After The Fire (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 9) by George Wier

Author:George Wier [Wier, George]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Flagstone Books
Published: 2014-07-05T04:00:00+00:00

*****

The cold feeling at the pit of my stomach intensified a hundred-fold the moment we stepped into the darkness beside the house. Jessica and the other officers each clicked on flashlights and played their cones of light about. To our left, a row of head-height wisteria bushes leaned away from the house and spilled over onto the gravel driveway. Along the fence to our right, irises and elephant ears competed for every inch of open sky—not that there was really any open sky to be had. A row of pecan trees of perhaps a hundred years of age and fifty or more feet in height pushed back the wood fence between the Holland’s and the neighbor’s property. The garage was ahead, it’s closed doors held together with a chain and an old padlock. The place looked pretty much the same as it had the night before, except...I wasn’t sure about the ‘except’ part. Something, though, didn’t feel right.

We came to the backyard area, with Jessica walking ahead of me and the two deputies and the cop walking in front of her. I noticed that each used their left hands to hold their flashlights while their rights rested upon the butts of their holstered firearms.

In the electric illumination from several roving beams, the back yard appeared to be an unused area beneath the spreading branches of a gigantic oak tree. The limbs of it reached from the room of the two-story garage completely across the yard and over the north fence. The silver-haired veteran deputy walked all the way to the north side of the property and shine his light down the alley there, then came back.

Jessica’s light roamed back to the garage and up the side stairs to the doorway to Chuck Holland’s apartment.

“What do you think, dad? Any chance it’s unlocked?”

“Let’s just see if there’s anything we can see from the landing.”

I followed her upstairs.

Jessica tried the doorknob, but it was locked. The shades were drawn.

I reached out and knocked on the door. “Chuck?” I called softly.

We waited. After a minute I knocked again.

Nothing.

I looked to the yard below where the others waited, looking up at us with a mingling of expectance and boredoom.

It was then we heard it—a dull thump!

“What the hell was that?” the cop asked.

“Shhh,” I called down. We all listened. I strained to hear. During the long silence that ensued I heard a car going down Dean Keeton a few blocks away, a dog barking in the distance a neighborhood away. There were voices, too, but faint, as if someone were talking on a cell phone outside at night.

Thump!

It was dim, muffled.

“I think it’s from inside the garage,” I said.

“Yeah,” the junior deputy below said. “I think you’re right.”

Jessica and I backtracked down the stairs and we all went to the front of garage in one hell of a hurry.

I lifted the chain and tested the lock. It was closed fast.

“Do one of you fellows have a pair of lock snips?”

“Yeah,” the city copy said, “in my trunk.

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