Read Online Countdown City: The Last Policeman Book II (Last Policeman Trilogy) by Ben H. Winters - Free Book Online Page B

we’re inside, once she’s slammed the door and worked down the column of locks from top to bottom, she makes a beeline for the kitchen and pantry, the one with the cartons of smokes—then stops herself, slaps her thigh, retreats to the sofa, collapses in a heap.
    “He was here?”
    Martha nods vigorously, almost violently, eyes popped open like a frightened child’s. “Right where you’re standing. This morning. First thing this morning.”
    “You spoke to him?”
    “No, no, I didn’t, not actually.” She shakes her head, starts chewing on a hangnail. “Didn’t get a chance to. He disappeared.”
    “Disappeared?”
    Martha makes a swift up-and-down motion, like a magician tossing pixie dust onto the stage,
whoosh
. “He was here and then, just—
disappeared
.”
    “Okay,” I say.
    The room looks exactly the same as it did. It’s Martha who looks different. She is shakier on her feet than she was at our meetingyesterday morning, her pale skin even paler, marked by bright red splotches, like she’s been picking at spots on her face. Her hair does not appear to have been washed or brushed, and it flies off in all directions, thick and messy. I get a nasty feeling, like her anxiety over her husband’s disappearance has metastasized into something else, something closer to profound despair, even madness.
    I take out my notebook, flip to a fresh page.
    “What time was he here?”
    “Very early. I don’t know. Five? I don’t know. I was dreaming of him, believe it or not. I have this dream where he pulls up to the house in his old cruiser, the lights spinning. And he climbs out, in his boots, and holds out his hands to me, and I run into his arms.”
    “That’s nice,” I say, seeing it in my mind like a mini-movie: the blue cop-car lights splashing on the sidewalk, Martha and Brett running into each other’s arms.
    “But then, so, I woke up because there was this loud noise. Downstairs. It freaked me out.”
    “What kind of noise, exactly?”
    “I don’t know,” she says. “A crack? A thud? Some kind of noise.”
    I don’t say anything, I’m remembering my own nighttime visitor, Jeremy Canliss, stumbling into Mr. Moran’s solar still. But Martha reads judgment in my silence, and she changes gears, her voice becomes brittle and insistent. “It was him, Henry, I know that it was him.”
    I pour her a glass of water. I tell her to start at the beginning, tell me exactly what happened, and I write it all down. She heardthe noise, she lit a candle, waited at the top of the stairs, breathless, until she heard it again. Not daring to call out, assuming it was a violent-minded intruder and preferring to be merely burglarized than raped or killed, she stared down the steps until she recognized him.
    “You saw his face?”
    “No. But his—you know, his shape. His body.”
    “Okay.”
    “He’s short, but he’s stocky. It was him.” I nod, wait, and she keeps going. “I called out to him, I ran down the stairs, but like I said, he was …” Her face collapses into her hands. “He was
gone
.”
    All of Martha’s wild energy fades; she sinks back into the sofa while my mind runs through the possibilities, trying to give her what credit I can: It might have been a house thief, plenty of those, who chose at the last minute, for some reason, to leave empty-handed. Someone unhinged, bent on violence, suddenly frightened or confused by his prey.
    Or, very possibly, it was nothing. The symptom of a desperately lonely and burdened mind, jumping at shadows.
    I rove around the downstairs rooms, doing my policeman routine, crawling on hands and knees, looking for footprints in the shag carpet. I investigate the windows one by one, running my fingertips carefully over the frames. Undamaged. Unopened. No signs of forced entry, no scatter of glass on the carpet, no scratches on the locks. If someone came in, they came in with a key. I pause at the door, running my hand along the long column of dead bolts and