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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2021 by Joseph Schneider

  Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

  Cover design by The Book Designers

  Cover images © Evgeniya Porechenskaya/Shutterstock, logoboom/Shutterstock

  Internal design by Holli Roach/Sourcebooks

  Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue: January

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Epilogue: January

  Excerpt from One Day You’ll Burn

  1

  Reading Group Guide

  A Conversation with the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For Anna, my best friend

  and partner in all things.

  Prologue: January

  The nightmare descended on a Tuesday.

  Dispatch was fully staffed, since Tuesdays were always busy. Tuesdays and full moons. The full moons made a kind of sense, since they brought with them enough ambient light to allow for more outdoor activity, and more outdoor activity meant more crime. But no one had a theory for Tuesdays; they were just heavy, always heavy.

  On the night of the fifth, as the hours ground by, dispatch crackled with armed robberies, smash-and-grabs, assaults, disorderlies, and the regular, mantra-like calls of “deuce”—for the DUI scanner code 23152. And then, amid the noise, came an almost apologetic request for a welfare check.

  Welfare checks were usually called in for seniors living alone, often by a relative who hadn’t been able to make contact, and generally ended with the discovery of a body, a call to EMS, and an hour of routine paperwork. The pair of responding officers expected much the same. Then they learned that it wasn’t just Bill Lauterbach who couldn’t be reached, but his wife, Joanne, as well. The couple had a landline and a shared cell phone, and their daughter had been trying to get hold of them for two days. She was about to buy a plane ticket and fly down from San Jose to see what was going on.

  At the wheel of the radio car was Evan Porter, his badge still foreign against his chest in the month since graduation. Riding shotgun was Melissa Banning, his training officer and a rising star in patrol. She’d already been promoted to sergeant, and wasn’t even out of her twenties. Porter was older, but he was an ex-marine, and command expected him to be a major asset to the force. He was a big man, six-two and two-twenty, with alert, searching eyes, thin lips, and a sharp, beak-like nose. He was, Banning had thought, the perfect trainee—respectful, calm, and already an expert with the radio codes. But then a week earlier she’d been halfway out of the restroom when Porter, not seeing her, passed by in low conversation with another rookie.

  “I’d fuck her, bite her, choke her out, whatever.”

  His friend chuckled, and the two drifted out of earshot.

  Banning hadn’t known whom or what Porter was talking about, but the words haunted her. Mostly it was the easy way he’d said them, like describing the best way to cook a steak, like it was something he’d done a thousand times. Thinking of it always conjured a chill, and her revulsion toward Porter only grew when she realized that maybe they’d been talking about her. And now that the idea had twisted its way in, she could hardly meet his eyes—not out of fear, but because she was sure he’d see how much he disgusted her.

  Their deployments were stiff and formal, the small talk they’d enjoyed those first couple weeks long gone. Each night they drove along, wanly lit by the instrument panel and dashboard computer, Porter restlessly scanning the view through the windshield. Every so often he’d spot something—an expired tag or an illegal left or a failure to signal—and murmur “So what’s this.” For her part, Banning only spoke to give an instruction or a correction, and Porter’s responses rarely extended beyond “Yes, ma’am.” What was more unsettling than the long silences, however, was how little Porter seemed to mind them. Sometimes she wondered if he even noticed the change in their relationship.

  “Request for a welfare check at 1320 Hollyridge Loop. Any units available?” The voice on the other end of dispatch was androgynous and flat. It would’ve maintained the same disinterested tone if it were announcing a virgin sacrifice atop the Bradbury Building.

  Porter responded immediately. “6-Adam-9, go ahead.”

  “Caller advises hasn’t been able to reach parents in forty-eight hours. Parents are elderly.”

  “Roger, on our way.”

  “Copy. Proceed Code 2.”

  Banning checked the time. Nearly eleven, the night just getting warmed up. At least a welfare check would get her out of the car for a while. All the same, it annoyed her that Porter had taken the call without consulting her.

  “Next time, weigh in with me first,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t spare her a glance.

  It had rained all week, and the gentle hills above Franklin were sodden. Puddles stood every few feet along the old, pocked road, and trees groaned under their own engorged weight. When Banning and Porter stepped out at the Lauterbach residence, the world around them was alive with water. It rushed past their feet into storm drains, dripped from the leaves of overhanging palms, and filled the air itself in the January chill.

