Page 125 of For the Birds

“I have a gun, Jed,” I said quietly, my heart racing. “Strapped to my thigh.”

“That’s good to know,” he said. “Let’s hope you don’t needit.”

When no one had answered after ten seconds or so, Jed knocked again, then tried the doorknob. “Locked.”

“Now what?” I asked. “If you weren’t here, I’d go around back to see if the back door wasopen.”

“Me too.” I followed him around the side of the house and through the chain-link gate into the empty backyard. The back door was locked too, but Jed pulled out some lock-picking tools and had it open in no time. He walked in first and motioned me in, closing the door behindus.

We stepped into a dated kitchen—complete with old Formica counters with metal trim—and I took a moment to catch my breath.

“How’re you doin’?” Jed asked.

“Okay. I feel like I’m in the big leagues doin’ this withyou.”

His answer was a half-grin. “Stay behind me in case we find any surprises.”

“Okay.”

The house was a small bungalow—just like all the homes in my neighborhood—so it didn’t take long to make our way throughit.

“Nothin’,” Jed said, scanning the bathroom. “No signs of a struggle. No blood.”

“There’s no furniture,” I said. “Would there be signs of a struggle?”

“There might be scuff marks on the floors or walls. Or even holes in thewall.”

Disappointment washed through me. “I was so sure they brought himhere.”

“Just because we don’t see anything doesn’t mean they weren’t here. You said the neighbor told you they were working on the house to get it ready for renters. They might have repaired it already. Or maybe there wasn’t any damage atall.”

He headed back to the kitchen and stopped in front of a narrow door. “I’ll be damned,” he said, opening it. “This house has a basement.”

He found a light switch and flipped it on, and a dim light appeared at the bottom. “I hope you’re not afraid of basements.”

“I never used to be—just closed-in spaces—but I might change my mind about basements depending on what we find at the bottom of the stairs.”

The staircase was made of two-by-fours with no walls, and two bare light bulbs were attached to the floor joists above, shedding enough light for me to see the cinder block foundation and the dirt floor. But it was the folding chair in the middle of the room and the dark stain in the dirt beneath it that really caught my attention.

“Stay there,” Jed said as he made his way to the chair and squatted next to it. He dipped his finger in it and lifted it to his nose. “Blood.”

I took comfort in the fact that it was a relatively small puddle. “Do you think they did bring Scooterhere?”

“If what the parrot said was true . . .” He glanced over at me, and a hint of a grin lifted his lips. “Words I never thought I’dsay.”

“No kidding.”

“But there was probably blood upstairs if the parrot heard one of them telling another to clean up blood before . . .” He lifted his eyebrows. “It doesn’t look like they tried to clean it up down here. And you’re sure the bird said Scooter’sname?”

“I heard it myself.”

He stayed squatted down and scanned the floor.

“What are you lookin’ for now?” I asked.

“I’m trying to make out footprints—how many, shoe sizes.”

“Can youtell?”

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