all the paperwork associated with his life. Lena checked the desk drawers. From what Will could see, they were piled with more invoices and receipts. The lone bookshelf in the room was bare and dusty except for a plate that contained a moldy, unrecognizable piece of food. A glass was beside it, the liquid dark and murky.
The carpet showed tracks from a vacuum cleaner but it still had the same grungy feel as the rest of the house. There was an ancient-looking computer monitor on the top of the desk. Lena pressed the power button, but nothing happened. Will leaned down and saw that the thing was not connected to a power supply. Or a computer.
Lena noticed this, too. “He probably took the computer to Jill June’s. That’s his girlfriend.”
“Did you see a laptop in the garage?”
She shook her head. “Could Tommy even use one?”
“He probably ran the machines at the bowling alley. That’s all computer controlled.” Will shrugged because he didn’t know for certain. “Gordon disconnected the landline. I doubt he was springing for Internet service.”
“Probably.” Lena opened the last drawer in the desk. She held up a sheet of paper that looked like a bill. “Fifty-two dollars. This place must be better insulated than it looks.”
Will guessed she had found a power or gas bill. “Or Allison kept the heat turned down. She grew up poor. She was willing to live in the garage. She probably wasn’t big on wasting money.”
“Gordon’s pretty cheap himself. This place is a dump.” She dropped the bill on the desk. “Moldy food on the shelf. Dirty clothes on the floor. I wouldn’t walk through this carpet with my shoes off.”
Will silently agreed. “The bedrooms are probably upstairs.”
The design of the house was a typical split-level, with the stairs running off the back of the family room. The railing was coming loose from the wall. The carpet was worn to the backing. At the top of the stairs, he saw a narrow hallway. Two open doors were on one side. A closed door was on the other. At the mouth of the hall was a bathroom with pink tile.
Will glanced into the first room, which was empty but for some papers and other debris stuck into the orange shag carpet. The next room was sparsely furnished, slightly larger than the first. A basket of folded clothes was on the bare mattress. Lena pointed to the empty closet, the opened drawers in the chest. “Someone moved out.”
“Gordon Braham,” Will supplied. He looked at the basket of neatly folded clothes. For some reason it made him sad that Allison had done the man’s laundry before she died.
Lena slipped on a latex glove before trying the last room. Her hand went up to her gun again as she pushed open the door. Again, there were no surprises. “This must be Allison’s.”
The room was cleaner than the rest of the house, which wasn’t saying much. Allison Spooner hadn’t been the neatest woman on the planet, but at least she managed to keep her clothes off the floor. And there were a lot of them. Shirts, blouses, pants, and dresses were packed so tightly into the closet that the rod bowed in the middle. Clothes hangers were hooked on the curtain rod and the trim over the closet door. More clothes were draped over an old rocking chair.
“I guess she liked clothes,” Will said.
Lena picked up a pair of jeans in a pile by the door. “Seven brand. These aren’t cheap. I wonder where she got the money.”
Will could hazard a guess. The clothes he’d worn as a kid generally came from a communal pile. There was no guarantee you’d find a good fit, let alone a style you liked. “She probably had hand-me-downs all her life. First time away from home, making her own money. Maybe it was important to her to have nice things.”