“Hey,” said Roger. “Any idea what’s going on around here?”

“Yes,” said the driver, with a smile and a curt nod. He had no idea what Roger was saying.

Two more turns brought them to Roger’s house. The driver popped the trunk and jumped out with Roger. The street was quiet, Roger’s house as dark as the rest.

“You know what? Wait here. Wait?” Roger pointed at the cobblestone curb. “Can you wait?”

“You pay.”

Roger nodded. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted him there. It had something to do with feeling very alone. “I have cash in the house. You wait. Okay?”

Roger left his luggage in the mudroom by the side entrance and moved into the kitchen, calling out, “Hello?” He reached for the light switch but nothing happened when he flipped it. He could see the microwave clock glowing green, so the power was still on. He felt his way forward along the counter, feeling for the third drawer and rooting around inside for the flashlight. He smelled something rotting, more pungent than leftovers moldering in the trash, heightening his anxiety and quickening his hand. He gripped the shaft of the flashlight and switched it on.

He swept the long kitchen with the beam, finding the island counter, the table beyond, the range and double oven. “Hello?” he called again, the fear in his voice shaming him, prompting him to move faster. He saw a dark spatter on the glass-front cabinets and trained his beam on what looked like the aftermath of a ketchup and mayonnaise fight. The mess brought a surge of anger. He saw the overturned chairs then, and dirty footprints (footprints?) on the center island granite.

Where was the housekeeper, Mrs. Guild? Where was Joan? Roger went closer to the spatter, bringing the light right up to the cabinet glass. The white stuff, he didn’t know—but the red was not ketchup. He couldn’t be certain…but he thought it might be blood.

He saw something moving in the reflection of the glass and whipped around with the flashlight. The back stairs behind him were empty. He realized he had just moved the cabinet door himself. He didn’t like his imagination taking over, and so ran upstairs, checking each room with the flashlight. “Keene? Audrey?” Inside Joan’s office, he found handwritten notes pertaining to the Regis Air flight. A timeline of sorts, though her penmanship failed over the last couple of incomprehensible sentences. The last word, scrawled in the bottom-right corner of the legal pad, read, “hummmmmm.”

In the master bedroom, the bedsheets were all kicked down, and inside the master bath, floating unflushed in the toilet, was what looked to him like curdled, days-old vomit. He picked a towel up off the floor and, letting it fall open, discovered dark clots of staining blood, as though the plush cotton had been used as a coughing rag.