Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [115]
Struggling to bring himself to his feet, Martin turned and began running for his car. He would call the police and then wake the Pearls’ neighbors, including Noah Blake. Flood the neighborhood with light and sound. Scare the bastard off if the police didn’t arrive first.
Martin had taken three strides across the Pearls’ back lawn when he heard something shatter inside the home and a female voice shout, “No!” before being muffled and then silenced. Martin froze in his tracks. His hands ceased to shake. His peripheral vision returned. He was able to clearly focus on his Subaru, more than two hundred yards away on the other side of the park. His legs felt strong and steady again. He heard something else shatter in the house, a vase, a lamp, a plate, and another cry, though softer and more in pain than in terror, as the first had been. There was a struggle taking place inside the house.
Martin turned and walked to the Pearls’ back door.
The door was unlocked, as Martin had expected. Clive Darrow was not as cautious as Martin had once thought. He opened the door, stepped inside, and then closed it behind him, trying not to make a sound. Standing in the kitchen, under the pale light of a single bulb above the sink, Martin looked into the living room and saw Sherman Pearl stretched out across the floor, motionless. He was lying face down, with lengths of black cord wrapped around his feet and binding his hands behind him.
Martin was relieved. The man was probably still alive, or else Clive Darrow would have had no reason to tie him up.
Still motionless, Martin waited by the door for a moment, listening and examining every shadowy corner of the kitchen and living room for possible danger. He could hear movement upstairs; a man’s muffled voice, and footsteps.
He couldn’t believe how calm he was.
“Mr. Pearl,” Martin whispered. “Can you hear me?”
No answer. Martin tried again with the same result.
Next, he looked to the far end of the countertop, where the recharging base of the Pearls’ telephone was located. Martin spotted the number 2 flashing in red, indicating that the Pearls had two unheard messages. He moved closer and saw through the shadows that the phone was not resting on its base.
Freezing again, trying to listen and look and think at the same time, Martin scanned the kitchen for any signs of the Pearls’ cordless phone. The kitchen table, the countertops, the end tables adjacent to the sofa.
Nothing.
Martin knew that the phone could very well be down the hallway in the couple’s office, or upstairs on a nightstand. Or even in the bathroom. Clive Darrow might have removed it from the base himself. There was no way of knowing.
Martin decided to move on, remaining watchful for the phone as he did so. Had he thought that there was time to search for a telephone and call the police, he would have run back to the Subaru, grabbed his cell phone, and done it there. But there was a struggle of some kind going on upstairs, and Sophie Pearl was in grave danger. Every second counted. He had been standing inside the Pearls’ home for a full minute now, and Martin knew that he had already wasted too much time.
Knowing the Pearls’ kitchen as well as his own, Martin slid open the drawer closest to him and removed a knife from its tray. The eight-inch blade gleamed in the sixty-watt light, its tip looking impossibly sharp, and Martin shivered at its menace. He didn’t think he could bring himself to stab another human being, but he wanted the knife just the same.
Next he moved into the living room, walking as quietly as possible, passing by the unconscious Sherman Pearl. At the fireplace, he removed one of the four perpetually unused logs from the hearth stand, making sure that the other three didn’t shift in the process. Though he couldn’t imagine plunging a knife into the chest of another man, he thought he was perfectly capable of bashing the son-of-a-bitch over the head with a chunk of wood if necessary.
This was not Alan Clayton, loyal client who had done no wrong. This was a dangerous criminal