Down the Darkest Road by Tami Hoag

Author:Tami Hoag
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2011-12-27T06:00:00+00:00

30

Denise Garland, LPN, Mercy General Hospital, lived in a one-bedroom guesthouse that had undoubtedly begun its life as a garage—as had many small rentals in the downtown and McAster College neighborhoods of Oak Knoll. The home had the squat build of a garage, though it had been dolled up with shutters and siding, and the driveway had been replaced with a concrete sidewalk and a little patch of lawn. A weak yellow bug light burned beside the front door.

The property sat on a corner lot, with the entrance to the rental on the side street around the corner from the front of the main house. Overgrown bougainvillea bushes offered privacy from the landlord’s backyard.

One person’s privacy was another person’s cover. He was able to approach and move around the exterior of the house with little concern for being seen.

He didn’t bother going to the front door. The front door would be locked. And if anyone happened by or looked out a window from one of the neighboring houses, their eyes would go to the front door. They would notice a man standing at the front door.

He wasn’t concerned that anyone had followed him there. Always watchful, he had been particularly so after leaving the sheriff’s office. He had not returned home and had gone through his usual maneuvers of circling blocks and doubling back on his own trail to make certain they had not put an unmarked car on the job of tailing him. They had not.

Eventually he had returned to Denise Garland’s neighborhood, finding a spot to watch her house until she left for her late shift at the hospital. Then he put on a pair of surgical gloves and walked across the street to begin his evening’s work.

The two windows on the south side of Denise Garland’s house were closed tight. The transom window denoting the location of the bathroom was cracked open several inches. It wouldn’t have been the first time he had gone into a house that way. He was tall enough to access the window and thin enough to slide through it like a snake, but it wasn’t his first choice of entrances.

He found his access on the back of the house, where a sliding glass door opened onto a little patio fashioned of inexpensive concrete pavers. Denise Garland had created a nice little entertaining area for herself there with a small, round, white plastic table with four white plastic chairs and a couple of white plastic lounge chairs for sunning. A short-legged Weber grill squatted off to one side of the patio.

Several Diet Coke cans had been left on the table. A striped beach towel had been forgotten in a heap on one of the chairs. A dirty ashtray sat on the concrete between the chairs.

He frowned at that. He couldn’t abide smoking. Filthy, stinking habit. He wouldn’t be interested in Denise Garland if she was a smoker. He hoped the ashtray belonged to the girlfriend who had come to visit her that afternoon while he had been watching the house from down the street.

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