Chapter Twelve
TWELVE
Tim
“Deep breaths,” said Tim as he gave Nicole Durham an awkward pat on the back. Sitting in the back seat of his car, door flung open and her feet braced on the pebbles, she looked like she’d seen a ghost.
If you asked Tim, what Nicole had just encountered was worse.
The call he’d received at the barracks had been both surprising and inevitable.
Tim had only met Sheriff Mac’s sister once before, at Mac’s fiftieth birthday.
He knew the Durham family owned Island Adventure, where he’d been a customer several times.
What Tim hadn’t known, and suspected Mac didn’t either, was that Nicole’s new client was a well-known former NHL player who planned to make Cape Vincent his summer home.
They’d arrived to find her in the front yard, pale and pacing as she shook out her hands.
The intruder had been hiding in the attic, which was accessible through a small door in the walk-in closet.
It had taken Tim and Sol some time, but they’d managed to flush the trespasser out with threats of a K9 Unit.
And when they did, they were stunned to find themselves face to face with a woman.
She was young, mid-twenties at most, with curly red hair that could use a wash, and brown eyes brimming with fear.
Her skin and clothes were dusty, but not as filthy as Tim would have expected for a squatter, which probably meant she’d been using the homeowner’s shower.
They knew little else about her so far, but he had a feeling the name she’d spat out like an ice chip—Jenny Smith—was a fake.
She had no ID on her, so the team had no way to corroborate her claim.
Much to Tim’s interest, though, Jenny Smith wore a white jean jacket with indigo cuffs over her striped sweater. A jacket Tim was confident belonged to Annelise Greene.
“She was in the ceiling,” Nicole muttered from the back of the car. “Creeping around the house. I think Eva heard her too. Why was she in the ceiling?”
All Tim could do was shake his head. He couldn’t fathom why Jenny Smith, who he’d concluded was the thief they’d been looking for, had picked a house that was occupied this time.
Was the woman an obsessed fan? It was a logical conclusion after Nicole explained about Mikko Helle’s profession.
Maybe Jenny had heard Mikko bought a house in the area, and had wanted to get close to him.
Tim had yet to talk to the man, who was on his way back from a day trip to Ontario.
He wondered if things would have ended differently had Mikko been the one to chase the woman out.
“What kind of person would do that?” Nicole went on.
“They’re called phroggers.”
Both Tim and Nicole looked up. Shana had parked near the road and was walking toward them, the sun dappling her face and hair with copper light.
Seeing her in her state police jacket reminded Tim how hard it had been when she was out on leave, caring for baby Darcy.
Shana had taken a full six months off, and he’d felt her absence intensely; without her, the work was a slog, the implacable monotony draining him dry.
Since her arrival in Alexandria Bay, she’d changed Tim on a molecular level, rearranging his life into something solid.
At the sight of his wife and the pinched scar that ran the length of her jaw, a relic from another time, he felt his breath hitch in his chest.
“Sorry it took so long,” she told Tim. “Had to drop Darcy with your mom. It’s good to see you, Nicole. You OK?”
“Just shaken up,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“Perp’s still inside,” Tim told Shana. “Sol’s got her detained while the troopers search the house, but she’s a wreck.
” That had been the first thing Tim noticed when they found her.
The young woman had been a snarl of nerves, her face stained with tears.
Tim was used to a range of reactions, had seen folks scream and bawl and throw a punch, but Jenny’s despair had shut her down completely. “You said something about frogs?”
“Phroggers, with a ph. I watched a documentary about them,” Shana said.
“It’s when someone secretly lives in a house right alongside the owners.
Like a roommate you don’t know is there.
It’s risky, obviously, so the people who do it tend to jump from house to house—like a frog.
It’s happened to some celebrities over the years, but really, any big house is a target. ”
“Terrific,” Tim said with sarcasm. There were countless homes like that in his jurisdiction.
“I was thinking that could be why she’s here—the celebrity thing.
Nicole says the owner’s a former NHL whiz kid who’s already retired.
I’d pretend not to be green with envy, but my acting skills aren’t up to the task. ”
With a laugh, Shana nodded at the house and said, “Looks like he’s got a good investment banker. You said the intruder was in the attic?”
Tim confirmed it. As a senior plainclothes detective with the troop, Shana oversaw all investigations, and he’d already filled her in over the phone.
Tim had been eager to hear her take. A young woman, hiding in a house without the owner’s know-ledge?
Assuming control of someone’s sanctuary?
The whole thing creeped him out. Darcy’s nursery was right next to Tim and Shana’s master bedroom, connected by a door they kept open so they could hear their daughter if she cried.
He imagined walking in to find Jenny Smith, or someone like her, leaning over his child’s crib.
Hands reaching toward his helpless toddler as if, like the house she’d claimed, the child belonged to her.
“We’re not sure yet how she got in, but the home is newly renovated,” Tim explained. “There may have been times when it sat open and she could have easily slipped inside.”
“Jesus.” Nicole’s eyes were wide. “I’m never going to bed again without checking every square inch of my house.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through this,” said Shana. Then, to Tim: “At least this puts an end to her Thousand Islands tour.”
Nicole straightened up. “Hold on. Are you saying this isn’t the first place she broke into?”
“She hasn’t admitted to anything yet, but there have been other break-ins,” said Tim.
“It’s possible this woman’s been house-hopping for a while now.
