CHAPTER 55
The cold bit at her, finding every seam in her clothes and pricking at her skin like dozens of needles. Tracy lowered her head into the wind, stepped over a fallen tree, and followed the tire tracks up the slope. She stayed in the ruts left by the tires, but her boots still sank up to her calves, making every step a struggle. She became quickly winded but trudged on, afraid to stop, pushing aside any thoughts of going back, telling herself it was futile since she could never reverse her car down the hill and turning it around was not an option. Besides, she’d put these events in motion. She needed to stop them.
Two hundred yards up the slope she came to the edge of a clearing. In the near distance, through the swirling snow, she could just make out the faint glow of a light and the shadows of buildings and snow-covered humps. She recalled the aerial photographs at Edmund House’s trial, which had depicted multiple metal-roofed buildings, as well as cars and farm equipment in varying stages of restoration littering Parker House’s yard. She didn’t imagine it would change much. This was the right place. She turned off the flashlight and crept toward the light at the back of the property, stopping behind the bumper of the one vehicle not buried beneath snow—the flatbed she’d seen at the courthouse. She scraped the snow and ice off the license plate and confirmed it to be the same as the plate number that Kins had provided. Satisfied it was the same truck, she studied the ramshackle wood-plank structure. Two feet of snow had piled atop the roof. Foot-long icicles hung like jagged teeth from its eaves. No smoke came from the flue.
The wind found a space between the collar of her jacket and hat and sent a chill down her spine. Her fingers had gone numb inside her gloves. She feared losing more dexterity if she waited much longer.
She shuffled from the flatbed to the wooden steps, which had been recently shoveled. The wood sagged beneath her weight. On the tiny porch, she pressed her back against the siding and waited a beat before leaning to look through a window’s glass panes, which were icing over on the outside and fogged on the inside.
Using her teeth, Tracy pulled off her gloves and unzipped her jacket. She reached for the Glock and felt the cold numbing her fingers. She alternately blew into each of her fists and reached for the doorknob. It turned. She gently pushed. The door stuck, and for a brief moment she thought it was bolted. Then it popped free of the jamb. The windowpanes rattled and she again waited a beat, the wind shoving hard at her back, nearly pulling the knob from her hand. Then she slid inside and, quickly and quietly, closed the door. She was free of the wind, which whistled through the house, but not the cold. The room was freezing and held the pungent smell of fermenting garbage.
She flexed her fingers, trying to improve circulation while quickly orienting herself. A table and chair sat beneath a small four-paned window. An L-shaped counter with a metal sink led to an opening to another room, in which was the source of the light she’d seen through the cabin’s window. Though she stepped cautiously, the wood planks creaked beneath her feet, the sound only partially dampened by the muffled whirr of a generator—the likely source of power for the light. Tracy slid along the counter to the doorjamb between the rooms. Gun in hand, she leaned around the corner.
The light was especially bright because it was coming from a bare bulb. The lamp shade had been removed and it rested on the floor beside a rust-colored armchair that was facing away from her. An orange extension cord snaked along the floor and down a darkened hallway. Tracy stepped in. She stopped when she saw a crown of gray hair protruding just above the back of the armchair—someone was slumped in the seat. She detected no reaction to her presence. Tracy stepped in farther, angling around the side of the chair, the floor continuing to betray her presence. She stepped past the side table, the face of the chair’s occupant coming into view from behind the wing of the chair.
“Jesus,” she said, as the chin lifted, the eyes opened, and he turned his head to look at her.
It was Parker House.