He spotted a mailbox with GUNTNER written on the side in slanted peel-and-stick letters, the type you could get at Home Depot. The house was white with a black roof, a porch wrapped around two sides of the structure. About twenty yards beyond the house was a barn that, while not about to collapse, had seen better days. The once red sideboards were mostly gray, and the roof was sagging in the middle. Duckworth wondered whether it would survive a winter of heavy snow.

He parked the car close to the porch steps and mounted them to the front door. Mike had said he believed Dolores lived in the house alone, now that her parents were in a nursing home. But that didn’t mean someone might not be here.

Duckworth rang the bell. When no one came after ten seconds, he leaned on the button a second time. Again, no response.

He tried the door and found it locked. He peered through the window, saw what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary living room. Couch, comfy chairs, a television. He went down the porch steps and slowly walked down the side of the house, rounded the corner, and went up two steps to a back door. He peered through the window into a kitchen that didn’t look as though it had been updated since JFK was in short pants.

He turned the doorknob, and while the place was locked, there was some play in it. He tried again, this time putting his shoulder into it, and the door swung open.

There were no beeps, so no security system.

“Hello!” he called out. “Anyone home?”

He waited a moment. Then, “This is the police! Detective Barry Duckworth with the Promise Falls Police!”

Nothing.

He went through the house slowly, starting with the first floor. He wanted to check recent incoming and outgoing calls, but while there were wall jacks, there were no phones to be found. Duckworth guessed that after her parents went into the home, Dolores Guntner, like so many of her generation, canceled the service and relied strictly on a cell phone.

The kitchen, dining and living rooms didn’t turn up anything that caught his immediate attention. He went into the basement first, but like many farmhouses along this stretch of road, it was a far cry from a rec room with a pool table and a minibar. The floor was dirt, the ceiling exposed beams that he had to be careful not to bump his head on. Light was by way of a couple of exposed bulbs.

Duckworth peered behind old boxes and piles of junk and failed to spot anything that raised any alarms. He had his doubts anyone had been down here in a long time, except possibly to service the furnace.

He came back up to the first floor, then went up the stairs to the second.