The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [72]
We sat behind the garbage cans for a few minutes and just watched the place. Everything was still. I had a few basic questions I wanted answers to, but I wasn’t really there for anything specific. Basically, I was looking for anything, anything at all that might help me get out of this mess.
We approached the gate to the side of the house, Tyrell in the lead. He moved so quickly and quietly that I could have sworn his feet were floating just above the grass. The gate was solid wood and rose just higher than my head. I grabbed the top and pulled myself up just high enough to see into the backyard.
The grass was yellow, long, and weedy. There was a shed in the back corner. Next to that was a small doghouse with a sleeping pit bull inside of it. That would not exactly be helpful when trying to check out the place, but we’d deal with that later. Tyrell had also pulled himself up, and I gave him a look as he dropped beside me.
He shook his head and whispered, “Don’t worry. The dog won’t be a problem.”
I wasn’t sure how he could be so confident, but I trusted that he knew what he was doing.
The first thing I needed to know was whether Staples had parents that we had to worry about. Whether the house was truly empty right now or not. I tapped Tyrell and motioned for him to follow me toward the porch.
We moved around to the front of the house and crept up the steps. They creaked under our feet. Tyrell stayed back to watch the street while I approached the front door. I heard Staples’s dog start barking in the backyard.
Their mailbox hung next to the front door. It was the kind that’s just like a huge 3-D metal envelope stuck to the house. I lifted the flap and flinched a little when it creaked loudly.
The mailbox had a magazine and a few letters in it. One was an energy bill—I could tell because the envelope had the local energy company’s logo on it. There was a Final Notice stamp on the front. I looked through the clear plastic on the envelope; it was addressed to Jonah Larsen. I wasn’t sure what to make of that quite yet. The other letters were also addressed to Jonah Larsen. One of them was from a place called Ahmed Collections. Another was from the IRS, which was a pretty evil tax organization, based on what I’d gathered from movies and TV shows.
Then I looked at the magazine, which was addressed to Barry Larsen. It was called Ink and Ammo. On the cover it had a ridiculous picture of this shirtless guy with rippling muscles and tons of tattoos shooting a gigantic machine gun. The caption read, “Inside: 10 Secrets to Showing Off Your Guns.”
I figured that Jonah was either Staples’s dad or older brother. I put the mail back into the metal box and walked over to a dirty window a few feet away. It was overcast that day but still bright, and the light kept me from seeing inside, so I cupped my hands around my eyes and pressed my face up against the dirty glass. The inside was a disaster. There were dirty clothes and empty pizza boxes everywhere. Near a ratty orange couch, there was even a pile of dog poop that looked like it had been there since the 1880s. But it was what was on the couch that shocked me most.
It was an old guy. He was wearing only gray sweatpants and a single black sock. And he was lying on his back with one leg dangling over the back of the couch. His face was sweaty and unshaven and he was clearly sleeping, possibly in a deep coma. It was a pretty gross sight. There were empty cans scattered all across the guy’s living room. Some of them were crushed flat, but I doubted that was because they were going to get recycled.
It was the same guy who Vince and I had seen out at the lake cabin. Staples’s dad, I was sure of it. So that red car had been the same car after all, and that lady must have been Staples’s dad’s girlfriend or something like that. I remembered then what she had said about his son paying his bills. So that’s what Staples did with all the money he made after all.
It explained a lot. Staples was essentially doing the same thing Vince claimed to be doing for his mom.