Death Falls (22 page)

“Partly,” he said. “We sort of stumbled upon this one.”

“Which is why you’re back to helping the state police.”

“Exactly.”

At last, Lucy looked at him again. “I’ve read a few articles about you and your mission. I admire what you’re trying to do. Call me if you ever need help with a case. I’d be glad to offer my expertise.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Or,” Lucy added, “call me if you just want to grab a beer sometime. I’d be happy to do that, too.”

Tony, who was standing behind her, gave Nick an excited thumbs-up. Because he was facing Lucy, Nick couldn’t react to the gesture. But, inside, his stomach was doing happy somersaults. He fully intended to make that phone call once he was done with the current case.

“I’ll definitely keep that in mind,” he said.

Lucy didn’t respond. She was too busy leaning over the left arm splayed on the stainless-steel table. Something about the clenched hand had caught her attention, and she drew in close until her nose was almost touching the knuckle of the index finger.

“I think he’s holding something,” she said.

She flipped the arm over; pressing the wrist against the table with her left hand, she began to peel back the fingers with her right.

The pinkie finger was first. The joints cracked loudly when Lucy separated it from the others—a sickening popping sound that made Nick wince. Once it was flat against the table, Lucy instructed him to put on a pair of rubber gloves.

“Hold the finger down,” Lucy told him once the gloves were on.

Nick pressed down on the bone as she moved to the ring finger. As soon as she pulled on it, the finger snapped off and clattered to the table.

“Fuck.”

“That’s one way of doing it,” Nick said.

Lucy frowned. “The wrong way.”

Although clearly flustered, she didn’t hesitate to move on to the middle finger. It made the same cracking sounds as the pinkie, although louder. When its knuckles had been bent to the table, Nick also held it down. He did the same once the index finger was unfurled. Soon he found himself staring into the now-open palm.

The object sitting in the hand was unidentifiable at first glance. Decades of mud and algae clung to its surface, making it look more like a turd than anything else. When Lucy slid it out from beneath the thumb, it left a smear of dark slime behind.

“It’s heavy for something so small,” she said.

Lucy made her way to the sink along the wall and began to wash it off. Picking up a nearby scrub brush, she scoured it for a good five minutes. Every so often, the grime that coated the object made an audible
splat
as it fell into the sink’s basin. When it was clean, Lucy turned around and showed it to them.

“What is it?” Nick asked.

“Honestly, I have no idea.”

She passed it to Nick, who examined it. The object was about a few inches long and indeed heavier than it looked. If he had been asked to guess what it was made out of, he would have said wrought iron. Fortunately, he didn’t need to guess.

“It’s a model rocket,” he said.

The paint job had been wiped away, leaving just a basic rod with a top that tapered into a rounded tip. What looked to be two small fins jutted out at the bottom. But the main thing that allowed Nick to identify it wasn’t the shape or size. It was the letters that had been carefully scratched onto the side.

He held the rocket to the light and angled it until the letters could be seen by Tony and Lucy. What they spelled was a first and last name.

That name was Dennis Kepner.

After his experience in Glenn Stewart’s yard an hour earlier, Eric wasn’t sure if he wanted to open the box Kat brought back from the cemetery. He still felt guilty about digging up his neighbor’s dead pet and remorse about invading his privacy. Staring at the tin box sitting on the dining-room table didn’t help matters. If anything, it only reinforced the lesson he had learned next door—that some things were meant to stay buried.

“Are we really doing the right thing here?” he asked.

Kat sat next to him, nodding gently. “Isn’t this what your mother wanted?”

Eric’s mother wanted him to find Charlie. He wasn’t sure she ever imagined that digging up things she had once buried would be a part of that. But apparently it was. Now he had to decide whether to go through with it or not.

To her credit, Kat remained patient as he thought through his dilemma. She had sent James home with Carl Bauersox, asking the deputy to keep an eye on him until she returned. Eric was certain she wanted to do that sooner rather than later. He was also pretty sure that, having been the one to unearth the box, she wanted to see what it contained.

