Chapter 27 - The Phantom Receiver
By 5:15 AM, the state police tactical unit had Duke Street completely cordoned off.
Three fire trucks were parked across the road, their massive diesel engines idling with a low, rumbling growl that rattled the windowpanes of the neighboring Victorian houses. The sleet had turned to freezing rain, encasing every branch of the dead apple trees in an armor of black ice.
Sylvan Crane, the corporate lawyer, was standing at the end of the driveway, flanked by two men in dark trench coats who were not state troopers. They carried briefcases and handheld radio gear that didn't match any state police frequencies.
"Detective Vance!" Crane shouted as we stepped out of the command vehicle. "If your men cross that threshold with breaching tools, I will have an order of contempt against your entire department from the Third Circuit before sunrise!"
Vance didn't even look at him. He racked the slide on his Remington 870 shotgun, the sound sharp as a gunshot in the freezing air.
"Get this suit out of my crime scene," Vance told the tactical sergeant. "If he steps across the curb, shoot him with a beanbag."
Marcus and I followed Vance up the front porch steps. The front door was still standing ajar, the lock shattered from our earlier entry. Inside, the house was deathly still, smelling of stale gravy, cold turkey fat, and the wet plaster we had knocked down in the foyer.
The dining room table stood precisely where it had been twelve hours ago.
The Thanksgiving spread had congealed into gray grease. The shattered shards of the Blue Willow platter lay scattered across the cranberry sauce like blue and white teeth.
Marcus dropped to his hands and knees, pulling back the heavy linen tablecloth that draped down to the floor.
Beneath the center of the table, directly beneath where my chair had been positioned for three decades, was a four-foot-long cast-iron floor register. It was bolted to the oak planks with four heavy carriage bolts, the heads ground down flat so no wrench could grip them.
"Bring the demo saw," Marcus called out.
Two tactical officers stepped forward with an electric cut-off saw. The carbide blade screamed as it bit into the cast iron, throwing a spray of brilliant orange sparks across the floral wallpaper and into the congealed turkey platter.
The smell of scorched iron filled the room.
As the center section of the register dropped through the floor with a heavy, hollow thud, the air that surged up from the opening was not the cold, moldy air of the orchard vault.
It was warm.
Eighty-five degrees, thick with the smell of medicinal ozone, baby powder, and old, overheated vacuum tubes.
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And from the darkness below came the sound of a music box, playing a tinny, mechanical rendition of *Brahms’ Lullaby*, looping every eight bars without end.
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