” He turned to face the home once more. What was taking the guys so long?
Tim didn’t expect the sweep for damage and theft to reveal much, since Jenny had yet to steal anything of real value—assuming she was, in fact, responsible for the other break-ins.
Tim would need to interview her. Get statements from the homeowner and his girlfriend, too, once they returned from Kingston.
He had a long day ahead, but he couldn’t start checking tasks off his list until the house was clear.
In the car, Nicole still looked puzzled. “If she’s here because of Mikko being famous, then why would she hide in those other homes too?”
“When I first heard about phrogging,” said Shana, “I wanted to know the same thing. What would compel someone to do it? I did some research on that. Some people have nowhere else to go and are just looking for a warm place to sleep. Others have suffered a psychotic break and believe the house actually belongs to them. There are those out for revenge, maybe against an ex, and people tuned to a different frequency. Who get off on messing with the homeowners, you know?” Shaking her head, Shana said, “It takes a certain personality type to be that cruel and reckless.”
Already, Tim was wondering which of his wife’s descriptions applied to Jenny Smith. Where had she come from? Why was she here? What had led her to hide out in multiple homes and steal such a random array of items? And why, this time, had she failed to flee the property before the owner reappeared?
The sound of raised voices shattered Tim’s thoughts and called his attention to the home’s open front door.
“Stay here,” he told Nicole, who nodded vigorously.
With Shana by his side, he crossed the driveway to where Sol now stood.
Tim had always thought the man’s youthful face looked at odds with his gray crew cut, but what he noticed now was that Sol’s cheeks were the same washed-out hue as his hair.
“You better come in here,” Solomon said. “There’s been a development.”
In the living room, Tim and Shana found Jenny Smith on the homeowner’s pristine white couch, her arms cuffed behind her back.
“Go ahead,” Sol said sternly. “Tell them what you just told me.”
Jenny’s face was swollen from crying, her eyes feral. “You’ve got this all wrong,” she said through hitched sobs. The woman looked worse than she had minutes prior, her forehead mottled with sickly patches of red.
Tim said, “You didn’t break into the house and hide in the ceiling?”
“No, I … yes,” Jenny replied, “but that doesn’t matter. What he did is so much worse.”
“What who did?” asked Shana.
“Him! I tried to get out of the house when I found it, but then that cleaning lady came and I had to hide again and—”
“Slow down,” Tim said, shifting his gaze to Sol. Trying to make sense of what he was hearing. “Are you saying you found something inside the house?”
“In the basement.” She let out a mewl, her shoulders quaking under the jean jacket that was a size too small. “I’ll show you. It wasn’t me. I swear to God, it wasn’t me.”
Tim was starting to get nervous, and one glance at his colleagues told him Shana and Sol felt the same way. He held Shana’s gaze, and she gave a quick nod. “OK,” Tim said, stepping aside. “Show us what you found.”
Jenny Smith directed them to the door that led to what Tim could only describe as fodder for nightmares.
The staircase took them to a low-ceilinged room with ancient stone walls and two tiny rectangular windows that let in a feeble wash of grass-green light.
When Tim glanced at the exposed beams inches above his head, spying evidence of deactivated knob and tube wiring, he could feel the weight of the house bearing down on him.
The basement smelled of fresh paint; the reno crew had made an effort to sanitize and refresh the space, coating the wooden staircase and rock walls with a bright shade of white. There was no furniture, and no shelving either. The cement floor was bare.
“That way.” Jenny wobbled as she pointed out a second door, this one at the back of the long, wide room.
Tim got ahead of her to turn the knob, feeling the woman shrink away.
This was the end of the road for primer.
The rest of the basement was dingy and dim, the walls a mishmash of filthy stone and fat, flaking bricks.
His fingers groped for a light switch. A bare bulb dangling from the ceiling cast the space in a bilious yellow light.
Tim saw a furnace and hot water tank, which hulked in the center of the room like twin giants at rest. Rust marks on the pitted walls near the exposed pipes reminded him of bloodstains. Vermilion, with a hint of copper wire.
It was only when Jenny nodded to a spot in the corner that Tim noticed the floor. The outline of a wooden square, flush with the cement. The dust that had covered it, camouflaging the board with the rest of the floor, had been disturbed.
“Down there.” Shaking hard, Jenny took several steps back, keen to distance herself from whatever lay inside.
Tim withdrew his flashlight and crouched down beside the door. No lock was visible. No handle, either. All he could see was a hole bored into the primitive slab of wood.
Steeling himself, he pushed his finger into the cavity, and pulled.
He stumbled back. Behind him, Jenny let out a pitiful cry.
Tim could feel Sol and Shana close, knew they could see what he was seeing, every gruesome detail illuminated by the beam from his flashlight.
Under the house lay a vast crawlspace, but what Jenny Smith had found was directly below the door.
Shoved, it seemed, through the hole in the floor and shut into the hollow darkness below.
“Jesus,” Tim said, the word a cold hiss.
“What the hell?” That was Shana, hovering over him, her hair tickling the top of his head. He could smell the soap the whole family used on his wife’s skin, and here, now, the perfume that permeated his daily life made his stomach heave.
“Get her back upstairs,” Shana told Sol. “Quickly. We need to seal this room.”
When Tim finally tore his gaze away from the crawlspace to look at Shana, her expression teetered on the edge of confusion and unalloyed dread.