Shallow Graves - Jeremiah Healy (25 page)

I crossed to the window itself. An old one, still
with iron sash weights hung in the jamb to allow its mass to be
raised. The window was closed but not locked still. I shoved it up
and looked out on the fire escape. The metal seemed solid but a
little rusty. Holding the bannister by the windowsill, I swung one
leg onto the escape and pushed down. The ironwork gave, but only a
bit. I swung the other leg out and shifted up and down on it. I got
back the sound Larry Shinkawa had described. Not much and not
continuous, but a clang every time I moved on the landing.

I climbed back into the bedroom, trying to picture
the burglar possibility. From the ground, he somehow pulls down the
first flight of fire escape and comes up to the third-floor landing.
Mau Tim's just taken her shower. Sinead Fagan told me that Friday had
been warm. Maybe Mau Tim has the bedroom window open. Or had it open
and closed it without engaging the lock. She's somewhere in the
apartment, not making any noise or making so little the TV or stereo
is covering it. Then I thought back. Larry Shinkawa said the TV and
stereo were off, no other sound beside the fire escape.

That probably meant Mau Tim was still in the
bathroom, toweling off and being quiet. Our boy comes in through the
window, place looks deserted, he starts with the jewelry box. Finds
the iolite necklace, stuffs it in a pocket or bag, scopes some other
pieces maybe, then . . . Wait, the necklace was
broken.

I walked back into the living room and over to the
futon. The pendant part of the necklace was found under one of the
corners. I closed my eyes, trying to see the eight-by-ten Holt had
showed me from the Homicide file. The pendant was partially under the
left front corner of the couch as you sit on it, the corner nearest
the front door if you're struggling with somebody who's holding the
necklace.

So, the guy has the necklace in his hand in the
bedroom. Mau Tim comes out of the bathroom toward the bedroom. They
see each other, or he hears her or she hears him. She runs toward the
front door of the apartment, he chases her . . .Wait. Why doesn't he
go back out the window and back down the fire escape? He's in the
bedroom, right by it. If he's in the bedroom. Maybe he's moved to the
living room while she's still in the bathroom. He's sizing up the
home entertainment center, figuring on maybe the CD player as the
best candidate. Then she comes out, sees him, and heads for the door.

In other words, heads toward him and not away from
him? And he still has the necklace in his hand so it can abrade her
throat and break as he strangles her? And walking past the bathroom,
he didn't feel the humidity from her shower or hear a telltale noise
right next to the bathroom door itself?

I looked over at the front door to the apartment. The
chain plate had been unscrewed from the jamb, a rectangle of bare
wood in the painted molding. Then I realized that Ooch was staring at
me.

Flick, sniff — sniff. "You okay?"

"
I'm okay, Ooch. Why?"

"You looked, I don't know, kinda queer there,
talking to yourself and walking back and forth."

"I'm okay. Thanks."

I shook my head. I wasn't okay, because I couldn't
picture what happened. It's a small apartment, she had to be
somewhere when the guy came in. Somewhere he couldn't see her or be
aware of her, because no burglar, even an addict, is crazy enough to
try a rip-off from a third-floor fire escape when somebody's in the
place.

If it was a rip-off. If it was a burglar.

I went back into the bedroom. At the window, I looked
out and down. The bottom, raised flight of the fire escape contrasted
sharply against the background of the bricked yard. If our boy had
used the green trash cans to reach and pull the last flight on his
way up, Shinkawa should have seen them after our boy used the fire
escape on the way down.

I walked to the front of the apartment. "Ooch,
can we try the second floor now?"

"Yeah. Yeah, sure."

He locked the door behind me, then started down the
stairs.

At the next landing, he jingled the keys again.
"Fuck, I can't never . . . There, there it is."

Ooch turned the key twice through the compass, though
I didn't hear it snicking. He pushed the door open but this time went
in first.

"Kinda close in here, ain't it?"

I said, "It is."

He moved into the bedroom and to the window at the
fire escape, opening it without bothering to play with the lock on
top. It gave me a minute to examine the lock on the apartment door.
The keyhole on the outside looked the same as the one on Mau Tim's
door, but on the inside, there was another keyhole, and the dead bolt
operated vertically, not horizontally. On the inner surface of the
metal were those screwheads you can't turn without a special tool.
 
From inside the apartment, I closed the
door. There was no sound at the knob, and the dead bolt didn't
engage. I used the knob to open and close the door again. Same.

I walked to the bedroom doorway. Ooch was taking some
breaths at the window.

I said, "You can't lock that door without a
key?"

He turned to me. "Huh?"

I pointed back toward where I'd come from. "Somebody
inside this apartment would need a key to lock that door and a key to
get out again?"

"Oh, yeah. The family, they just use this place
to stay when they're in the city for whatever."

"And they lock themselves in?"

"No, no. You don't get me."

Ooch passed by and took out his keys again. "See,
Claudette, Joey's wife, she was all the time forgetting her key.
She's a real polite lady, she locked herself out, she don't like to
come bothering me." Ooch held up an odd, pimpled key. "So
my Uncle Tommy, he says to me, 'Ooch, you go see they got a lock you
need a key for, let you out, too.'

Ooch inserted the key on the interior face of the
door lock and turned it twice, again without a snicking noise, then
pulled the key out. "This way, she don't forget her key because
she can't lock up without the thing."

I tried the door. Locked, dead bolt vertically
engaged.

"Who else has a key to this place?"

"What, you mean this apartment here?"

"Right."

"All the family's got one. They don't know when
they need the place, they want to be able to use it, right?"

