Chapter 10: The Intruder

Cane moved like a startled leopard.

He pushed Lila down behind a box and, barehanded, crept step by step up the wall toward the stairs. Behind him, Lila heard her own heart hammering.

From the kitchen above came the sound of things being moved—quiet, urgent.

Cane planted himself at the stairwell, took a deep breath, and charged up.

Lila heard scuffling, a muffled grunt, the crash of a door kicked open. She climbed up. The back door stood wide, the wind whipping the curtains like a flag. Cane stood in the doorway, half in the rain, clutching something.

It was a black rubber boot. Size twelve.

The intruder had lost a shoe in his escape.

“You okay?” Cane looked back at her. His lip was split, bleeding.

Lila shook her head, but her eyes were fixed on the boot. She was a forensic artist; her eyes were sharper than most. She saw something dark-red embedded in the tread, mixed with fine sand.

“Wait.” She crouched and pulled tweezers and evidence bags from her bag—tools of her trade, carried everywhere.

She carefully scraped that dark-red something from the sole.

“Is that blood?” Cane’s voice tightened.

“Not sure yet.” Lila held the bag up to the light. “But it’s not rust. It’s scraped from sand where something was buried. Blood mixed with mud.”

She paused, looked up at him: “This boot has to go to a lab.”

“Go where?” Cane gave a bitter laugh. “The only forensic examiner in town is the sheriff’s brother-in-law.”

They looked at each other.

Lila spoke first: “I have a classmate at Portland University. She does forensic evidence. I can mail it to her.”

“Mail?” Cane shook his head. “The town postmaster is the sheriff’s own cousin. Whatever you mail today, he knows by tomorrow.”

“Then what?”

Cane looked at her and made a decision: “I drive to Portland every Wednesday to drop off rescue-squad gear. I’ll carry it myself.”

Lila looked at him. This man, who that same day had held up her bag and told her to get lost, now stood in the doorway of his own burgled home, lip bleeding, offering to hand-deliver evidence for her.

“Why?” she asked softly.

Cane didn’t answer. He bent, picked up the boot, dropped it in an evidence bag, hands steady.

“Because the thing I didn’t dare do twenty years ago,” he said to her back, “I don’t want to drag through another twenty.”

He paused, then added, very softly:

“And I don’t want you to become the sixth photo on that wall.”