CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The address Pruitt had sent for Cord led them to Gaston Street on the eastern edge of the Thomas Square neighborhood, in a block of older rental properties that sat under a dense canopy of live oaks.
The route brought them in from the north end of the block so he could see the full length of the street before they arrived at the specific address.
He was barely aware of it, though, because he was thinking about Elena.
Her face had surfaced without invitation, the way it usually did.
It wasn’t that he was trying not to think about her, but memories of her tended to pop up at the worst times.
He’d thought of her here and there during cases at pivotal moments, and he had nearly broke into tears a week ago when he and Sarah had been sharing a deep kiss and a memory of Elana had popped into his head.
Now, he was thinking of her because he was thinking about the few months where Elana had gone through a painting phase.
It had started roughly two years into their relationship, somewhere in that middle period when they were still learning one another while also envisioning what a future of marriage might look like.
She had taken a class on Saturday mornings at a studio in Alexandria, and for about four months she had come home with canvases that she propped against the walls of the apartment to dry.
They were bright…. aggressively, joyfully bright.
She’d started painting in the garage, too, on cheap canvasses from the lower-end hobby store.
He had loved them all without reservation and told her so, and she had laughed and said she had no idea what she was doing.
He had lovingly told her many times that was maybe why he loved them so much.
She hadn't stuck with it. She had the enthusiasm but not the discipline for the solitary hours the work required.
After a few months, the Saturday classes stopped and the canvases migrated to storage.
Occasionally, she would mention going back to it but aside from some toying around with watercolors and sketches, she never had.
He thought about standing in Nadia Ostroff's studio, surrounded by work that represented the discipline Elana had never quite landed on. He had registered something in that room that he hadn't been able to name at the time—a faint sort of unease that had nothing to do with the crime scene. He’d felt unsettled and hadn’t been sure why.
But he thought he understood it better now.
"There," Vic said.
Miles snapped out of his recollections and slowed the car. Vic was pointing just ahead and to the right.
Cord’s house was a narrow two-story rental, wood-sided, painted a pale gray that had been the right choice at some point and now needed refreshing.
It sat between two similar properties, all of them set close to the sidewalk in the way of older Savannah construction.
The lots were narrow and deep. The oak in front of the neighboring property threw shade across the upper half of the facade and the porch roof.
Miles pulled to the curb two houses down and they sat for a moment looking at it.
The lawn had not been cut in some time, the grass gone long and uneven.
Miles’s best guess was that it had been at least three weeks, likely more.
In a neighborhood where the other properties were reasonably maintained, it stood out.
The porch held a folding chair and a small table, and on the table a small, potted plant had seen its last days.
The mailbox at the edge of the walk was open, and the overflow that hadn't fit in it had been set on the porch rail and had since blown or shifted to the steps.
Even before getting out of the car, he could see that the curtains on both front windows were drawn.
Miles got out of the car. Vic came around the passenger side, and they walked to the property line without going past it.
He didn’t need to get close to see what he was seeing.
The mail volume alone put the vacancy at two weeks minimum, possibly three.
The lawn confirmed it. The curtains confirmed it differently.
"He's been gone a while," Vic said.
"At least two weeks." Miles looked at the porch, at the accumulated mail, at the folding chair with an envelope caught under one leg. "Maybe longer."
Even before they reached the porch, Miles picked up on the chemical scent.
It was faint, diluted by two weeks or more of open air and the warm, green smell of the neglected lawn.
He was pretty sure it wasn’t coming from anywhere outside but was contained inside and had started to leak out in trace amounts through gaps in doors and windows.
He had smelled it twice in the past thirty-six hours, so he knew exactly what it was.
He stopped on the bottom porch step and looked at Vic. “You smell it?”
Her expression didn’t change but she had caught it, too. "Yeah," she said quietly.
He didn’t go up the remaining steps just yet.
He stood where he was and looked at the gap at the base of the door, at the window frames, at the seal of the threshold.
It then occurred to him that if this house had been vacant for two or three weeks, the smell still being present after this length of vacancy was odd.
He took his phone out and called Pruitt. She answered on the second ring and immediately said, “I'm four minutes out."
"He's not here. The property's been vacant for at least two weeks, probably more. The mail is piling up, and the lawn has been neglected. More importantly, there's a chemical smell at the threshold. Faint but identifiable."
There was a brief silence as Pruitt thought this through. "Okay. I'll call the warrant in from the car. We'll need the chemical hazard notation to expedite it."
"Note it. And we'll need a hazmat assessment before anyone goes in. If we can smell it from out here, I have no idea how bad it must be inside. I’m surprised none of his neighbors have made any complaints."
"Understood.”
He ended the call and stepped back down to the walk. Vic was already at the property line, looking at the side of the house, where a narrow passage between the rental and its neighbor gave a partial view of the side yard.
"Miles, come here.”
He came to stand beside her and looked where she was looking.
The side of the house had two windows on the ground floor, and below each window was a window box—the painted wood kind that were generally planted with seasonal color.
There were four of them along the side of the house.
He could see three of them from where he was standing, and each one held plants that were entirely dead.
Not recently dead, not wilting or browning at the tips, but fully gone to rot; the stems had gone rigid and gray, and the leaves curled and papery.
He looked at the fourth box visible from the front and saw the same condition.
He came back to the front and looked at the window boxes there, which he had not registered when they first arrived.
There were two of them on the front porch rail, flanking the steps, and they were in the same condition as the ones on the side.
Four boxes of dead plants arranged around the exterior of a house that smelled of chromium compounds and had not been occupied in weeks.
If it was simple neglect and lack of watering, they’d be a little sad-looking but not completely ruined like this.
His pone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out without looking away from the dead plants. “This is Sterling,” he answered.
“Hey, it’s Pruitt. Hazmat will be there in fifteen and I’ve already placed a request for a search warrant, listed as high priority.”
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll literally see you in about thirty minutes.”
Pruitt ended the call, leaving Miles and Vic standing on the sidewalk in front of the empty rental while a series of dead plants faced the street behind them.