(2002) Basket Case by Carl Hiaasen

Author:Carl Hiaasen [Hiaasen, Carl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-06-13T05:35:27+00:00

Janet's banged-up Miata is parked out front but she's not answering my knock. Emma says we ought to bag it and come back later, but I've got a bad feeling—there's a fresh pry mark on the doorjamb. Cautiously I twist the knob, which falls off in my hand.

"What're you doing?" Emma says.

"What does it look like?"

Stepping inside, I break into a sickly sweat. The place has been looted. Half a dozen times I call Janet's name.

"Let's go, Jack." Emma tugs anxiously at my shirt. This isn't as safe as boarding Jimmy Stoma's boat. This time the cops haven't been here ahead of us; only the bad guys.

Janet's makeshift TV studio has been demolished. The tripod racks are down, lightbulbs shattered on the floor. A couch is overturned, the ticking slit open with a knife. Her computer operation—keyboard, monitor, CPU, video camera—is gone.

I expect the rest of the house to be in shambles, but it's not. Emma stays on my heels as we move wordlessly down the hall; at each doorway I pause to gather a breath, in case Janet is lying lifeless on the other side. Oddly, nothing in the kitchen, the bedrooms or the closets appears disturbed. A light is on in a bathroom and cold water runs from a faucet in the sink. I turn it off.

"Maybe she wasn't here when they did this. Maybe she's okay," Emma whispers.

"Let's hope." But I fear that even if Janet Thrush is alive, she's not all right. Her Miata shouldn't be parked in the driveway, and the intruders should have gotten farther than the living room. Something worse than a burglary happened here.

"Jack, we'd better go."

"Wait a second. Let's think this through."

We're sitting side by side on the end of Janet's queen-sized bed. Somewhere in another room a phone is ringing and ringing—Ronnie from Riverside, maybe, or Larry from Fairbanks. Doesn't matter because the computer line is disconnected, and Janet's gone. Emma says, "You know why I think she's okay? Because we haven't found a purse. She must have taken it with her, which means she's probably just fine."

I'm not persuaded. Why would a woman returning to a ransacked house flee with her handbag but leave the car?

Emma follows me out the front door. When we arrived I didn't look closely in Janet's convertible, but now I see why she didn't drive it away. The glove box is ajar, the carpeting over the floorboard is ripped back and both bucket seats have been wrested off their mounts. Whoever broke into the house started first with the Miata.

Which means Janet most likely was at home, inside, when they came through the front door.

"Shit." I kick another dent in the car.

"You think it's the hard drive they were after?" Emma's voice is shaky.

"That'd be my guess."

"You ever had this happen before—a source disappearing like… ?"

"No, ma'am." The wise move is to call the cops anonymously from Janet's phone, pretending to be a concerned neighbor, then depart swiftly. There's no point trying to explain our presence here to detectives Hill and Goldman.

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