Cold Trail Blues by Raymond Miller

Author:Raymond Miller [Miller, Raymond]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

I waited a week before driving up to Waverly again. The campus was now officially closed and all buildings had been vacated for the winter break.

It was Christmas Eve. A perfect night for a little bit of breaking and entering.

A heavy thick wet snow had been falling steadily since the late afternoon. The New York area was about to have its first white Christmas in years.

I drove carefully, from the Saw Mill to the Sprain to the Taconic.

My windshield wipers were enthusiastic, and yet they didn’t actually work very well. I drove hunched up over the steering wheel, like Mr. Magoo.

When I was two blocks from the Redeemers’ place, I cut my lights. I parked a half a block away and just watched the building for an hour.

It was dark. No signs of life.

All of the Redeemers must have gone home to mom and dad. Now they were putting up their Christmas stockings, leaving out milk and cookies for Santa.

I opened the glove compartment and got out a little toolkit I had for occasions like this. Picking locks was one of my favorite parts of my job.

The street lamps gave off a pale inadequate light. I got out of my car and walked three times around the house, checking for a security system. There didn’t appear to be any.

I walked up the back porch, opened the toolkit, blew on my hands, and got started. It took me about five minutes to get in.

It was possible that the Bull hadn’t really gone home. Mama and Papa Bull might be alone tonight, missing their boy—who might still be in his room two flights above me, playing with his souvenirs in the dark. There was a chance that I’d pick his lock, open his door, and get shot in the face.

It always feels eerie to move through a home when the people who live there are gone. Even in the silence, you could still sense the presence of the Redeemers, vomiting into toilet bowls and smashing beer cans against their heads.

I was moving around the place with a little flashlight that I’d bought at Costco. I liked to buy supplies like this at Costco rather than Home Depot because they pay their workers a living wage and they’re not hostile to labor unions. The socially conscious PI.

The door to Bullock’s room was locked, but I got it open in no time. It was the kind of lock you could open with a credit card.

The room smelled bad. Frat boy bad. It stank of beer and unwashed plates and unwashed laundry.

As bad as it smelled, it looked worse. Filthy socks and sweat pants on the floor; a cardboard pizza box with half a pizza that, judging from its advanced state of decomposition, might have been eaten by Ayn Rand during her triumphant visit to Kendall in 1949.

I shined my flashlight on the pizza. It had developed green and seething pustules full of bacterial life. If left to itself a while longer, it would undoubtedly achieve a rudimentary form of consciousness.

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