That kidnap detail had been centered on a house like that, fairly new, with a kitchen that looked like it could have served a small restaurant but that Gregor was willing to swear had never been cooked in. There were pots and pans hanging from the ceiling over a large center island, and one wall consisting of nothing but big banks of windows. One end of the island was constructed like a diner’s counter, with stools, and the mother of the victim sat at it while they talked to her.
“It was his idea, this house,” she said, talking about the husband she was in the middle of divorcing, the one they thought had taken the child and run. “I never wanted a house like this. I wanted an antique house. I wanted dark wood and mullioned windows.”
Going upstairs, Gregor thought that this was the kind of house that woman had meant, that this was what she had wanted instead of what she had. He also remembered how the case had worked out: it was his first real case, the one that was supposed to stay with you. There was the kidnap note left next to the phone on the built-in desk in the kitchen. There were the police cars and Bureau cars that came in and out of the driveway. There were the bodies, father and daughter both, lying on the floor of the third-floor playroom as if they’d been there for eternity. The man must have come back after the police first searched the house. He must have been watching and waiting and biding his time.
Gregor and Tom Fordman were going up the stairs to the second floor of this house, where nobody was supposed to be home. There was a cold blast of air of, cold enough to make Gregor want a coat. Windows were open somewhere, in the rooms at the end of the hall. Somebody must have been airing the place out. Gregor knew how the houses of old people got when the old people lived alone.
“Did you come up here and search the house when Annie-Vic was attacked?” he asked.
“Gary did,” Tom Fordman said. “I didn’t see any point to it. The guy wasn’t going to be hiding out in the house.”
“The guy?”
“The guy who attacked her.”
Gregor wanted to say that there was nothing he knew at this point that would rule out a woman, but he let it pass and opened the first closed door on his left. It was a walk-in linen closet, with built-in shelves lining the walls. There were sheets and pillowcases and towels, all neatly folded and segregated into categories. He went on to the next door, which was open. That led to a bedroom that had obviously been slept in, and recently. The bed was unmade. There was an oversize T-shirt lying on the end of it, the kind of thing college girls wore to bed instead of regulation nightgowns. Gregor walked in and looked around. He opened the door to the big wardrobe that stood against one wall and then closed it again. There was no closet. He wondered, idly, when it was that houses had started to have closets in every bedroom. It was so standard now that zoning boards didn’t count a room as a bedroom unless it had a closet.
Gregor went back into the hall. “We should really get a team,” he said, “and go all the way through here thoroughly.”
“Looking for what?” Tom Fordman said. “You never say. Do you really think the murderer is up here somewhere, hiding out?”
“It’s possible,” Gregor said. “There are other possibilities.”
“Like what?”
Gregor thought of those two bodies on the third floor. Then he went into the next room, and that one he was sure was Annie-Vic’s own. It was scrupulously clean and mostly empty. There were two big wardrobes instead of just one. The furniture was old but not shabby. It had been well made and kept up over the years. Still, the wood was as dark here as it was downstairs. Everything was dark.
“I think if you think the murderer is here, we ought to do this the way we were trained to,” Tom Fordman said. “We ought to have our guns out.”
“I don’t have a gun.”
“Really? You mean on you, or at all?”
“At all. I don’t like guns. I carried one when I was required to, of course, but I was never happy with it. I’m not really interested in shooting at anybody. I’m not really interested in getting shot at.”
“You were in the FBI, weren’t you? Gary said something about that. And you can’t count on not getting shot at.”
“No, I know you can’t,” Gregor said. He was out in the hall again, and then into another room. The rooms seemed to go on forever. How did anyone live alone in a house of this size? If it had been him living alone here, he would have rigged up a place to sleep on the ground floor and restricted himself to that and the living room and the kitchen. He would have left the upstairs alone to gather ghosts. It felt to him as if the ghosts had gathered anyway.