By 4:30 we were finished with dinner, the dishwasher was loaded, and Beth was over with the Gordell sisters with her homework. By 4:50, I was on Philip Castler's street on the west side. The houses in the neighborhood were at least sixty years old, and looked it. Almost all of them were two stories, but the postage stamp lots had kept the value down, and developments of cheap cookie-cutter homes in the immediate area over the following decades had attracted low income families of various ethnicities. Whenever you heard about a shooting or some other gang violence on the radio, you expected to hear "on the west side" by the end of the sentence.
Across the street and two lots up was a vacant house for sale. I backed the car into the driveway just far enough that I could watch the Castler home around the untended hedge. The front of the house was about a year past repainting, and the lawn, while mown and green, was spackled with dandelions and broadleaf. A minivan was parked in a rutted-out section of lawn beside the empty carport. The interior lights were on downstairs, and it was still early enough in September that only the screen door was closed in the front. I could hear a television, and occasionally children's voices.
I left the radio on NPR and kept an eye on the house.
At 5:35, a ten-year-old Ford half-ton pickup pulled in under the carport. I turned off the radio. The driver was a man with thick black hair and a full black beard, dressed in workboots, Levi's and a denim workshirt rolled up to his hairy elbows. From the fact that I heard a young voice call him "Dad" when he walked through the screen door, I deduced that this was likely Philip Castler himself.
I watched the house as other carports filled up and down the block. Shadows lengthened.
Just after six-twenty, Philip Castler stepped outside again, this time with a girl younger than Beth skipping around his heels. Behind him came a woman around Castler's age with shoulder-cut tawny hair, and a skinny boy about twelve in soccer shorts and cleats. While Castler unlocked the minivan's side door to let the kids in, his wife flipped on the porchlight and locked the front door. Castler got behind the wheel, and the Castler family went out for a night on the town.
I locked my cell phone, Palm, and anything else unnecessary in my car and crossed the street. I had changed into black denim pants and a charcoal turtleneck, and my hair was ponytailed back and gelled to dull the blonde glint.
I didn't even stop at the front door; I could see the brass lock for the deadbolt above the doorknob. The back door was at the far end of the carport, and the truck blocked any view from the street. The only lock on that door was the one in the knob.
I glanced in the curtained window of the door. The kitchen was small, lit by the light coming from the front room. I stood on tiptoe and put my ear against the glass. The house was still.
I crouched beside the doorknob and pulled my locksmith's tools from my back pocket, the one thing I hadn't left behind in the car. The door was original to the house, and the lock was original to the door, so in under a minute I was in the kitchen, shutting the door quietly behind me. The dinner dishes were in the sink. The only doorway led to the living room, so I took it.
There's a sameness to living rooms, especially among those on subsistence budgets. Functional couch and chair, facing a TV newer than anything else in the room. A coffee table just the right distance from the couch for an adult male to prop his feet on it while resting his remote-holding hand on the arm of the couch. Carpet that held just a bit of everything ever spilled on it, no matter how well cleaned.
But the display of flags over the entertainment center wasn't typical: The stars and stripes, the Confederate flag, and the swastika surmounted by a stern-looking eagle. And most family rooms didn't have a framed portrait of Adolf Hitler bathed in a Christ-like aura, even in this neighborhood.
Well, it looked like I had the right address, anyway.
The living room opened onto the short hall that led to the front door. The other end of the hall went up a set of stairs. Opposite the living room was a catch-all room with a chest freezer; at the back of that, a doorway led into a laundry room, with a further door leading into a half-bath at the back of the house. From the layout, I judged that the functions of the rooms had been juggled several times since the house was first constructed.
The stairs creaked as I mounted them. At the top was a full bathroom with the only tub in the house. There were five towels on bars. I suppose the fifth could have been for Mrs. Castler's hair when she got out of the shower. Or not.
To either side of the staircase were two bedrooms. I decided to survey them first, then go back for a more thorough search. To the left, the first one was a little girl's room, complete with Barbie and her friends (though, I noted, none of her friends of color). The next was the master bedroom. His side of bed had a pair of beat-to-hell slippers on the floor and an ashtray on the bedside table; hers had a hairbrush and a Bible.
The first door to the right of the staircase smelled like the twelve-year-old boy. The walls were covered with posters of racecars and their drivers. It's the one sport that's predominantly and obviously white.
The fourth bedroom was the only one that was locked. Nothing attracts a curious private eye like a locked room, so I made quick work of the lock and went in.
From the looks of it, the last room was usually an unused guest room. There were no pictures on the wall, and boxes labeled "Christmas" were stacked in the open closet. But there was a half-full military-style duffel bag at the foot of the bed, there was a handful of receipts and pocket change on the dresser, and the bed was casually made. The unused guest room was being used.
I turned on the bedside lamp and started on the dresser. I didn't need to go far. The top drawer contained nothing but half a pack of gum, and a large rectangular object wrapped in a black garbage bag. I could smell the old leather covers before I got it out of the bag.
The warm brown leather was worn soft, with designed around the corners and the hint of a title once embossed on the front, now rubbed off. From the cover and the edges of the yellowed paper came that smell of history that only books older than your grandparents have, a rich smell of dust and old wood pulp. And, like all big books, it was a heavy sonofabitch.
So. Now I had Vielstich's book, right here in my hands. I was already committed a felony by coming in to take a look around. Should I commit another one by returning it to him? Even someone who breaks the law frequently should never get into the habit of doing so casually.
The debate suddenly became moot. The bedroom window faced the street, and just then I saw an old sedan pull up to the curb. A blond man in the passenger seat leapt out and looked straight up at the window.
Busted.
