Chapter 2 – Halter House
A quick trip to city records got them the information they needed on Jeffery Halter. His address was listed as a rental house on Grove Lane, not two blocks from where he'd died. Deciding to start there, they climbed into Nathan's truck without any further discussion.
The drive across town was filled with talk of the case. While Nathan concentrated on driving, Audrey read from the file and told him about anything that seemed worth noting. "Well it looks like he was pretty new to Haven; he's only lived here about six years. Ew, he was a health insurance agent. That sounds like reason enough to commit suicide to me." Nathan didn't comment much while she talked, just grateful that she'd forgotten about their earlier conversation for now.
When he pulled the truck up to the curb, Audrey peered across him to get a better look at the house. "It's so – quaint," she said, clearly surprised. 'Quaint' would be the perfect word to describe the house, Nathan thought. It was small and square, and made of simple white wood and flat black shingles and dark blue shutters around the wide windows. The yard was green and obviously recently trimmed, and a little flowering bush flourished beside the front step.
"I don't know, it looks a bit depressingly mundane to me," Nathan offered and gave her a wry smile as he slipped out onto the sidewalk. Audrey came around the hood to join him a second later and they started up the front walk. "His car is gone," he noticed, nodding in the direction of the vacant driveway, where dull black oil patches stood out against the pale concrete.
Nathan tried the front door and made an annoyed sound when the knob wouldn't turn. He had just turned to make a comment about it to Audrey when he saw her kneel down and pick up a rock from beneath the flower bush. Even with the short glimpse he'd gotten, Nathan could tell there was something off about the rock she'd chosen. She smirked as she flipped it over and pushed aside a plastic flap, pulling out a brass key. "A hide-a-key?" he asked, torn between scepticism and amusement. "Didn't anyone tell him no one falls for those?"
"Apparently not," she responded as she inserted the key into the lock and twisted. The door opened with an audible click. "I do have to admit this is nicer than having to break down the door."
"Less fun though," Nathan argued, making her smile.
The inside of the house looked as standard as the outside. It was floored in light wood, the walls were painted in neutral, flat colours, and the living room furniture looked well-used and comfortable. A narrow hallway ran the length of the house, with a half-opened door in the middle, and ended in a pale yellow kitchen. The only unusual thing was a strong aroma hanging in the air that made Nathan wrinkle his nose.
"Think he takes his coffee strong enough?" he commented in disgust. Shaking his head, he began wandering around the living room. There was an old bookshelf against the wall near the window, and he browsed the titles curiously. Above a row of books that all looked like they were law and regulations studies, probably from work, were a set of battered Grishams' and Kings' and Koontz'. Nothing all that unusual for a middle aged man, really.
"Looks like these were all clients he's been working with recently," Audrey said from the coffee table, flipping through a stack of papers that had been left scattered across the surface. "All of them have annotations and notes dated within the last week or so."
"So if this turns out to not have been suicide," Nathan said, ignoring the exasperated noise she made at his reluctance to admit it might be, "then one of those people could've had motive if their policy wasn't going the way they wanted."
Audrey had opened her mouth to respond when there was a heavy thud from the next room and they both froze. In an instant, both of them had drawn their sidearms and they began moving carefully down the hall to the doorway where the noise had come from. As they got closer they could hear a dull scraping, faint clicks, and raspy breathing. Flattening themselves to the wall, Nathan drew back the safety on his gun and took a breath.
"Haven Police, identify yourself," he said loudly. There was no answer, just more scratching and tapping and panting. He exchanged a quick glance with Audrey and then threw himself around the corner, training his gun on the first sign of motion he found. "Police, put your ha-" He trailed off mid-sentence, staring in shock at the intruder.
It was a dog.
Some sort of mixed breed, it was black and slightly on the heavy side. The amount of white around the muzzle meant it was probably fairly old, and it simply stood in the middle of the room and gazed up at them with bright brown eyes, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.
"Well I doubt that's our suspect," he said, holstering his gun again.
"You never know, this is Haven," Audrey pointed out but she had put away hers as well. While she began looking around the room, Nathan knelt down and extended a hand toward the dog. It sniffed him and then licked his fingers, finally leaning its head into his palm looking for affection.
"Hey there," he said with a small smile, scratching idly at the dog's ears. "What's your name?" He grasped the little metal tags hanging from the leather collar and twisted them so he could read the inscriptions. "Delilah. That's pretty." The dog lay down on her side with a weary huff and he switched to rubbing at her rounded stomach with a grin.
"Would you look at that," Audrey remarked and he glanced up at her. "You're just as cute with animals as you are with babies."
Giving her a sarcastic look, he straightened up – the dog made a noise of annoyance at being left – and moved to examine the night table. The blankets on the bed were untidily made, probably done in a hurry, and there was an obvious depression in the middle where he assumed the dog had been sleeping. The night table held only a lamp, a digital alarm clock, and a handful of spare change and crumpled receipts.
"Wonder what kind of music he listened to," Audrey mused, staring at the stereo system on the chest-of-drawers curiously. "Marilyn Manson, maybe?" She pressed the power button. A blast of trumpets came out, so loud that Nathan physically staggered and dropped the receipt he'd been looking at so he could cover his ears against the noise. Audrey hastily slammed her palm against the button, shutting it off.
