Selling H & R Block tax services and then doughnuts, the radio voices bounced with enthusiasm down the stairs. The killer had it cranked up too loud; the volume level seemed wrong to Chyna, as if he was trying to mask other sounds.
There was another sound, similar to but different from the rain, and after a moment she recognized it. A shower.
That was why he had set the radio so loud. He was listening to the music while taking a shower.
She was in luck. As long as the killer was in the shower, she could search for Ariel without the risk of being discovered.
Chyna hurriedly crossed the front room to a half-open door, went through, and found a kitchen. Canary-yellow ceramic tile with knotty-pine cabinets. On the floor, gray vinyl tile speckled with yellow and green and red. Well scrubbed. Everything in its place.
She was soaked, rain dripping off her hair and still seeping from her jeans onto the clean floor.
Taped to the side of the refrigerator was a calendar already turned forward to April, with a color photograph that showed one white and one black kitten—both with dazzling green eyes—peering out from a huge spray of lilies.
The normality of the house terrified her: the gleaming surfaces, the tidiness, the homey touches, the sense that a person lived here who might walk in daylight on any street and pass for human in spite of the atrocities that he had committed.
Don’t think about it.
Keep moving. Safety in movement.
She went past the rear door. Through the four glass panes in the upper half, she saw a back porch, a green yard, a couple of big trees, and the barn.
Without any architectural division, the kitchen opened into the dining area, and the combined space was probably two-thirds the width of the house. The round dinette table was dark pine, supported by a thick central drum rather than legs; the four heavy pine captain’s chairs featured tie-on back and seat cushions.
Upstairs, the music started again, but it was softer in the kitchen than in the front room. If she had been an aficionado of big-band music, however, she would have been able to recognize the tune from here.
The noise of the running shower was more apparent in the kitchen than in the living room, because the pipes were channeled through the rear wall of the old house. Water being drawn upward to the bathroom made an urgent, hollow rushing sound through copper. Furthermore, the pipe wasn’t tied down and insulated as well as it ought to have been, and at some point along its course, it vibrated against a wall stud: rapid knocking behind plasterboard, tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta-tatta.
If that noise abruptly stopped, she would know that her safe time in the house was limited. In the subsequent silence, she could count on no more than a minute or two of grace while he toweled off. Thereafter he might show up anywhere.
Chyna looked around for a telephone but saw only a wall jack into which one could be plugged. If there had been a phone, she might have paused to call 911, supposing there was 911 service out here in… well, wherever the hell they were—these boondocks. Knowing that help was on the way would have made the remainder of the search less nerve-racking.
At the north end of the dining area was another door. Although the killer was in the shower upstairs, she turned the knob as quietly as she could and crossed the threshold with caution.
Beyond lay a combination laundry and storage room. A washer. An electric dryer. Boxes and bottles of laundry supplies were stored in an orderly fashion on two open shelves, and the air smelled like detergent and bleach.
The rush of water and the knocking pipe were even louder here than they had been in the kitchen.
To the left, past the washer and dryer, was another door—rough pine, painted lime green. She opened it and saw stairs leading down to a black cellar, and her heart began to beat faster.
“Ariel, she said softly, but there was no answer, because she had spoken more to herself than to the girl.