  Banning felt a dampness on her skin and glanced up at a streetlamp, where she saw a light mist dancing in the beam. There was something else there, too, tucked in the elbow bend where the lamp arched away from the pole. She squinted, and was able to make out a fat spider’s egg. It might’ve been her imagination, or the work of a mild breeze, but it seemed to tremble as it hung there in its ragged web.

  “Ma’am?”

  Banning st
arted. She turned and saw that Porter had snuck up close behind her. Had he done that on purpose? She studied him for any hint of mischief, but his face was unreadable. Just that same assured calm he always wore.

  “What?”

  “Should I call in our location?”

  “Why’re you asking me?”

  Porter blinked. “You asked me to check in with you from now on.”

  “Not about every little thing.”

  Porter touched the shoulder mic of his ROVER. “6-Adam-9. Show us Code 6 at the Hollyridge Loop address.”

  “6-Adam-9, 10-4,” the radio crackled back.

  The house was a Tudor Revival cottage—timber-framed, with a faux-thatched roof and a wide redbrick chimney sweeping up the left gable wall. Two dormer windows protruded from above and to either side of the front door, so that the house seemed to bear an expression of surprise, but the diamond-shaped panes that stared out from their lead casings were dark. No light glimmered within.

  Banning stepped through the wrought-iron arbor that marked the boundary between the sidewalk and the Lauterbach property, passing the beam of her Maglite across the yard and over the ground-floor windows. No doors ajar, no broken glass, no foot-sized depressions in the spongy mulch. The two officers followed the curving flagstone path to the covered entryway, where a note taped to the doorbell advised “Out of order—please knock firmly.” The cursive handwriting was done with the studied elegance of a schoolteacher.

  It would be difficult not to knock firmly, Banning saw. The brass griffin and the knocker hanging from its beak were oversized, absurd, a conspicuous misstep in design. She gripped the ring, which felt much colder than she’d expected, and brought it down three times on the striking plate.

  She winced. The sound was terrific, sharp and penetrating. Banning listened, holding her breath, but the gurgling of the wet night made it impossible to tell if anyone stirred within. She counted to thirty, then knocked again.

  “LAPD,” she called. “Everyone okay in there?”

  Thirty more seconds.

  Nothing.

  Porter was a head taller, so Banning had to look up at him. “Go check out the windows ’round the house. Shine your light in there and see what you can see.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He turned to go, and Banning heard him murmur, “Yes, ma’am,” again. That smacked of insubordination, but of the kind that was almost impossible to prove. The kind that made you seem paranoid and overly sensitive for reporting it. Well, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it. She’d figure out a way to tease out his true colors, show himself for the toxic, misogynistic asshole he was.

  She reached again for the knocker, then paused, fingertips brushing the icy metal. A thought had broken the surface of her consciousness, shone its pale belly, then vanished again. What was it? She tried summoning it back, but couldn’t. It had been a disturbing thought—yes, even terrifying, and perhaps also an important one. Maybe if she let go of the knocker, then reached for it again…

  When her hand seized the griffin’s ring, the thought returned, whole and immense—a fanged, venomous leviathan caught full in a lantern’s glare.

  The thought was this: Don’t knock, or you might wake it up.

  With effort, she pushed it away. It was silly, childish. She was a trained law-enforcement professional, and if there was anything behind that door besides two dead senior citizens, it certainly wouldn’t be any match for her Glock 36.

  She slammed the knocker against the plate five times in quick succession.

  Now you’ve done it. It’s on its way.

  “LAPD,” she said. “Mr. and Mrs. Lauterbach? Hello?”

  “Sergeant Banning.”

  She spun, hand on her sidearm, and saw Porter had managed to creep up on her again. I’m gonna make him wear a bell, she thought.

  “What is it, Porter?”

  “I think…” He let his voice trail off, then cleared his throat. “I don’t know. Something. ’Round back.”

  He turned, stepping out of sight, and Banning followed. She looked toward the street, where the spinning red and blue lights of their squad car had attracted a few curious neighbors. A hulking man in a brown silk bathrobe stepped through the arbor.

  Banning skewered him with the beam of her Maglite. “S’cuse me, sir—I’m gonna need you to stay off the property right now.”

  “Jeez, wow. Shit.” He retreated, lifting his arm to shield his eyes from the piercing light—an oversized Dracula fending off a crucifix.

  Along the side of the house grew a forest of blackberry bushes, and the officers had to pick their way along, backs against the flimsy wooden fence separating the Lauterbach lot from the neighbor’s yard. The plants were wet, and their thorns sought out Banning’s sleeves and pant legs. She emerged damp and covered in scratches; one, on the back of her right hand, felt like a streak of fire.

