Old World Murder - Kathleen Ernst [47]
Scri-i-itch.
The noise came from that window beyond the door. Chloe heard another tiny sound, a hushed thump. Someone had pulled the screen from the window, and set it quietly on the porch.
Her hand found the light switch by the front door. “Hey!” she yelled, flicking it on. In the sudden glare she glimpsed a foot and leg extending through the window. In an instant it was gone. Something thumped again on the porch, much louder this time. Scrambling footsteps pounded over the boards. Then silence.
Chloe flipped the porch light on and jerked at the front door knob. The old door stuck, and she had to wrestle with it before wrenching it open. No one in sight. As she ran across the porch and into the yard, a car with no headlights on roared away.
A sickle moon shed little light. Chloe stood, waiting, feeling the grass cool and damp beneath her feet. Finally she blew out a long breath and turned back toward the house. The window screen lay on the porch. It was inexpensive, the type intended to slide easily in and out, held in place only by the weight of the open window.
Chloe stared at the screen. “Son of a bitch,” she whispered.
Roelke jerked awake when the telephone rang. His feet hit the floor, his hand reached for the bedside lamp, and his brain switched into gear. One-fifteen A.M. He snatched the phone. “McKenna here.”
“Roelke? It’s Chloe. Someone just tried to break into my house.”
His throat tightened. “Did you call the cops?”
“What? Yes!”
“OK. Unless you have reason to believe that someone is in the house, stay inside and sit tight. Call your neighbors so you’re not alone. I’ll be right down.” He pulled on jeans and extracted his service revolver from the lockbox under his bed, grabbed his truck keys, and ran down his flat’s exterior staircase.
He hit Highway 59 at an illegal speed and kept at it as he wound through the state forest toward La Grange. When Roelke pulled into Chloe’s driveway, anger pulled his muscles even tighter. Chloe sat on the front porch steps, faintly illuminated by the light spilling from the farmhouse interior. No one else was in sight—no cop cars flashing red and blue, no hovering landlords defending their property.
He jumped from the truck and strode toward the porch. “What are you doing? I told you to wait inside!”
“I didn’t want to wait inside. I needed air.” She stood to meet him. A baggy green T-shirt proclaiming “WVU Foresters Do It In The Woods” almost covered her denim shorts. She was barefoot.
“Did you call your neighbors?”
“I don’t want to wake them. They’re dairy farmers, for God’s sake. The guy is gone. There’s nothing here that can’t wait until morning.”
He glared at her, angry and incredulous and painfully aware of her long blonde hair. He’d never seen it completely loose before, flowing past her waist. “What about the cops?” he demanded. “You told me you’d already called the cops!”
“I called you!”
Roelke quivered with the effort of keeping his hands from those thin shoulders. He wanted to shake some sense into her. He finally turned and walked away. One deep breath. Another. OK, a few more. Finally he felt ready to try again.
She stood waiting on the steps, arms folded, jaw set.
“Let’s start over.” Roelke managed the calm, pleasant tone he’d perfected on the beat. “First of all, your home is out of my jurisdiction. I’m employed by the Village of Eagle. You don’t live in Eagle. You don’t even live in Waukesha County.”
She considered that. “Oh. Yeah.”
“And second, you didn’t call the station. If you had, you’d have been routed to Walworth County.”
“Oh.”
“You called my home number,” Roelke added, feeling a need to make his position crystal-clear.
“OK, I get it.” She sighed. “I guess I screwed up. Sorry.”
“A local car could have been here in half the time it took me. If you’d been threatened,