After another minute of silence ticked by, Eric said, “I guess it has to be done.”

Without giving it any more thought, he removed the lid and looked inside the box. A photograph of his brother stared back at him. Again, it was Charlie’s final school portrait—an image Eric had seen far too many times in the past few days. He picked it up and stared at it a moment, taking in his brother’s sad eyes, jug-handle ears, and wary smile.

“There’s something else in the box,” Kat said.

Eric set Charlie’s picture aside and peered into the box once again. Sitting on the bottom, where it had been hidden by the photo, was a key. Once bronze but now tarnished to a dull dark brown, it was smaller than modern keys. The teeth were more pronounced, the ridges less deep. Nothing was attached to it—no ring or chain—and nothing indicated what the key could be used for.

Eric, however, had a good guess.

Grabbing the key, he jumped up from the table and headed out of the dining room. Behind him, Kat could barely keep pace as he rushed upstairs, stopping at the door to Charlie’s room. With shaking hands, he slid the key into the hole. It fit perfectly. When he turned it, a slight click emanated from inside the door.

Charlie’s room was now open.

Standing in front of the unlocked door, Eric let out a joyous whoop. That was followed by some celebratory hopping up and down. He grabbed Kat, who had at last caught up to him, and pulled her into the dance.

“It’s the key!” he shouted. “We’re in!”

He drew Kat close, enveloping her in a bear hug. He pulled her face close to his. Then, without thought or warning, he kissed her.

Kat wasn’t expecting the kiss. But when it came, she realized that she had wanted it. From the moment she had laid eyes on Eric again, she wanted it. After barging in on him naked earlier that day, when she had peeked more than she cared to admit, she knew she
really
wanted it.

So when that first sudden peck on the lips was over, she silently indicated she wanted another by placing a hand on the back of his head and pulling him close again. Halfway through that second go-round, she started kissing him back.

They had kissed before, of course. Long, long ago. When they were dating, one of their favorite pastimes was finding new places to park and make out, places her father and his deputy didn’t know about. But they had been kids then. Now they were adults, and Kat was pleased to see that Eric’s style had changed and matured. His kiss was somehow simultaneously forceful and gentle. There was a hunger to it that Kat liked.

Eric snaked an arm around her lower back and lifted, pulling her against him. The resulting collision of their bodies made her weak with desire, and she found herself grabbing onto the door handle for support. When Eric moved his lips to her neck, the pleasure she felt caused her to twist the handle.

Like the initial kiss, the opening of the door was a surprise. Both of them had been leaning against it, shoulders adding pressure to the wood. When the door went, they went with it, tumbling into the room in a heap of intertwined limbs.

Kat landed on her back, head knocking painfully against the floor. Eric fell on top of her, although his arm remained beneath her body. She felt the bump of it running along her lower back. When he slid his arm out from under her, it was colored a dark gray from the dust.

Every movement they made only kicked up more dust. By the time they had helped each other to their feet, they were engulfed by a cloud of it.

“Jesus,” Eric said, swatting in vain at the dust particles floating in front of his face. “I can barely breathe.”

Neither could Kat. The dust was overwhelming. Dipping a hand into the front of her uniform, she yanked the collar of her T-shirt until it was over her nose and mouth. Eric did the same with his own shirt as both of them peered through the dust cloud into the depths of the bedroom.

Kat’s first impression was that it looked like everything in the room had been drained of color. The bedspread. The curtains. The toys littering the floor. All of it had been rendered gray by the dust. Moving deeper into the room, she passed a dresser cloaked in it. She swiped a finger across its top, revealing a streak of its original color—a shade of blue that stood out even more against the unrelenting dust.

There were cobwebs, too. Strung from the bed to the nightstand. Clinging to the radiator. Large strands of them swooped from the ceiling like crepe paper that had been hung for a party and never taken down.

“How long do you think it’s been since someone was in here?” Kat asked.

“Probably 1969.” Eric tried the light switch by the door. It did nothing. The bulbs had all died long ago. “Right before they buried the key.”