"That was unexpected," Nathan said, rubbing at one of his ears in an attempt to make the ringing go away.
"I'm starting to get the feeling this guy may have been a little whacked out," Audrey said. "World's strongest coffee, loudest jazz music I've ever heard. He's like some sort of extremist."
Nathan's brow furrowed. "Are you sure that word means what you think it does?"
Audrey shot him a reproving look. "I just mean that everything he does, he does it to a crazy level," she said.
"Let's check in the bathroom, see if there's anything unusual in there," he said, nodding toward the door behind her. When he made to follow her he stumbled, not having realized that the dog was standing at his ankles. Audrey muffled her laughter when the dog nudged against his leg, panting happily.
"Looks like someone has a new friend," she said with a smile.
"I'm a popular guy," he said with a shrug, and then stepped over the dog to follow Audrey into the bathroom. It was small and appeared just like expected; A frayed toothbrush and paste on the sink, a tiny mirror mounted on the wall, a faded towel hanging from the hook on the back of the door.
"Amoxicillin," Audrey read off the label of a tiny prescription bottle on the sink. "This was what they said was in his system, right? Prescribed by Dr. Kelly Marlow."
"I know Kelly," Nathan said as he checked the inside of the shower curiously. "Good guy. We can stop by and ask him a few questions about Halter if we need to."
"You know every doctor in this town," Audrey said lightly. As she moved to put the bottle down, she paused and her eyes narrowed. "Nathan, come look at this."
Nathan climbed out of the bathtub and joined her at the sink, squinting down at the spot she was pointing to. There were coarse flecks on the white ceramic, and they looked a bit like –
Audrey had drawn a latex glove from her pocket and slipped it on, running a finger over the spot. When she lifted it to her face, he saw the answer in her eyes before she had said it. "I think it's sand," she said, and glanced up at him with wide eyes.
"Sand in his ears and brain and now his sink," Nathan listed off, trying not to let his confusion come through in his voice. "I have a feeling I'm not going to like where this leads."
"Is there some tape around here?" Audrey asked. "We should try to get a sample of this stuff and send it back to the lab. See if it matches the stuff they found in Halter." Nathan rummaged through drawers in the bedroom until he found a roll of scotch tape on the chest-of-drawers. Audrey pressed the strip of tape to the sink, picking up several grains of white sand, and then folded it over on itself to make a slide.
"Neat trick," Nathan said as she tucked the tape slip into a rumpled evidence bag he'd found in his coat pocket. "I knew there was a reason we kept you around."
Finished in the bathroom, they went the rest of the way down the hall to the kitchen, stepping around Delilah, who was still following Nathan everywhere. The smell in the kitchen was so strong that Nathan had to pull the collar of his shirt up over his nose, grimacing as the overwhelming scent tried to trigger a headache. Audrey threw open the window above the sink and dumped the rest of the coffee pot down the drain.
"You know, this all looks like your typical bachelor pad of a kitchen to me," she said, browsing through the cupboards. "Basic staples, mismatched dishes." There was a day's worth of dirty plates in one side of the sink, and a half-drank cup of the insane coffee sitting on the countertop. Nathan opened the fridge and saw packaged lunch meats, a half gallon of milk, a bag of carrots that looked on the verge of turning, and a six-pack of cheap beer.
He closed the door just in time to see Audrey stick a finger into the coffee cup and he made a noise of protest. "What?" she asked, pulling it out and sniffing curiously.
"Parker, you should probably stop sticking your hands into unknown substances," he pointed out.
"It's coffee, not acid," she said unconcernedly. Before he could comment, she had sucked the coffee from her finger and then grimaced. "Disgusting and cold coffee, but definitely just coffee."
Nathan couldn't restrain his eye roll at her behaviour. "Alright, but if you start blasting Timberlake, I'm going to just shoot you, okay?"
They finished their search of the kitchen, not finding anything else of interest, and headed back to the front door, ready to take their things to the office and call it quits for the day. Audrey had just grabbed the stack of papers from the coffee table and opened the front door when a quiet whine made Nathan stop and look back. "Wait," he said when he saw Delilah standing a few feet behind him, staring up at him with doleful eyes. "What do we do about her? We can't just leave her here alone."
"Does Haven have a pound?" Audrey suggested. Nathan grimaced, not wanting to think about how the poor old dog would handle being shut away in a kennel. He hesitated a second longer and then let out a low whistle, patting a hand against his thigh for good measure. Delilah didn't need to be told twice, following him out the door. Nathan determinedly ignored Audrey's quiet laughter.
"You know, Nathan," she said when they'd reached the truck. "I'm pretty sure it's basic police protocol that you don't bring anyone related to the case home with you."
Nathan seized the dog around the middle and heaved her into the cab of the truck, before climbing up after her. "So if someone asks, I'm putting her in witness protection," he said with a small smirk. Delilah made herself comfortable in the middle of the bench, laying her head in his lap and starting to snore almost instantly. "Besides," he added as he shifted the truck into drive, his grin widening, "she'll be the perfect home security system. The Chief's allergic to dogs."