“Hello?” I call out. “Hello!”

No one answers.

“Marino?”

I look around, standing perfectly still, listening. The house is silent, just the incessant noise of flies. They crawl over blood and circle sluggishly like tiny spotter planes looking for the putrefying wounds and orifices, the rotting flesh where they laid their eggs. Their buzzing sounds angry and predatory, as if they’ve been robbed of their unborn babies and denied a carcass, a food supply that was rightfully theirs. The flies seem louder even though there are fewer of them, and the stench seems just as strong with the body gone but that’s not possible.

My senses are on high alert, in overdrive and the same sensation drifts over me like a noxious vapor. I feel a presence. I feel something evil and curdled inside this house and then I think about what Marino said. Chanel Gilbert was into occult shit, and I don’t know what he meant. Maybe she consorted with the dark side, assuming there really is anything to that, and I remind myself it’s understandable if I’m feeling spied on because Lucy was. I just witnessed it.

“Marino?” I try again. “Marino are you here? Hello?”

I ENVISION THE door that leads down to a basement where I’ve not yet been.

I’ve not had the chance to search the house but I’m fairly sure that the door is off the kitchen, which is how I entered when I first got here. I came in the same way the housekeeper had earlier, and I remember noticing the closed door opposite the pantry. It occurred to me it led down into what likely was a laundry area, a cellar, possibly a kitchen for the household staff in centuries past.

I listen carefully and have waited long enough. I’m about to go look for Marino when I hear footsteps again, big heavy ones. I stay where I am and listen as they get closer. Then I see him near the staircase.

“Thank God,” I mutter.

“What’s the matter?” He walks into the foyer and his eyes instantly find the blue luminescent shapes on the floor. “What’ve we got here?”

“Someone may have tampered with the scene.”

“Yeah I’m seeing something. I don’t know what but something. Good idea to spray it down just to be on the safe side.”

“I thought you’d vanished.”

“I checked the basement and there’s no sign of anybody,” Marino says as he looks at the blue luminescence from different angles. “But the door that leads outside? It was unlocked and I know I locked it after I looked around earlier.”

“Maybe one of the other cops did it?”