Karen let out a dry, breathy chuckle that had no humor in it. “Call him.”
She held up the hand that wasn’t holding the utility knife, showing him empty, stained palms. “Call Sheriff Miller. Tell him I’m out here touching your porch. He’ll take twenty minutes to drive down the ridge, he’ll lean on his cruiser, and he’ll ask why you have a jumper tapped into the county easement.”
Frank looked down at the backplate in his palm. The three digits etched into the plastic—4-0-9—were rough at the margins, melted in with the fine tip of a soldering gun. Right beside the score, where the rubber insulation met the bracket, was a thread of bare silver wire, thin as fishing line, that had never come out of a retail package. It ran parallel to the copper pair, vanishing into a second, hairline drill-hole tucked behind the siding’s lower lip.
She saw him notice it. Her hand stopped fidgeting with the knife.
“You didn’t install this, did you?” Karen murmured. The sharp, abrasive armor of her voice cracked open, revealing something hollow and worn thin beneath it. “You had some kid from the strip mall do it after the break-ins on North Ridge.”
“I do my own work,” Frank lied. His voice didn’t waver, but his fingers slipped an eighth of an inch against the tacky silicone.
“Then you know where that silver trace leads,” she said, pointing the knife’s brass butt down toward the porch skirting, where the weathered lattice met the hard-packed red clay and the overgrown roots of the boxwoods. “Because it doesn’t go to your chime, Frank. And it’s not pointing toward the road.”
CHAPTER 3
Frank didn’t drop the bell housing. He closed his fingers around it, letting the sharp mold-seams bite into his palm, and walked down the three porch steps.
The heat was thicker down on the red gravel, caught in the stagnant pocket between the cedar skirt and the thick, waxy hedge of overgrown boxwoods. His knee gave off its familiar, dry crunch as he crouched, the gravel grinding beneath the tread of his work boots. The smell down here was different—no baked paint, just sour dirt, decaying mulch, and the metallic tang of oxidized galvanized iron where the downspout discharged into the ditch.
Karen followed, her canvas sneakers crunching lightly behind him. She didn’t offer to help, and she didn’t leave. Her shadow fell long across the dirt, stretching past Frank’s shoulder until it touched the wooden lattice panels protecting the crawl space.
“Second bay from the corner,” she said, her voice dropping into the hedge line. “Under the cleat.”
Frank didn’t answer. He took his pocketknife out of his trouser pocket, thumbing open the short, curved sheepfoot blade with a heavy click. The brass liners were worn down from thirty years of pocket lint and oil, but the steel still had an edge that could shave pine. He slid the flat of the steel under the lower trim strip of the lattice, levering it back just enough to pop two rusted brads from the framing.
The wood parted with a sound like a dry branch snapping underfoot.