Free The Gray Zone by Daphna Edwards Ziman Page A

there. It was the middle of the night. He knew this might not go over well.
    Reaching Manzanita Lane, a street of circa-1970 tract houses, he slowed. A few of the driveways had boats or RVs in them. Most of the houses, however, appeared to have huddled down, as if shivering in the desert-cold night. Twenty-five-twelve, twenty-five-fourteen, twenty-five-sixteen. Jake drove two houses past Kelly’s, shut off the lights and engine, and watched the house in his rearview mirror. It was completely dark. No porch light. Jake reached for the flashlight in his glove box and got out of the car. The street was deserted too. The only sounds were the whoosh of traffic on a nearby boulevard and the crackling of power lines overhead.
    Jake crept up to the house, gauging the windows. There were no signs of life. He edged over to a side gate, trying the latch. It opened easily, and he stole along the side of the house. The backyard was overgrown with flowers and decorated with an assortment of scarecrows obviously created by children. A concrete patio covered by a wooden pergola painted red was just outside a sliding-glass door that led inside. On impulse, Jake tried it. To his surprise, it slid open. Fighting logic, he stepped in and closed it behind him.
    When his eyes adjusted to the darkened interior, he found himself in a room that seemed entirely beige, from the carpets to the walls to the canvas sofa that looked newly covered. Long, parallel strips of moonlight stretched across the floor, swaying in time with the swinging vertical blinds. Jake flicked on the flashlight and threw some lightaround the room. He was in a little living area. The front door was directly across from the sliding-glass door he had entered; a hall cut through the room to both the left and the right. The place seemed small and old-fashioned, but clean and freshly painted.
    Jake chose the hall to the left and crept lightly across the carpet, stopping every few seconds to listen. Three doors led off the hallway. The first was a bathroom. Jake wiggled his arm up into his shirtsleeve and used the fabric to cover his hand before opening the drawers. He saw about two dozen plastic makeup containers and gobs of assorted skin-colored putty. In contrast, the medicine cabinet was empty.
    Jake moved to another room and saw a queen-sized bed stripped of sheets, a dresser, a TV. The dresser was empty except for a lavender sachet in the corner of the top drawer. The closet contained only coat hangers. Jake turned on the TV: MSNBC. He turned it off.
    He went through the third door and found two twin beds, also stripped. A poster of van Gogh’s
Irises
was on the wall and a basket of dried flowers on a side table. He slid open the closet. It was empty except for some child-sized coat hangers.
    Did this woman have kids? Jake’s curiosity deepened.
    He went back down the hallway and crossed through the living room into the kitchen. It was very clean and, like the other rooms, almost totally empty. A narrow yellow countertop ran underneath a window that overlooked the front yard. Yellow curtains with red cherries on them framed the window. The fridge was yellow too. Inside, it was pretty bare: an old milk carton, some slices of American cheese. A small round table, painted red, stood next to the fridge, along with three chairs. Jake found some empty soup tins in the trash can under the sink.
    He wandered back to the living room again, not sure what he was looking for. He turned on the TV. It was tuned to QVC. He turned it off, pushed EJECT on the DVD player. After a whine anda click, a disk slid out:
Sesame Street Dance with Me.
So she did have kids, or at least kids lived here too. Jake sank down on the couch and let his mind wander. What was he really doing here? Breaking into a woman’s house to try to get a date?
    His thoughts looped back to his original excuse for coming here. A platinum blonde wig had been found in Porter’s hotel room. This nightclub singer, Kelly Jensen,