Drawn Into Darkness(61)

“I can see. I have eyes.” The blue house’s rear windows looked no different from the front windows, with their roller blinds pulled clear down.

Forrest said, “If those boards are meant to keep somebody out, they’re stupid. Why block the highest, smallest window? Anyhow, a guy with a pry bar could—”

“Hey,” Quinn interrupted, staring intently at a window with drapes instead of a roller blind. Kind of a picture window. He jogged toward it.

“Hey, what?”

Quinn did not reply. Crouching, hands cupped beside his eyes to lessen the outdoor glare, he pressed his nose to the glass. The drapery fabric had left a small space through which he could glimpse the shack’s dim interior.

Beside him, Forrest repeated, “Hey, what?”

Not much, Quinn thought. From what he could see, the rigidly arranged rectilinear furnishings looked bare and sparse, indeed Spartan. The inhabitant or inhabitants had to be masculine, he assumed almost unconsciously, and when he glimpsed a discordant object, an instinctive part of his mind gave him a jolt before he consciously recognized it. Then he stiffened and stared.

“What?” reiterated Forrest patiently.

Quinn straightened, stepped back, and motioned for Forrest to take his place at the window. “Look at the bag tucked down beside the sofa.”

“Bag?”

“Purse. Handbag.”

“I don’t see it.”

“You will when your eyes adjust.”

“Oh, okay, I see it now. What about it?”

“Does it look like a Mom bag to you?”

Quinn knew that his brother knew exactly what he meant. Women’s handbags in general did not interest them, but they knew their mother’s funky taste as exemplified by her Hello Kitty collectibles, and they knew she liked her purses colorful and capacious. If there were such a thing as a large Hello Kitty purse, Mom would have bought it. The purse Quinn had seen was comparable to a baby elephant except in color, or rather colors. It combined scarlet, turquoise, white, and black in a kind of checkerboard, or rather plaid, or perhaps quilt pattern? Quinn felt his fashion vocabulary inadequate to describe it, as usual when regarding his mother’s choice of apparel.

Abruptly Forrest left the window and strode to the back door, where he seized the knob as if he would like to tear it off. “Locked.” Judging by the tension in his voice, he agreed with Quinn about the handbag.

“We need some cops with a search warrant.” Quinn started to reach for his cell phone.

“Are you crazy?” Forrest was the one who looked crazy, giving Quinn a demented stare. “Mom may be dying in there. We don’t have time to fool around.”

“But if we don’t work with the police—”

“Look, they’d just hold us up. We don’t know for sure that’s Mom’s bag in there. We don’t have, whatchacallit, probable cause.”

“We could say we are sure—”

“Oh, for God’s sake. The door’s open.” Forrest whirled on one foot and planted a hefty kick beside the doorknob with the other. “There, see? It’s open.”

It certainly was.

Speechless with the shock of watching his usually docile brother take charge, Quinn shot his hand out to halt Forrest from plunging through the doorway.

“Now what?” Forrest demanded.

With an effort Quinn spoke. “Now I expect somebody to pop out screaming, ‘What the hell you think you’re doing?’”

“And has that happened?”

“Excuse me. Let’s just be a little careful, okay?”

“Sure. You first.”

Quinn sighed forcefully and strode in without flinching at any shadows. He went over, set aside a tablet of cheap paper that had been parked on top of the purse, and picked up the massive handbag. He lifted the flap and peered within, but it was like looking into a well. He reached for a table lamp.

“No,” Forrest said, “no lights,” and he grabbed Quinn by the elbow, towed him across the room, and halted him at the back window, where he parted the drapes a few inches.

In bright daylight, it turned out that the black things on the purse were Scottie dogs cavorting on patches outlined in turquoise tartan plaid. “Mom,” said Quinn with near certainty even before he pulled out her wallet, unsnapped it, and flipped it open. Yet at the sight of his mother’s face smiling at him from her none-too-flattering driver’s license photo, he felt an unexpected heat stinging his eyes.

“Damn,” he said, his voice cracking. “What the hell is going on?”





EIGHTEEN





Little known fact: a rattlesnake can control the amount of venom it releases when it strikes. It doesn’t want to waste venom on things it can’t eat. So it can give you a warning with a dry bite. Or it can give you a punishment with a moderated bite. Or it can go all out and give you the works.