SK01 - Waist Deep (25 page)

4
4

Roger
Jackson
lived on the north side of town on a quiet street named Midland.
His house was on a corner lot and didn’t look any different than the other ranchers and split-entries on the block.
A new Camaro was parked in the driveway.
A four foot chain link fence surrounded the front lawn, which was currently a short, wintry yellow.

I sat behind the wheel of the Celica and considered my next move.
Did
Jackson
have a regular job?
If so, he’d probably be
working
right now.
The Camaro in the driveway argued otherwise, though.

Was he married?
If I knocked
, would it be Mrs.
Jackson
who
answered the door?
I looked for a garage and didn’t see one.
Maybe the little woman was at work.

If there was a wife, how much did she know?
For that matter, how much was there to know?
Maybe
Jackson
just had a deal with someone else to manage a website.

I pushed down all these questions and focused on what was important.
Jackson
was my only link to Kris.
And sometime tomorrow, he would probably be in police custody.
If I was going to get anything out of him, it had to be now.

My decision made, I got out of the car and walked directly to the front door.

I gave the screen door a friendly knock and waited patiently.
When there was no reply, I opened the screen
and
knocked again, this time on the front door.

Still no answer.

I paused
.
Was he home and not answering?
Or gone?

A moment later, I decided I didn’t care.
I drove my hip and shoulder into the door and crashed it inward.

45

I stepped inside and shut the door quickly.
My heart was pounding in my ears.
I dropped low onto my right knee, wincing slightly as I bent the left, and listened.
If anyone was home, they’d be on me in second or two.
I wrapped my hand around my gun and waited.

All I could hear was the hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the tick of a clock on the wall in the living room.
Even so, I waited several minutes before moving.
I listened for creaks in the floor and I listened for sirens in the distance.
I thought vaguely about the fact that I wasn’t licensed to carry a firearm.
That led me to the fact that
by bringing a gun along
,
I’d bumped this little caper up to a
first degree b
urglary.

Stupid.

A trickle of sweat slid down my temple and I wiped it away.

No one was home, I finally decided, and stood up.

I inspected the door first and saw that the damage was light.
Jackson
’s deadbolt was a stubby half-inch and the mechanism was flimsy.
The doorjamb itself was barely damaged.
The door rattled a little when I jiggled it, but if
Jackson
wasn’t looking for it, he might not notice.

Once I finished with the door, I slowly walked through the house.
It was a typical rancher-style house, just a box with rooms.
I wandered through them, my hand still on the butt of my pistol, my heart racing.
I had visions of all the homes and buildings I’d searched when I was a cop.
I tried to recall old tactics as I moved through the rooms.

It was definitely a bachelor’s house.
There were no signs of a woman’s touch anywhere.
But it was neat and clean and surprisingly sparse.
The furniture was nice but comfortably middle
class.
There was no oak.
The television was
thirty
inches and he had a DVD player and bookshelf stereo, but nothing fancy.

I walked into the bedroom.
His bed looked like a queen and it was made.
I half
expected to see a pair of slippers sitting beside the night stand, but there was only a telephone and a digital alarm clock.
Roger
Jackson
was definitely a very orderly man.

The kitchen and bathroom were more of the same.
I completed my circuit of the small house in less than five minutes and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The place was a little on the sterile side,
all tidy and without
pictures of family on any of the walls.
A framed movie poster for
Miller’s Crossing
hung in the hallway.

I wondered if I had the wrong house.
Maybe Adam was wrong about
Jackson
entirely and his Internet investigation had been a bust.

A car drove by the house slowly.
The windows were tinted black and the sound of bass thumped obscenely, rattling the front windows of
Roger
Jackson
’s house.
I watched from behind the curtain.
The car turned onto Assembly and headed south.

A magazine rack stood next to one of the chairs in the living room and I flipped through the selections.
Time
and
Playboy
were the most prominent, but neither one had any copies with an address label.
Then I came across a
Videomaker
magazine and saw a label on it.

Roger
Jackson
.

This was the right house.

I started checking doors, finding several closets.
One was full of towels, another was bare except for three coats hanging from the rack.
Then, off the kitchen, I found a door that I had taken for a pantry.
I opened it and saw a set of stairs that led sharply downward.

To the basement.

I flicked on the light, drew my gun and went down the stairs.

4
6

The
narrow stairs
creaked as I went down them.
At the foot of the stairs, I saw that the basement was small.
A tiny laundry area was off to my left.
I poked my head in and swept my eyes across the room.
Just a washer and dryer and another closet.

I moved to the other side of the small basement and found a finished room that had been turned into a simple office.
A desk with a computer was pushed into the corner.
A printer on a small table sat next to the computer desk and another box-shaped component sat underneath the table.
The printer was off, but a red light
glowed
on the box beneath the table.
The desk chair was a match for the upstairs dining table chairs.
Behind that, on the opposite wall, was a bookshelf with a few mainstream paperback novels and some back issues of
Videomaker
magazine.

The desktop was empty except for a keyboard and mouse on a dark blue pad.
I put my pistol back in its holster and slid open some of the desk drawers.
There was nothing but generic computer related items and office supplies.
In the bottom drawer, I saw a
Hoyle
Casino game advertising Texas Hold ‘em as a featured game and a thick box
of software.
The cover of the software box showed a video camera and an editing screen.

I slid the drawer shut.

Jackson
’s computer was up and running.
I could hear the fan, even though the screen was blank.
I nudged the mouse.
The newest version of Microsoft Windows popped up, along with a password request.

My eyebrows went up at that.
Who puts a password on their computer when they live alone?

People who have things to hide, that’s who.
And given his subscription to
Videomaker
magazine and the copy of
video editing software
in his desk drawer, I had an idea what it was he was trying to hide.

I thought about it for a minute and tried a few random passwords, knowing the odds were better that Ed McMahon would burst through the door with my check from Publisher’s Clearing House than me getting the right password.

Star
, I typed.

Incorrect.
Please check your password and try again.

I tried
Jackson
.

Incorrect. Please check your password and try again.

I typed a few more, including
Miller’s Crossing
and
Videomaker
, and got the same response.
Finally I typed,
Jackson
is a pervert
and hit Enter.

Incorrect. Please check your password and try again.

“Damn,” I muttered and wished I knew half of what Adam did about computers.

I settled for checking around the office some more, but found nothing.

I was h
alfway up the stairs
when
the telephone rang.
I froze for a moment, then trotted up to the kitchen and listened to it ring.
The stair
climbing caused a flare of pain in my knee.
I massaged it and waited.
After four rings,
Jackson
’s answering machine picked up.
I couldn’t hear his message, but the large zero on the face of the machine turned into a rotating red line.
Then the speaker kicked on.

“Are you there?” a woman’s voice asked.

I thought about snatching the receiver and talking to her.
My hand actually began reaching for the handset, but I stopped and waited.

“Okay, I guess you’re out.
Listen, I’ll be over a little later than we talked about, but I’m bringing a friend and she is excited to meet you.
She’s never worked before, but she’ll do fine.
Her name’s Linda and she’s totally okay with working one with me.
We can do that instead of the solo s
cenes
you wanted, if that’s okay.
Anyway, I’ll see you later tonight and I’ll bring Linda.
You’ll like her.
Bye.”

I listened to the machine click off and I wondered if that had been Kris.
I’d never heard her voice before, but somehow that hadn’t sounded like her.
That was what I told myself, anyway.