Free The Judge by Steve Martini Page A

door is open.
     
    "Where are you going?" Her only response is a slammed car door, as she heads across the street.

    Left with the accomplished fact, there is nothing I can do but follow.

    By the time I lock the car, Lenore has disappeared into a dark passage up a narrow walkway, the ground floor of one of the four-plexes. If I hadn't turned to look in time I would have lost her completely. As it is, I follow her across the street.

    In the dark, deep in the bush of somebody's front yard, I cannot see her, but I can hear her fumbling in her purse, the rattle of keys.

    "What the hell are you doing?" "Shhh."
    "Who lives here?"

    "Put a cork in it." Then, suddenly, a faint beam of light, like Tinkerbell in an inkwell.

    Lenore has found what she was looking for, a small penlight on her key ring. I approach down the walkway.

    "I hope this is a good friend," I tell her. I glance at my watch, with its luminous dials. It is nearly one a.m.

    Lenore is working the handle of the front door. It is not until I see the handkerchief lining her hand that my apprehension runs to fear. The sobriety of the moment settles on me like white-hot phosphorus, and as the door latch clicks, dark intuition tells me who lives here.

    In a neighborhood like this, that anyone would leave their door unlocked is a curiosity on the order of fire eating and sword swallowing.

    "We're in luck," she says.

    Not any kind that I would recognize.

    Lenore slips through the door and pulls me in after her. "We shouldn't be here," I tell her.
    More shushing, a finger to her lips as she closes the door, a hand kerchief. I have visions of sirens and red lights.
     

    "It can't take them long to figure this out," I tell her. "We won't be here long."
    "We shouldn't be here at all."

    "Then go sit in the car," she says. With this I am left in darkness as Lenore moves and takes the dim illumination of the penlight with her. In an instant, in the dark, I am playing bumper cars with her behind, "Keep your hands in your pockets," she whispers.
    "I wasn't getting fresh. Honest."

    "I'm worried about fingerprints," she says.

    "Right." I am wondering about the cutting-edge frontiers of science, and whether they can get DNA footprints off the leather soles of my shoes.

    Though in this place I need not worry. There is so much shit on the floor that if I work it right, I will not have to step on it.

    It is one of the immutable rules of dating, learned in pubescence: the better looking the woman, the messier her apartment. This is one of those places where you might eat off the floor, only because the dishes are dirtier.

    There is a stream of light through windows off the street in the front.

    In this I can see papers strewn across the kitchen floor and what looks like the remnants of someone's meal, part of a yogurt container spilled across them waiting for a culture to take hold. The sink is filled with dishes, pots, and pans, more clutter than the average junkyard. One of the chairs is turned cattiewampus, blocking the way through the kitchen, so we take the course of least resistance, down the hall toward what I assume is the living room.

    Here there is not just mess, but destruction.

    A picture in its frame is on the floor. This appears to have been pulled from the wall, its glass shattered, the scarred and bent hanger remaining.
     
    As I turn into the living room I see dirt on the carpet near a metal-and-glass coffee table, some potting soil from an indoor plant, the greenery on the floor near another, larger dark stain that has settled into the carpet like oil on sand.

    I am thinking that clutter is one thing, this borders on the ridiculous, when it settles on me that what I am seeing is not the usual random chaos of life. There is some desperate design to all of this. Here, in Brittany Hall's own home, is the place other death.

    It takes several seconds before Lenore can move. Then finally, she walks around the debris. Her flashlight catches the glint of metal,