American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,83

before.”

“I really do not like being sent into anything blind,” she said to him. “If I wind up hurting someone doing this, I will be fucking mad.”

But it’s what he said just after this that really got to her, Mona thinks as she begins sliding down the slope, grasping rocks and roots to slow her descent. For Parson just smiled, and said, “If it is any consolation, if you find anything within the house I doubt you would be able to hurt it at all.”

She comes to the base of the cliff and squats there, listening. She can hear no one nearby, nor can she see anyone. The fence of Weringer’s backyard starts just ahead. It’s made (of course) of perfect white pickets, but the advantage to this is that they have significant gaps between them, so she can see quite a bit of the house and the yard on the other side. The house is utterly dark and still, the yard totally disorganized but with plenty of cover.

Mona sighs a little, and, mentally kicking herself every step of the way, runs up and hops the fence.

She feels as if she’s just broken some solemn rule when she crests the top of the fence and lands on the ground on the other side. She looks around at the dark, quiet yard. It is overgrown with leafy brush, and an unpruned cottonwood leans drunkenly toward the house as if about to impart an impolite secret. She remembers what Parson said:

“What you are looking for is something that will not belong there at all. It will be a key, but not just any key: it will be a large, technical-looking key, like a key for some rare and extremely dangerous piece of equipment. Which it is, in a way. It will be unusually long and have many, many teeth, and its head will be striped yellow and black. And I expect that, if it is still there, Weringer will have attempted to hide it very, very well.”

“And what is this key to?” Mona asked.

“A place,” said Parson. “A place that has answers for you, and me.”

Answers for you and me, Mona thinks as she makes her way to the back door. She kneels and produces her lockpicks, and grasps the knob as she examines the lock. It’s as she reaches for the right pick that she twists the knob a little bit, and is surprised to find it gives.

She twists the knob all the way and gives the door a little push. It falls open.

Well, she thinks, that makes things a lot easier.

She slips inside and shuts the door behind her. She turns on her flashlight and sees she’s in the kitchen, and it’s done in that nauseating sort of faux French country that requires lots of rustic chicken decorations. A genuine Kit-Cat Klock hangs on one wall, tail at an angle, eyes suspiciously at one side. Mona’s about to start forward when she hears something: there’s a song being played somewhere in the house.

She calms herself, and prowls forward through the rooms, all of which are a little shabby but quaint. The song is coming from an ancient-looking record player, which, defying all logic, is playing twenty seconds of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” over and over again. Mona flashes the room with her light, sees no one, and approaches.

Immediately she spots the signs of a struggle. She can see where the couch has been moved, its clawed feet out of place with the years-old indentations in the green shag carpet. She’s guessing someone bumped it, and bumped the record player in the process, which is why it’s stuck on repeat. It must have been playing this section of song for weeks, over and over again. Mona debates turning it off, but if there is someone else here (and there won’t be, she tells herself, but if there is) then whoever it is, they’ll definitely know they’re not alone if the music stops. So as much as it sets her teeth on edge, she lets it keep playing.

She begins searching for this key of Weringer’s. She’s not sure why Parson talked up the interior of this house so much, because to Mona it’s just another old-man house, and she’s been in plenty of those, mostly when the neighbors called the police because they hadn’t seen Mr. So-and-So in a while and could they please send someone out to check on him. And often she did find him, sometimes