Blowout

her. She must have run outside to hide in the woods.”
    “What did the woman look like, Agent Savich?” Sheriff Harms spoke slowly, his faded blue eyes intent on Savich’s face.
    “She was about thirty, thin. Her hair was long, straight, dark, parted in the middle. I don’t remember her eye color, but her face was very pale. She wasn’t dressed for winter, I can tell you that, which is part of why I’m concerned.”
    Sheriff Harms said, “That was an excellent description, Agent Savich. Now, we can go out to the Barrister place and look around. We can shine big lights all through the woods, make a lot of racket—but the thing is, that’d be a waste of time.”
    “I don’t see how, Sheriff.”
    “Well, the fact is, Agent Savich, the Barrister house has been abandoned for well nigh thirty years now. There’s no one there, hasn’t been for half my lifetime.”
    Sherlock said, frowning, “Thirty years? You’re saying that no one’s lived there for that long a time?”
    “Yep. I know the Barristers still own the place, since the taxes are paid on it every year, but they all left.”
    “No,” Savich said, rising, leaning over the sheriff’s desk. “No. You’re thinking of a different house. Look, Sheriff, I didn’t dream this. The woman was as real as you are. I’ve described her to you. We’ve got to go out there; we’ve got to find her and help her.” He turned on his heel, said over his shoulder, “Sherlock, I want you to take Sean back to the cabin and wait for me. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
    “You want me to come with you, Agent Savich?”
    “That would be up to you, now wouldn’t it, Sheriff?”
    Sherlock stood by the front door of the sheriff’s office, rocking Sean, who was bundled up in his winter jacket and gloves. “Why don’t we all go?”
    All of them piled into the sheriff’s big black SUV. Ten minutes later, without Savich saying anything, the sheriff pulled off of Route 85 onto Clayton Road. It was dark and cold, the black clouds thick overhead. There was the smell of snow in the air, not rain. Savich supposed he expected the woman to come running out on the road again, waving her arms madly—wearing that skimpy dress. She could freeze to death. She could be dead already. The man could have been hiding outside, at a safe distance, watching to see what would happen. If so, he could have seen her run outside, and followed her.
    He didn’t believe for a minute that the Barrister house, the one Sheriff Harms said was deserted and abandoned, was the house he’d been inside.
    “We should see the house any minute now,” the sheriff said. It seemed to Savich that there were more ruts in the road than he remembered, the asphalt crumbling in many places, as if it hadn’t been tended in a very long time. No, he was wrong, he was mis-remembering. That beautiful big lighted house would come into view at any moment. Yes, there, another hundred feet and the small rise appeared, on the left, and on top of the rise was the house, trees closing in around it from all sides. He didn’t remember the trees being so close.
    There were no lights shining out of the first floor of the house now, none at all. It looked like a huge black hulk, crouched atop that rise. Someone had come back and turned the lights off, or the power. A small voice in the back of his brain asked why.
    “This is the Barrister house,” Sheriff Harms said, as he pulled to a stop in front of the big, dark house. “Is this the place where you brought the young woman, Agent Savich?”
    Savich didn’t say anything. He pulled on his leather gloves as he slowly got out of the SUV and walked to the front of the house. He paused a moment, unwilling to accept what he was seeing. He walked up the wide wooden stairs that led to the covered porch which extended the full width of the front of the house.
    Suddenly the moon came out from behind the black clouds, and he saw the house clearly for the first time.
    It was the same house he’d been inside an hour before, but it wasn’t, not really. This house looked deserted, dilapidated, as if it had been neglected for many years. Trees pressed in toward the house, some of their branches whipping against upstairs windows. There were boards nailed over downstairs windows, broken glass scattered on the porch. There was even graffiti on the wall next to the front door.
    The house was dead, had been dead for a very long time. His heart pounded as he looked at the front