Something Missing_ A Novel - Matthew Dicks [15]
And Martin hated dogs.
Using his pick gun, Martin had disabled the relatively simple lock on the Grants’ back door and swung it open slowly. As he placed his moccasined foot onto the welcome mat, he was greeted by a voice from somewhere within the home.
“Welcome home, sweetie pie!”
The greeting had startled Martin so badly that he had fallen backward down the steps, landing in a puddle of slush, his pick gun clattering to the cement patio. His first instinct had been to run. Execute the escape route that he had planned for each of his clients’ homes in case of emergency. In the Grants’ case, this route would take him across their backyard (an approach Martin wouldn’t normally consider with fresh snow on the ground at the time), over the chain-link fence that backed onto a grove of scrub pine, and through the trees for about seven hundred feet before emerging onto Chamberland Avenue. Cross Chamberland and Martin could be on any of the reservoir’s many footpaths in seconds, safely mixing in with the crowd until he reached his car.
But as this thought flashed in his mind, the unexpected voice repeated itself from the house. “Welcome home, sweetie pie! Welcome!” and it was this second greeting that had caused Martin to realize that the speaker was not human. Unnerved but feeling slightly more at ease (and frightfully exposed at the bottom of the Grants’ back steps), Martin quickly retrieved his pick gun, made sure that his hairnet and rubber moccasins were still in place, climbed the back steps again, and entered the home, bypassing standard procedures in favor of locating the source of the voice as quickly as possible.
Normally Martin would begin his first visit to a client’s home by mapping the entire house on a sheet of the graph paper that he carried in bulk on a clipboard. Beginning at the point of entry, he would work his way forward, step by step, room by room. Dimensions would be roughly estimated at first, rooms labeled, and large furniture drawn in as best he could, strictly observing his fifteen-minute time limit. A search for spare keys in the usual locations would also be conducted, and if time permitted (and it usually did, thanks to Martin’s efficiency), photographs of the refrigerator, pantry, and shelf contents would be taken. In subsequent visits Martin would catalog the contents of each room, begin a photographic study of the couple’s household supplies, and search for information that would eventually prove invaluable to his business. This would include inspecting checkbook registers, the contents of file cabinets, and files on the couple’s computer, if these files weren’t protected by passwords. More than three quarters of his clients’ computers were not password protected, and the information stored on these machines had helped Martin more than any shred of paper that he had ever found, particularly when the client kept financial information on the computer as well. With this information, Martin could often determine a client’s net worth, recent purchasing history, and occupation, if that had not yet been determined.
Eventually Martin would spend time examining photo albums, searching through boxes of old letters and greeting cards, and reading diaries (though sadly most of his clients kept no such written record of their lives). He watched his clients as they aged, celebrated holidays and anniversaries together, and