15. Holt #2
Holt lay on his back with his hands folded on his chest and stared up into the dark.
His mind would not stop turning. June’s face in the kitchen doorway.
Willa’s cool, accusing eyes. Carmen’s voice telling a story he had never known about June.
But June’s words were the ones that stuck in his mind the most. Her story of how many times she’d actually tried to contact him to tell him about Willa.
A lump formed in his throat, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he pictured her with their one-month-old baby coming to see him.
He lay there for a long time, expecting sleep not to come. Eventually, somewhere between the memory of June’s face and the memory of Willa walking away from him, it did.
He woke up two hours later.
The sky outside the bedroom window had started to lighten, to the soft grey of Miami just before dawn. Zane was still asleep, his breathing deep and steady across the small bedroom. Holt lay still for a few minutes and knew immediately that he wasn’t going back to sleep.
He got up carefully, pulled on his jeans from the day before and a clean shirt, slipped his shoes on, and let himself quietly out of the bedroom.
The house was absolutely silent. Holt moved through the hallway, past the closed doors where the women and Alfred were sleeping, past the living room where Ace and Rad were still stretched out on the sofa beds with the thin blankets they’d been given.
Holt eased the front door open, stepped out onto the porch, and pulled it quietly shut behind him.
The early morning air was cool, with the humidity still low, and the light was still soft.
He crossed the road to June’s house.
The young officer posted at the front had changed shifts at some point.
The new one looked up as Holt approached, recognized him immediately, and nodded. “Good morning, Director Dillinger.”
“Good morning, officer.” Holt gave him a small nod. “I’m going to take a look around inside. I’ll be about half an hour.”
“Take your time, sir.” The young man returned to what he had been doing when Holt had disturbed him.
Holt stepped carefully over the yellow tape.
The front of June’s house looked like anyone would’ve expected it to after a gas explosion.
The front door was gone. The doorframe was blackened and split.
The living room, where the accelerant had been poured most heavily, was a gutted black shell.
The sofa where he and Willa had sat watching Shaun’s video was a twisted frame of charred metal with springs poking out of it.
The coffee table where June had set the laptop was a pile of ash and dark, wet wood.
The fire department had done its job well, but they’d been working to contain the fire, not to save the living room.
Holt stood in the middle of the wreckage for a long moment.
The kitchen had gone with the living room. The gas line blast had blown the back wall half out, and the refrigerator was on its side in what used to be the back garden. The smell of wet, burnt wood was heavy in the air.
He turned and moved carefully through the house, stepping over debris and crunching on broken glass.
The hallway was smoke-blackened but mostly intact.
The back bedrooms had suffered smoke damage and water damage, but the structure was standing.
Holt moved down the hall and up the stairs slowly, testing each step. The staircase held his weight.
The upstairs had fared considerably better.
The smoke had climbed, of course. Everything was coated in a thin grey film. The walls were dark. But the bedrooms on the second floor had been beyond the reach of the main fire. Doors had been closed. Windows had held.
He found June’s bedroom at the end of the hall.
He stopped in the doorway.
Holt had only been in here with Willa the day before as he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The bed was neatly made. A soft cream-and-blue quilt was folded across the end of it.
A single framed photograph on the bedside table showed Willa with the three children, Becky on her lap, Andy and Grace on either side of her, all four of them laughing at something off camera.
Another photograph beside it showed a younger June with a man Holt immediately recognized as Trevor, the two of them at what looked like Willa’s school graduation, their arms around a young woman with bright, shining eyes and a cap tilted at an angle.
Holt stood and looked at the photograph of Trevor for a long moment.
Trevor had a kind face. Steady eyes. The specific quality of a man who had loved his wife and daughter completely and never spent a moment resenting the life he’d built around that love.
Holt’s throat tightened.
“I’m sorry,” Holt said quietly to the photograph. “I’m so sorry.”
He made himself look away.
The closet door was slightly ajar. Holt crossed to it and pushed it open gently.
Inside, June’s clothes hung in the neat, precise rows he already knew she’d arranged, everything grouped by type and color, her shoes lined up along the floor in pairs.
Smoke damage had left a grey sheen over everything, but nothing was ruined.
On the top shelf of the closet, tucked behind a row of hat boxes and sweaters, sat a thick leather-bound photograph album.
Holt reached up and carefully took it down.
He didn’t open it.
He stood in the middle of June’s bedroom with the album in his hands and ran his thumb over the cover. The leather was soft and worn brown. Someone, June presumably, had had a single word stamped into the front in small gold lettering.
Willa.
He closed his eyes.
For a long moment, he couldn’t move as he thought about what Carmen had said about an album for him back at Willa’s house in Sandpiper Shores. He blew out a breath and looked at the one in his hands.
Holt thought about opening it. But then felt like he’d be invading their privacy.
It was bad enough that he was standing in June’s bedroom, going through her private things.
Holt held the album carefully against his chest before something caught his eye.
He turned slowly toward the dresser. It had an ornate mirror mounted above it and a tray of jewelry arranged neatly in the center.
He moved toward it without really knowing why, some old investigator’s instinct that read rooms the way other people read books.
Holt noted a gift box sat in the corner of the dresser, its lid open.
Inside, nestled in tissue paper, were two hardcover books. Holt recognized them immediately from the description June had given them the night before. The Barbara Bass cookbook and the novel titled The Traitor Among Us.
Holt realized this was the gift Shaun had sent June. He let out a slow, quiet breath of genuine relief. Something of what June had wanted to save had been saved.
He was reaching for the books to tuck them under his arm with the album when he heard it.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Slow. Deliberate. Unhurried.
Holt went absolutely still.
The officer outside wouldn’t have come inside without calling out. Whoever was on the stairs hadn’t announced themselves, which meant they may not have come in through the front door. The officer was still out there watching the place.
Holt set the album down carefully on the dresser and moved his hand slowly to his hip.
The footsteps reached the top of the stairs.
They came down the upstairs hallway.
They slowed as they approached June’s bedroom and came to a stop. There was a slight sound as something scraped on wood before the footsteps started again.
A shadow fell across the doorway of the bedroom where Holt stood.
Holt’s hand settled on the grip of his weapon.
The shadow stopped in the doorway, and Holt turned his head sharply to face it.