  She looked around for Porter, but couldn’t see him at first. The backyard was big, and for some reason he’d turned off his Maglite.

  “Here.” His voice was low, almost a whisper. She splashed her beam toward his voice and found him standing at one of the windows. He squinted, and she pointed the light at the ground as she approached.

  “What is it?”

  “In there.” He pointed. The window ledge began at his shoulders, so it was easy for him to see inside. Banning would need to stand on something.

  Porter seemed to understand the problem. “If you want, I can—”

  “No. Thank you.”

  She searched the area, and found a large, yellow watering can tucked amid some rosebushes. She picked it up, hefted it. It was metal, not plastic, so that was good. She put it in position, held the Maglite between her teeth and, gripping the ledge above her, carefully stepped up onto the can.

  The two hundred lumens reflecting back at her made it impossible to see through the glass, so she steadied herself as much as she could with her left hand and took the flashlight with her right. The can rocked under her weight, then steadied. Directing the beam at an angle, she could now make out the living room. A fireplace, liquor cabinet, two heavy sofas on either side of a coffee table. Past that, a pair of double doors opened onto the foyer, where a flight of stairs marched steeply upward. Nothing unusual at all, not that she could see.

  “What is it? I don’t—”

  “There.”

  Porter’s finger insinuated itself into view. “Right there, up toward the top of the stairs.”

  Banning began moving the light up the staircase one riser at a time.

  “Toward the top, I said.”

  “I heard you—can you shut up please?”

  Halfway up was a small landing, and from there the stairs cut rightward at a sharp angle. It was inky black at the top, and Banning’s flashlight beam barely seemed to penetrate, illuminating only small pockets before the darkness surged in again.

  “I don’t…” But then she did.

  Someone was looking right back at her. A pair of eyes, still and unblinking. Banning fixed the light on them directly, making sure it wasn’t her imagination.

  Yes, two eyes, wide open. She waited, waited for some movement, but nothing. God, they were wide—so impossibly wide.

  That’s because it’s on its way. Because you woke it up.

  Banning ignored the thought and studied the face more closely. It lay on its side, with only the top half visible—everything below the nose obscured by a baluster. The rest of the man—it did seem to be a man—was far out of view.

  “Is it real?” asked Porter.

  Banning continued watching the eyes, urging them to blink. She rapped on the window with her Maglite. The eyes remained still.

  “Is it real?” Porter repeated.

  “Call for backup.”

  “What is it? An EDP?”

 
An EDP was an “emotionally disturbed person,” a handy designation for anyone butting heads with reality, from the average street-corner babbler to a catatonic schizophrenic. The blessing with EDPs was that they quickly became someone else’s problem, hauled off to join the rest of the window-lickers at the mental health facility on Temple Street—a place the cops called “Fantasy Island.”

  But this wasn’t an EDP. The eyes that glinted from the darkness did so dully, more like marbles than glistening, living sclera.

  “Call for fucking backup, Porter.”

  He backed stiffly away, and a moment later Banning heard him speak the request into the shoulder mic of his ROVER. “6-Adam-9, requesting backup. Got a 10-54 here.”

  Banning noticed that while her trainee had used the correct 10-code for a possible dead body, his voice had lost its clipped, military professionalism. He sounded scared. She was scared, too—couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d disturbed something in the big, dark house. Banning thought of spiders, and the way they crouched out of sight, waiting for that telltale quiver in a strand of web. She thought how patient a spider must be, its cluster of inscrutable black eyes trained on its prey from aloft until, its malefic little brain satisfied, it decided to pounce.

  She shuddered at that—actually shuddered, and checked to make sure Porter hadn’t noticed. He was there, only a few feet away, a hand still draped over his shoulder mic, but his attention was fixed on a spot somewhere high above her head. Banning followed his gaze, saw nothing, then looked back at her partner. “What? What now?”

  “The house is bleeding.” Porter’s voice was low and raspy, as if he couldn’t muster enough air.

  “What…” Banning scanned the house’s exterior, the beam of her Maglite flitting across the stucco. Her eye caught something, and she raised the light again, this time in slow, deliberate seesaws.

  On the second floor, beneath one of the dormer windows, a long crack had formed—probably damage from last week’s quake. It wouldn’t have been noticeable, but now there was some kind of dark substance seeping out. It mingled with the heavily misted air and beaded into drops, which eventually swelled until they grew heavy enough to break free, streaming down the wall like tears.