"Does Sinead have a key?" Ooch seemed taken
back. "Sinead, she ain't family. She's a nice kid and all, but
she's just a tenant."

"How about Tina?"

"Yeah. Yeah, she had one."

"Where?"

"In her apartment."

"
Where in her apartment?"

"Kitchen. Drawer by the faucet there."

I looked around the second-floor unit. Modestly but
functionally furnished, a notch above a suite in a good hotel. Ooch
was back at the bedroom window, me joining him there. I leaned out,
looking up to Mau Tim's landing above, then down to the flight to
Fagan's apartment before the raised last link. I said, "You
afraid of heights, Ooch?"

"Me? No."

"Mind climbing out onto the fire escape and
going up to the next floor, then down again?"
 

Flick, sniff/sniff. "You want me to climb up,
then down?"

"Right."

He motioned for me to stand back a little. He moved
agilely over the sill and went up to the third floor, just one hand
on the railing. I could hear a clang with every step.

Ooch said, "Okay?"
 
"Fine. Now come back down again. This time,
slow and light on your feet."

"Huh?"

"
Come toward me slowly, light on your feet."

Ooch shook his head, but used the bannister to ease
down the escape. No clanging until he hit the landing outside my
window.

"Tina's parents were coming up the day after she
was killed, right?"

"Yeah." Flick, sniff/sniff. "They was
coming up on Saturday, see her and have a birthday dinner Saturday
night."

"So you didn't do any cleaning up for them?"

"No. I mean, yeah, I did."

"I don't follow you."

"See, I didn't know what time they was coming up
on Saturday, so I was in here Friday afternoon, before I went out to
the gym."

I inclined my head toward the window. "You aired
the place out."

"Sure. You gotta do that, these buildings.
Otherwise, they been closed up a while, they get musty like today,
you know?"

"And you locked the door to this apartment when
you left?"

A blank look. "A course I did. I'm the super,
remember?"

"When did you close the window here?"

Flick, sniff/sniff. "Saturday."

"Saturday."

"Yeah. Saturday, it starts to rain. I remember,
the windows're open on the second floor, so I come up and shut them."

"And the door to this apartment was locked then,
too."

"A course it was. What's so hard to understand?"

An honest face. Roughed up some, and maybe not quite
everything you'd want behind it. But enough to make me rethink a lot
of things I wasn't sure I wanted to.
 
 

-19-

WHEN OOCH LET ME OUT OF THE SECOND-FLOOR APARTMENT, I
HEARD strident rap music from downstairs and saw that Sinead Fagan's
door was half-open. Ooch hurried past me and down the staircase.

At her entrance, he stopped and said, "What's
going on?"

Somebody turned down the stereo. I could hear
Sinead's voice before I could see her. "I'm moving the fuck out,
Ooch."

Over the super's shoulder I took in the living room.
Fagan in designer sweatshirt and blue jeans, her red hair in that
cocklebur cut. She was dumping audiocassettes into a shopping bag.
Behind her, Oz Puriefoy separated two cardboard boxes on the kitchen
counter. He stopped what he was doing, but stayed by the boxes and
out of the conversation.

Ooch said, "Where you gonna go, Sinead?"

"I'm moving in with Oz for a while, get my head
on straight."

Ooch glanced at Puriefoy and muttered something.
Then,

"
You mean, I'm gonna be all alone here?"

"
Aw, Ooch." Sinead came toward the super,
towering over him at close range as she put her hands on his
shoulders, consoling a Little Leaguer who made last out. "I'm
sorry, you know? But I just can't stay here after what happened to
Mau."

"
Tina," said Ooch, wrenching away from her
without using his hands and bumping by me. "Her name was Tina."

As Ooch headed toward and down the stairs to the
basement, Fagan worried her lower lip with her upper teeth. Then she
remembered I was there, too. "The fuck you want?"

"Ooch was taking me on a tour of the building.
Part of the investigation?

"
Well, the tour's over."

"Not quite. Mind if I come in?"

"What if I do?"

I looked to Puriefoy, whose expression said he was
still staying out of it.

"Your bosses at Lindqvist/Yulin need for me to
finish what I started."

Fagan stopped, the way she had at the photo shoot
when a question threw her. "They're not my bosses. They're my
agents."

"You're moving out, what difference does it make
if I take a look at your place?"

Fagan wasn't buying it. I didn't think she was so
much thinking as being stubborn.

Puriefoy said, "Sinead, the man wants to look,
let him look. We leave, he can just get Ooch to let him in anyways,
right?"

Fagan finally stepped away from the door, stiffly
motioning me into the living room. "You can't stay long. We just
got started here, and we still have quite a lot to do."

Quite a lot. I shook my head.

In size, the first-floor place was between Ooch's
little cave and the second-floor guest suite. The living room shared
an open space with the breakfast-countered kitchen, the doorways to
bedroom and bathroom on one wall.

I walked past Puriefoy to the kitchen, going around
the counter to stand between refrigerator and stove. I could see the
railing of the fire escape through the window. Above me, pipes
crooked out of the ceiling and into the wall, painted to blend in
with the surrounding planes.

"These the water pipes?"

Fagan said, "Yeah."

"Had anybody been staying on the second floor
recently?"

Fagan looked at me. "The fuck would I know?"

"Footsteps overhead"

Puriefoy said, "We couldn't hardly hear you and
Ooch up there just now."

"But you could hear us."

Puriefoy shrugged. "A little."

I tumed back to Fagan. "So, anybody up there
recently?"

"Not that I heard. Go ask the family, you want
to."