Page 26 of The Shape of Night

He turns to a fresh page in his notebook. “Their names?”

“Ned and Billy.” Their last names have slipped my mind and Tarr glances up at me.

“Ned? Ned Haskell?”

“Right, that’s his name.”

There’s a silence as he mulls over this information, a silence that makes me uneasy. “They already have access to the house,” I point out. “I leave a key for them. They could just walk in the front door, so they’d have no need to climb in through the window.”

Tarr’s gaze slowly pans the kitchen and comes to a stop at my laptop computer, which sits undisturbed on the kitchen table, still powered on and plugged in. His gaze travels, sloth-like, to the countertop where a handful of spare change sits in a bowl, untouched. While Officer Tarr may be slow-moving, he is not stupid, and he’s reading the clues, which lead to a baffling conclusion.

“The intruder pops off the window screen, tosses it in the bushes,” he says, thinking aloud. “Climbs through the open window and proceeds to track dirt across this floor.” His tortoise-like head dips down as he follows the shoeprints, which fade away halfway across the kitchen. “He’s in your house yet he doesn’t take a single valuable item. Leaves the laptop sitting there. Doesn’t even scoop up the spare change.”

“So this wasn’t a robbery?” says Quinn.

“I’m not ready to say that yet.”

“Why didn’t he take anything?”

“Maybe because he never got the chance.” Tarr lumbers out of the kitchen into the foyer. Grunting, he slowly drops to a crouch. Only then do I notice what he’s looking at: a clump of dirt just inside the threshold of the front door, which I’d missed earlier.

“Cast off from his shoes,” says Tarr. “Funny, isn’t it? He didn’t track dirt anywhere else in the house. Just in the kitchen and here, on his way out the front door. Which makes me think…”

“What?” I ask.

“Why did he leave so quickly? He didn’t take anything. Didn’t go upstairs. Just climbed in the window, walked across the kitchen, and then left the house in such a hurry he didn’t even bother to close the door.” Tarr grunts as he rises back to his feet. The effort leaves his face flushed a bright red. “That’s the puzzle, isn’t it?”

The three of us stand silent for a moment, considering the explanation for the intruder’s odd behavior. Hannibal slinks past me and sprawls at the feet of Officer Tarr, whose torpor seems to match his own.

“Obviously something scared him off,” offers Quinn. “Maybe he saw her headlights coming up the driveway and ran.”

“But I didn’t see anyone,” I tell him. “And there was no car in the driveway when I got home.”

“If it was a kid, he might not have come in a car,” says Quinn. “Could’ve walked here using the cliff path. The trailhead starts at the public beach only a mile from here. Yeah, I bet that’s what we’re dealing with. Some kid who thought he was breaking into a vacant house. It’s happened here before.”

“So I’ve heard,” I say, remembering what Ned had told me about the Halloween break-in and the unfortunate girl who fell to her death from the widow’s walk.

“We’ll just give you the same advice we gave her. Keep the doors and windows locked. And let us know if—”

“Her?” I look back and forth at the two officers. “Who are you talking about?”

“The lady who was renting the house before you. The schoolteacher.”

“Charlotte had a break-in, too?”

“She was in bed when she heard a noise downstairs. Came down to find a window open. By then he was gone, and nothing was taken.”

I look down at the clump of dirt, cast off from the shoe of the intruder who violated my home tonight. An intruder who might still have been here in my house as my car came up the driveway. Suddenly I am shivering and I hug myself. “What if it wasn’t just some kid who did this?” I ask quietly.

“Tucker Cove is a very safe town, ma’am,” says Officer Quinn. “There’s the occasional shoplifter, sure, but we haven’t had a major incident in—”

“It’s always smart to take precautions,” interjects Tarr. “Keep your doors and windows locked. And maybe think about getting a dog.” He looks at Hannibal, who’s contentedly purring against his boot. “I don’t think your cat here’s scary enough to chase off a burglar.”

But I know someone who is.The ghost.

—

I bolt the front door and walk through the first floor of the house, closing and latching all the windows. The police have checked every room, every closet, but I am still jittery and certainly not ready to go to bed.

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