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“Well, let’s have a look around.”
“You think you’re going to get lucky enough to come across two unlocked doors into suspects’ homes on a single case?”
He shrugged and reached across to the passenger side, unclasping the glovebox cover. When it fell open, he fidgeted around inside and grabbed the small lock-pick set.
“Are you sure about this, Jack?” She knew—as she was sure Jack did, as well—that without strict probable cause, it would be considered illegal to just pick Dickerson’s lock and head inside. While they both felt there was more than enough reason to force their way inside, a court and jury (and likely Anderson) may not be so agreeable.
“I am,” he said. “We need answers quikcly because, quite frankly, I can’t keep you out much longer. And I know you’re going to whine and complain if I suggest I take you home before weknowwe have our killer.”
“Well, you’re right about that,” she said with a grin.
They walked to the front door of the single-story house. The vinyl siding was white but dingy and more of a beige color in some areas. Just for the sake of follow-through and protocol, Jack knocked on the door. When there was no answer after ten seconds, he did it again. Still, there was no answer.
“Well, we tried,” he said as he started taking the tools out of the lock-pickingkit.
As Jack worked at the lock, Rachel turned her back to the door and looked around at the neighboring yards and houses. There weren't many cars along the sides of the streets and no activity at all in any of the yards. It was a quiet neighborhood, and she felt safe in assuming that even if a nosy neighbor did happen to see what they were doing, no one was going to kick up much of a fuss about it.
It took less than twenty seconds for Jack to unlock the door. He opened it up, and without a word exchanged between them, they stepped inside.
The house felt stale and would be considered by some to be a bit of a mess. The front door opened up onto a living room that held a couch, one armchair, and a small flat-screen TV mounted to the wall. A pair of well-worn boots sat beside the armchair, and the coffee table in front of the couch was littered with an empty pizza box, a baseball cap, and random little pieces of trash.
From the living room, they stepped into the kitchen. It was at this point that Jack called out to see if anyone was home.“Mr. Dickerson? Are you home? Anyone here?”
Rachel could tell right away that they were the only ones in the house. It was the way that Jack's words fell flat as he walked into the kitchen. A slight stink reached her nostrils as she closed in on the sink and counter. She saw several dirty dishes, some smeared with what looked like ketchup or spaghetti sauce. A few gnats drifted above it all, and a fly buzzed in annoyance as the humans passed by. She wrinkled up her nose as she studied the plates. Whatever the sauce on the plates was, it had congealed to the point of drying.
Working a hunch, she walked to the refrigerator and opened it up. She found the crisper drawer pretty much empty, aside from a small crate of cherry tomatoes. Most of them had gone soft and to the point of wrinkling. She then looked at the milk carton and saw that the expiration date had passed three days ago.
“I think he’s been gone for a while,” she said as she closed the fridge.
Jack had walked into the bathroom that sat just to the right of the kitchen’s entrance. He poked his head out of the doorway and waved Rachel over. “Hey… check this out.”
She joined him in the restroom and saw the hole in the wall right away. In fact, she was pretty sure therewere two of them. While it was pure speculation, she guessed they were just about the right size to have been created by a fist. When she turned to comment on this, she saw that Jack was looking at something else.
She followed his eyes to the floor and saw a small pile of dirty clotheslying in the space between the edge of the sink and the toilet. There was a single pair of jeans and two shirts. Both shirts were black, but one of them was clearly covered in something. Rachel extended her foot out to uncrumple the shirt, and the stains on it became more apparent.
“Blood… and lots of it.”
“Look here,” Jack said, hunkering down by the tub. “Everything else in the house suggests he hasn’t been here in a while. But that—”
He was pointing to the two bars of soap sitting on the edge of the tub. They were worn down slightly and recently used. One was white—Ivory soap, Rachel assumed—and stained pink with blood. A fine, barely noticeable residue in the bottom of the tub suggested that another, stronger cleaning agent had been used at some point.
“What if he’s only coming here to clean up?” she suggested.
“Yeah, that could be it. And I think this is more than enough to kick this thing into a higher gear.” He pulled out his phone and punched in a number. As he started speaking to someone at the bureau, Rachel listened in as she started looking throughout the remainder of the house.
She walked into the bedroom—one of only two rooms aside from the bathroom—as Jack requested everything the bureau had on James Dickerson. He put an urgent request in for a license plate so they could get car information and put out an APB. As he hurriedly went through all of this, Rachel looked the bedroom over. The bed was perfectly made, and the room itself was very clean. It had the same barely-used and almost stale feeling the rest of the house gave off. She made her way over to the closet, which was already partially open.
It was a bit of a mess inside. A few piles of clothes wereon the floor, while some hung loosely from wire hangers. It was not a walk-on closet by any means. It wasn’t even big enough for Rachel to step inside. But she did see the two stacks of boxes at the top of the closet, along with several file folders that looked stuffed.
She took them all down and set them out on the bed. She checked the boxes first. There were five of them, and they were all Amazon boxes of roughly the same size. The first one she checked was completely empty, which seemed odd. The second one contained a few books that looked to be relatively new. There were three of them, all on the topic of coping with cancer. She opened the third one just as Jack finished up his call and came into the room behind her.
The third box was filled with old adult magazines. She even found an old VHS tape, something she legitimately hadn’t seen in a few years. She could only assume it contained material of the sort that filled the pages of the magazines in the same box.
“Anything?” Jack asked. “Not yet.”
She finished looking through the boxes, finding a random assortment of trinkets—things she assumed James Dickerson had held onto over the years as trinkets from his life. The more interesting items were what looked like an old wedding band, a Joe Namath rookie card in a plastic sleeve, and an old, wrinkled map and brochure from Disney World.
Rachel nearly shoved the box away. The Disney World paraphernalia almost felt like a slap in the face. Pictures of her finally taking Paige flashed through her mind—something she fully intended to do if she was able. Knowing that this was yet another link between her and Dickerson (as if the damned tumor wasn’t enough) felt like a personal attack. She knew it was ridiculous to feel such a thing, but there it was.