Looking around, Kat thought it was more like the moment Charlie disappeared. The room had the aura of something suddenly abandoned, as if Charlie ran out of the room one night and no one had entered since. No organizing possessions. No clearing out. And certainly no tidying up. She could easily see the disarray of daily life present in the room, even though the boy who had inhabited it was no longer alive.

Kat walked to a desk pushed against the wall. Scattered over its surface were uncapped pens and worn-down pencils that had been used to mark nearby pieces of paper. She picked one up using her thumb and forefinger, trying to shake away the dust and cobwebs. Through the layer of gray that remained, she saw hand-drawn pictures of stars, a rocket, and, of course, the moon.

A fair amount of space-related paraphernalia could be found scattered around the room. A papier-mâché planet dangled from fishing line over the desk. On the dresser was a series of model rockets, arranged by height, and sitting next to the window was a small telescope perched on a tripod.

Eric was nearby, examining the nightstand. There was another model rocket there, along with a lamp and a framed photograph. He began to wipe away the decades of dust that obscured the photo.

Kat moved to the window and did the same, swiping it in a circular motion until there was a clear oval of glass. The view it offered was a nice one. She saw a patch of the front yard, followed by the street itself. On the other side sat the Santangelo household, lights ablaze in almost every window. Kat knew not much had changed on the cul-de-sac since 1969. What she was looking at now was pretty much exactly what Charlie Olmstead would have seen back then. She imagined the space-crazed kid spending hours peering through his telescope, watching the sky, the street, the neighbors.

She examined the telescope. The lens cap was on it, blocking the blanket of dust that covered everything else in the room, including the telescope’s eyepiece. Kat blew on it a few times, each breath sending up tiny puffs of dust. When the eyepiece was relatively clean, she bent down and squinted through it.

The first thing she saw was Lee Santangelo. The telescope was aimed directly at his bedroom window, giving Kat an up-close view of his blank face. The glow from the nearby television colored his skin a pale blue. The only things that moved were his eyes, which darted back and forth, following the action onscreen.

Kat adjusted the telescope until more of the room came into focus. She saw Lee’s easy chair, the television, and a corner of the railed bed nearby. Peering inside the Santangelo house, she wondered if the stars in the sky were the only things Charlie had gazed at through his telescope. From the looks of it, he also did some spying on his neighbors.

On the other side of the room, Eric gasped. “Kat, look at this.”

Still holding the freshly cleaned photograph, he turned the frame until Kat could see the picture inside. It was of a cluster of schoolkids sitting on the floor and looking up in admiration at a man speaking in front of them. The man was Lee Santangelo in all his former glory—young, virile, handsome. He seemed to be smiling down at a boy in the front row. That boy was Charlie Olmstead.

“The photo is signed.” Eric pointed to the inscription before reading it. “Always look to the sky. Your friend, Lee.”

Kat looked through the telescope again, inching it slightly lower until she could see into the room beneath Lee’s bedroom. It was the odd museum devoted to his life and career, lit brightly like the rest of the house. Kat focused the telescope, zeroing in on the photographs covering the wall. She stopped at one in particular, one that she had completely bypassed earlier that day without giving it a second thought.

“I can’t believe I didn’t piece it together.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The pictures,” Kat said. “In Lee’s house. They told us everything we needed to know.”

She was out of the bedroom within seconds. A minute later, she was out of the house itself and crossing the street. Eric caught up with her as she stepped into the Santangelos’ yard, marching up the grass to the front door.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said.

Kat grabbed the large brass knocker and used it to pound on the door. “You will in a minute.”

Becky Santangelo answered the door in a satin nightgown and matching robe. Like the yellow chiffon number she had entertained them in that morning, it was both young and inappropriate for a woman her age. Making the outfit more ridiculous were the slippers she wore. Colored a light shade of purple, they had kitten heels and small tufts of white at the toes.

“You again.” Becky didn’t even try to sound happy to be seeing them. “Have you come here to interrogate me one more time?”