Worth More Dead

visitation weekend with their father. There shouldn’t have been anyone else in the house.
    Tim recalled that he tried to turn on the light on the staircase that led up to the bedroom landing, but it was burned out. He walked slowly up the stairs. When he got to the top, he pulled aside a curtain that covered his bedroom doorway and at the same time reached in to click on the light in his room.
    That light didn’t go on, either. He went in anyway, wondering a little at the coincidence of two bulbs burning out at the same time.
    “As I walked in,” he said, “a guy wearing a ski mask stepped out and stuck a rifle up against my throat.”
    He froze, panicked, his heart beating loudly in his ears. Tim remembered that he looked into the dimness of his bedroom, lit only by a street light outside, and saw a second figure who also wore a mask. It was a woman. He couldn’t see her face, but she had full breasts that were obvious under her tight black pullover.
    She mumbled something, and he instantly recognized her voice. It was the same woman who had called him and persuaded him to come to the Pancake House to meet her.
    Although Tim didn’t know what was happening or who these wraithlike figures were, he believed he was in terrible danger and that the gun at his neck might go off at any moment. A scream burst from his throat. “Help! Help!” he called out frantically. “I’m being robbed.”
    He had no reason to think that, but why else would anyone be hiding in his room? It was just the first thing that came to his mind. The Roslyn family owned a small apartment that was connected to their house at the first-floor level. He hoped desperately that the couple who lived there were home and would hear him. His house had a large window at the bottom of the stairs that offered a view right into one of the apartment’s windows. If he could manage to get downstairs and their drapes weren’t drawn, they would be able to see him.
    No one responded at first to his screaming. And then one of the tenants shouted something. At least they were home and aware that he was in trouble. His knees buckled under him and he went limp, still calling out for help.
    “Shut the fuck up,” the man in black growled.
    “Shut up,” the woman hissed. “Just shut up.”
    It was her all right. Tim couldn’t mistake that voice, but he had no idea who she was. The man ran down the stairs, but Tim, still lying on the floor, blocked the woman, so she nudged him aside and followed.
    Unable to stand up because he was so frightened, the teenager prayed that they were leaving, but he expected them to come back upstairs and kill him.
    He waited, the sound of his hoarse breathing seeming to fill the room. Then he realized that the house was silent. The two masked strangers appeared to be gone. Trembling, he made his way to a phone and called the Bremerton police emergency number. Next, he called his mother. She said she would come right home.
    Then Tim grabbed a kitchen knife and put it his pocket. He locked all the doors and wedged a chair under the front doorknob. Although he doubted it would do any good, he reactivated the alarm system. It was odd. He had armed it when he left to meet the mysterious woman, but somehow she and the man had gotten in anyway without setting it off.
    When Officer Emm arrived, he saw several faces peering out the window at him, trying to see who was knocking on the door. The neighbors had joined Tim. They were all frightened, but Tim was the most afraid since he was the only person who had actually encountered the strangers in black.
    None of them knew who might have been in their house or why. They were not wealthy. They didn’t own anything worth a home-invasion burglary.
    Emm and Bogen searched the house and checked the exterior doors. They found no sign of forced entry. Indeed, they couldn’t even be sure what the point of entry into the house was. They did discover why the lights on the stairs and in Tim’s room hadn’t responded when he hit the switch: someone had carefully unscrewed the bulbs.
    They also found an empty gun case in Tim’s bedroom.
     
    Della arrived home shortly after the police left. She was instantly suspicious. She had her own idea of who had attacked Tim. That was strengthened by Bébé’s call to Della from Beth Bixler’s house, where she was babysitting. The teenager was nervous because she kept getting phone calls. The caller hung up as soon as she answered. And she told Della