The Bone House - Brian Freeman [103]
'OK,' Hilary said. 'If I make the ferry, it'll still take me a couple hours to get there. In the meantime, don't do anything, OK? Just wait for me.'
'Call me when you're getting close,' Katie said.
Hilary hung up. She glanced at the foreboding sky and realized she'd be driving into heavy rain as she neared Green Bay. A wicked storm was coming. She turned the car around and accelerated toward the ferry harbor. As she drove, she punched the speed dial for Mark's number. The phone was already ringing when she remembered the message he'd left on their answering machine.
He'd lost his phone.
She was about to hang up when someone answered on Mark's line. It wasn't Mark.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Six
Cab found the dead end at Peter Hoffman's house and followed the edge of the dirt driveway toward the house. He brushed past tree branches, and his black shoes sank into mossy ground. He noticed boot prints in the mud of the driveway; someone else had come and gone recently. The house was situated in a clearing that had been carved out of the woods, in the middle of a lawn littered with leaves, acorns, and branches. The log beams of the building glistened. Steam from the furnace spewed out like smoke from a pipe through a white exhaust vent. Behind the house, where the woods began again, Cab could see a glimmer of the blue water beyond the cliff.
He noticed something else, too. From the woods at the rear, a second set of footprints made impressions in the long grass leading toward the back door.
Two visitors. One in front, one in back.
Cab approached the porch warily. He saw tools strewn across the floor and patches of sawdust. The front door was closed. He climbed the steps, but he couldn't see inside, because the drapes were closed across the windows.
He rang the bell. When no one answered, he pounded loudly.
'Mr Hoffman!' he called. 'It's Cab Bolton.'
There was no response from inside.
Cab nudged the door with his shoulder. When it didn't open, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully twisted the knob. The door was locked. He stood on the porch, hands in his pockets, and surveyed the yard. To his left, beyond the house, he saw a detached garage. The door was open; a car was parked inside. Rutted tracks led in and out, but they didn't look recent. Hoffman hadn't driven anywhere today.
His gut sounded an alarm. He reached inside his coat and extracted his service Glock, which he cradled loosely in his hand. He descended the steps and followed the house to the rear, noting the footsteps in the grass, which were mostly indistinguishable, with no visible tread marks. The rear door of the house was ajar. Beyond the door, the frame of the roof angled upward, and huge windows looked out on the water. In the yard, he saw a lonely deckchair beneath the shade of a mammoth oak tree, near the sharp drop-off to the shore. In the stretch of gray-blue on the horizon, he spotted a dot of white where a ferry cruised through the passage toward Washington Island.
Cab approached the open door and called again. 'Mr Hoffman!'
The door led into the dinette area of the kitchen. At the doorway, he stepped out of his loafers and crossed the threshold in black socks. He was near a butcher block table placed in front of the windows. The kitchen was on his right. The house was warm, and in the shut- up space, he smelled the metallic smoke of gunpowder. Above it was something fetid, a dead smell of excrement and blood.
Cab swore under his breath.
He followed the hallway toward the front of the house, passing doors for two bedrooms on his right and stairs to a loft. At the end of the hallway, the house opened up into a large living room with a high ceiling. He saw the body lying halfway