In the pocket of his coat he had a set of lock picks.

He climbed up to the porch of the house and, more out of hope than expectation, tried the door. It was locked. He thought for a moment, then gave the door a hard push with his shoulder, rattling it in its frame. No alarm went off. Good, thought Mickey. Another lucky break to add to the absent neighbors and the fact that Parker no longer seemed to have a dog. He’d heard him talking about it with one of the bartenders, shortly before Parker gave him the bum’s rush.

He moved to the left and peered in the window. There was a night-light burning in the kitchen at the back of the house that shed a little illumination into the living room. The rooms looked comfortably furnished, with a lot of books. To the right of the front door was a small office, a computer on a desk, papers piled neatly around it and on the floor. Mickey knew that Parker had been down in New York recently. He wondered why. He desperately wanted to look through those papers.

He walked to the back of the house and stood in the segmented square of illumination cast by the night-light. The mist seemed thicker here, and when he looked behind him, it formed a near-impenetrable wall of white, obscuring the trees and the marshes beyond. Mickey shivered. He tried the back door, with no result. Once again, he pressed his face to the glass.

And something moved inside the house.

For a moment, he thought that it was reflected light, or a car passing on the road creating shadows in the room beyond the kitchen, but he had heard no car. He blinked, and tried to recall what he had seen. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought it might have been a woman, a woman in a dress that hung just below her knees. It wasn’t the kind of dress anyone would usually wear at this time of year. It was a summer dress.

He considered leaving, but then he realized that an opportunity to enter the house might just have presented itself without necessitating a breach of the law. If there was someone inside, maybe he could introduce himself as a friend of the detective. There might be a cup of coffee in it for him, or a drink, and once Mickey got himself seated he would be difficult to roust. Cockroaches were harder to get rid of than Mickey Wallace in interrogation mode.

“Hello?” he called. “Anybody home?” He knocked on the door. “Hello? I’m a friend of Mr. Parker’s. Can you-”

The light went out in the kitchen. The shock of it was so sudden that Mickey stumbled backward in fright, spots before his eyes as they adjusted to the dar Jtha/dikness. He recovered himself, and took a breath. Maybe it was time to leave. He didn’t want the woman inside to take fright and call the cops. That would jeopardize everything. Still, he carefully approached the door one more time. His flashlight was in his right hand, and he used it to rap on the door as he leaned against the glass, shielding his eyes with his left.

The woman was standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She was looking right at him, her hands by her sides. He could see the shape of her legs through the thin material, but her face was cast in shadow.

“I’m sorry,” he called to her. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. My name is Michael Wallace. I’m a writer. Here’s my card.” He found a card in his pocket. “I’m going to slide it under the door so you’ll know I’m legit.”

He knelt down and slipped the card through. When he stood up, the woman was gone.

“Ma’am?”

Something white appeared at his feet. His card had been pushed back at him.

Jesus, thought Mickey. She’s at the door. She’s hiding at the door.

“I just want to talk to you,” he said.

go away

For a moment, Mickey wasn’t sure that he’d heard right. The words had been clear enough, but they seemed to come from behind him. He turned around, but there was nothing there, only mist. He put his face to the glass again, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman hiding inside. He could almost see her: a patch of darkness on the floor, a palpable presence. Who is she? he wondered. Parker’s girlfriend was supposed to be in Vermont, not here. Mickey planned to try to talk to her sometime over the next couple of weeks. Anyway, they were estranged. There was no reason for her being here, and even less reason for her to try to hide herself if she was.

Something began nagging at Mickey, something that made him uneasy, but he tried to force it from his mind. He only partially succeeded. He felt it lurking at the edge of his consciousness, just like the woman who was squatting in the shadows by the door, an unwelcome presence to which he was frightened of giving his complete attention.

“Please. I just wanted to speak to you for a moment about Mr. Parker.”

Michael

The voice came again, only this time it was closer. He thought that he could feel breath on his neck, or maybe it was just the wind coming in from the sea, except there was no wind. He spun around, breathing heavily. He felt the mist enter his lungs. It made him cough, and he tasted snow and saltwater in his mouth. He hadn’t liked the way the voice had spoken his name. He hadn’t liked it one little bit. There was a hint of mockery to it, and an implicit threat. He felt like a recalcitrant child being spoken to by a nanny, except-

Except it was a child’s voice that had spoken.

“Who’s out there?” he said. “Show yourself.”

But there was no movement, and no response, not from before him. Instead, he became aware of movement at his back. Slowly, he craned his neck, not wishing to turn away from whatever had spoken to him fr J

The woman was now standing in the kitchen once again, midway between the back door and the entrance to the living room, but there was a lack of substance to her. She cast no shadow, distorting instead of blocking what little light was filtering through the glass, like a piece of gauze in the shape of a human being.

go away

please

It was the use of the word “please” that finally got to him. He had heard the word used in that way before, usually before a cop wrestled someone to the ground, or a doorman at a nightclub applied brute force to a drunk. It was a final warning, couched in a version of politeness. He shifted position so that he could see both the door and the mist, then began to retreat, moving toward the corner of the house.

Because the shadow that was troubling him had just assumed a recognizable form, even as he tried to deny the reality of it.

A woman and a child. A little girl’s voice. A woman in a summer dress. Mickey had seen that dress before, or one very like it. It was the dress that Parker’s wife had been wearing in the pictures that were circulated to the press after her death.

As soon as he was out of sight of the door, Mickey began to run. He slipped once and landed heavily, soaking his trousers and plunging his arms into the icy snow up to his elbows. He whimpered as he got to his feet and brushed himself off. As he did so, he heard a sound from behind him. It was muffled slightly by the mist, but it was still clearly identifiable.

It was the back door opening.

He ran again. His car came in sight. He found the keys in his pocket and pushed the Unlock button once to turn on the lights. As he did so, he stopped short and felt his stomach lurch.

There was a child, a little girl, on the far side of the car, staring at him through the passenger window. Her left hand was splayed against the glass, while the index finger of her right traced patterns in the moisture. He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he knew instinctively that it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been inches away from her instead of feet. She was as insubstantial as the mist that surrounded her.

“No,” said Mickey. “No, no.” He shook his head. From behind him came the sound of hard snow crunching underfoot, of an unseen figure drawing nearer. Even as he heard it, he sensed that if he were to retrace his steps to the back door he would find the imprint of his own footsteps, and nobody else’s. “Oh Jesus,” whispered Mickey. “Jesus, Jesus…”