Chapter 3 - The Ghost at the Table
The drive back to our old house felt like navigating through a dreamscape where the laws of physics had been subtly altered.
The state police had finally cleared the crime scene hours ago after executing a fresh search warrant based on Victor’s ledger, but the yellow police tape had only just been stripped away from the front porch. The paint on the white siding was peeling slightly more than I remembered; the overgrown oak tree in the front yard dropped dry, dead leaves onto the hood of our rented sedan as I pulled into the driveway.
Ethan was still asleep in the back seat, curled across the vinyl bench with his head resting on a rolled-up jacket. I left him there, locking the car doors and walking up the wooden steps with leaden feet.
Caroline stood on the porch, her fingers trembling as she stared at the brass front door handle. Six years ago, she had walked out of this very doorway in handcuffs, surrounded by a howling mob of reporters and neighbors who chanted words I still heard in my nightmares. Now, she was back, but the house didn't feel like a home. It felt like a mausoleum.
“I can’t go inside,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. “Not yet. The air in there still smells like that night.”
“We have to,” I said, pulling the heavy brass key—which the police had handed back to us along with her personal effects—out of my pocket. “The police are going through Victor’s office downtown, but if there’s anything else hidden here—anything that proves why he did it—we need to find it before the media circus catches wind of where we are.”
The door swung open with a dry, complaining creak.
The interior was frozen in time. A thick layer of gray dust coated the mahogany foyer table where my father used to drop his mail every evening. The coat rack still held his winter wool jacket, stiff and lifeless. The forensic teams from six years ago had done their job with brutal efficiency; lumol traces still stained the baseboards of the hallway where the technicians had mapped out the blood spatter patterns.
We walked past the living room and toward the kitchen—the ground zero of our family’s destruction.
It was smaller than I remembered. The stainless steel refrigerator hummed quietly, a solitary sound in the cavernous silence. The butcher-block island still sat in the center of the room. I walked over to the base of the island, dropping to my knees. I reached beneath the bottom shelf, running my fingers along the rough particle board where the kickplate met the floor.
“What are you looking for, Leo?” Caroline asked softly, standing in the doorway like she was afraid to cross some invisible boundary line.
“If Victor planted the knife under your bed,” I said, my fingers brushing against something sharp and metallic hidden behind the wooden trim, “he had to get it from somewhere in this room.”
My fingers hooked onto a small, cold ring of metal. With a sharp tug, I pulled it free.
It wasn't a knife. It was a heavy, old-fashioned brass floor-register key, the kind used to open the vintage heating ducts that ran through the older sections of the house. Stamped into the brass head was a single letter: V.
Caroline’s eyes widened as she stared at the key in my palm. “The old duct system... it runs from the basement directly up through the kitchen floorboards and straight into the master bedroom closet on the second floor.”
“He didn't walk through the house with a bloody knife,” I realized, the pieces clicking together with terrifying clarity. “He didn't need to force a lock or leave muddy footprints. He used the house itself.”
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Before either of us could move, a sharp, metallic clack echoed from the dark, open doorway leading down to the basement.
It wasn't the wind. It was the distinct sound of a boot hitting the bottom stair.
