Next to Die Page 19

“My favorite kind,” Lena said dryly.

  Nineteen

  The night was hot, muffled by the humidity. The apartment was quiet, the fridge fixed and no longer rattling since Connor had replaced the evap motor. Maybe it was the silence that made it harder to sleep. Bobbi sprawled on her mattress, looking up at the ceiling, sweating, unnerved by every sound.

  She picked up her phone, seeking a distraction. She knew about the evidence that said looking at your phone kept you awake, but she dimmed her screen and looked anyway, unable to focus on much.

  Someone was moving around outside the apartment.

  She set her phone on the floor and stretched toward the open windows, tense and listening. While it was normal to hear a car passing, a dog barking, or even a late-night burble of conversation as people walked home from the bars, this had been different, closer.

  There it was again: the tympanic sound of metal dragged over asphalt.

  She got up from the mattress, padded across the carpeted floor to the windows. Hot as it was, she rubbed her arms, suddenly chilled. No one out there, though, just the stone church looming in her window, the edge of St. Adams School, and a slice of Saranac Avenue beyond.

  Then a figure emerged from the shadows, down in the alley between the church and her building. He was hefting a trash bag, and he walked it toward the street.

  She heard a thoomp and then the metal-on-metal sound of the lid over the bin. He started back into the alley, and she saw a bit of light reflected off his balding head: Frank Gilbert.

  She relaxed. Gilbert was one of her neighbors. He lived alone, from what she knew – she’d said hi to him only once since moving in; it had been early in the morning on her way out to work and he was standing in that same alley, cleaning up a drift of brittle leaves from the previous autumn.

  He moved out of sight and she heard the front door open and close, felt the slight vibration of it. Tomorrow was trash day. Maybe Gilbert was old and a night owl, just didn’t give a shit, or maybe he was OCD.

  Bobbi lay back down, knitted her fingers behind her head, and stared up. The street light on Saranac Ave shining through the windows formed two parallelograms of light on the ceiling. The image recalled her childhood bedroom in Almond, when a car would turn and drive down the hill beside her house, and its headlights would slide over the ceiling. She missed her family and had only spoken to her parents once since the whole Harriet thing had happened. That’d been on Sunday. Four days ago. She’d promised them a follow-up phone call that she’d never delivered on, too afraid of what she might say, how she’d be liable to blurt out her lingering fears that this whole thing could be about her.

  Mike Nelson had told her that local police would be checking on her each night, at least driving past her building, even hanging around if time permitted. She hadn’t seen anyone so far that night.

  She rolled onto her side, looked at her phone sitting on the carpet. She was tempted to text Connor, but surely he was asleep. Maybe Lennox was up. He’d told her how he sometimes had trouble sleeping, but she worried a vibrating or chiming phone might wake him if he was actually getting some rest, and anyway he’d called in sick that day, presumably struck down by what had been going around.

  Time for a glass of warm milk; one of those silly things that sounded like hokum but with proven science behind it. Bobbi got up and left the bedroom, passing by the apartment door. The door was hung with about an inch to spare at the bottom.

  As she stepped past, she saw a shadow in the hall light sneaking beneath the door and heard a creak.

  She stopped cold, her heart beating hard again, listening for more. She thought maybe she heard the soft groan of a floorboard coming from a slightly different location. Someone was definitely out there. Gilbert? He lived on the first floor, but perhaps he’d come upstairs for some reason. Hunting for more trash to take to the curb? Or maybe it was her one third-floor neighbor, the apartment across the way…

  With no peephole in the door, Bobbi lowered to all fours, put her head to the floor, and peered through the gap.

  Nothing.

  No one standing there.

  She got back to her feet, hurried to the bedroom, and picked up her phone. She was about to call the police when she stopped, thinking it through. She’d seen enough of this behavior in her line of work to know what it was – she was behaving like a paranoiac. Gilbert had spooked her with his activity, and now she was jumping at phantom sounds.

  She kept the phone, though, dialed 911, and moved her thumb over the Call button as she left the bedroom. There was a reason she’d spent years learning self-defense. Not to be foolish, but to have the courage to stand up for herself, to fight back when necessary. First her brothers, then Jamie, and she wasn’t going to be pushed around any longer. She unlocked the door and pulled it open.

  Bobbi stepped into the hallway, her feet bare. There was only darkness in the gap at the bottom of the neighbor’s door; no one home. Then – a noise from her left, a bit of a scrape, and another creak. She thought the sound had drifted up from the floor below. Like someone who had been on her floor was going back down.

  Bobbi walked softly in that direction, thumb still poised to send the call. She grabbed the banister and swung around to the steps, started down, her feet light. She reached the second floor, stopped, and listened. It sounded like someone was still one floor below her. She moved down the hallway to the next flight of stairs, checking the two apartment doors as she passed, these doors not hung as high but still dark around the seams, no TV noise or anything indicating a neighbor awake. As she started down the next flight of stairs, she thought she heard the front door to the building shut. If it was Gilbert, he’d gone back outside.

  The door to his apartment on the first floor was closed, his TV on but muffled – it sounded like Sports Center or something. Was he in there? Had he gone outside? Was it someone else?

  She moved to the front door, cautious, willing herself steady. She brought the phone to her ear, opened the door with her free hand, and looked out. There were three steps and a walkway bisecting the shabby excuse for a front lawn with its dirt and bits of crabgrass. No one out there; no one on the street. Maybe they’d hooked around the building and gone into the alley where she’d first seen Gilbert.

  Keeping the phone to her ear, Bobbi took that direction, reached the mouth of the alley, then stopped. It sounded like a door closed on the church.

  Someone from the frigging church?

  She dared to get closer. The door was thick wood, a half-circle of stained glass at the top, and she found it locked. She left the alley and returned to the street, looked along the row of parked cars including her own Honda CR-V, and still saw no one.

  The other way, past the church and the school, a vehicle slipped past. She listened to the murmur of its engine fade as it headed toward Main Street, then everything was quiet.

  Her NASA T-shirt clung to her skin with all the heat and sweat. She turned around to head back inside, stopped short, her breath catching, heart in her throat.

  Gilbert was standing in the doorway she’d just come through, looking confused. Bobbi almost pressed the Call button but exhaled, lowered the phone, and moved down the walkway, stopped a few yards away from him. “Hi, Mr. Gilbert. Were you just upstairs, on the third floor?”

  He had a sagging face – pouches beneath his eyes big enough to store pennies, cheeks that hung like basset hound jowls. He did a slow shake of his head. “No.”

  “Okay… well, I heard someone up on my floor. Then it sounded like they went out the front – did you hear them?” She got a little closer. “Like, before I came downstairs, did you hear anything?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was baritone. He wore jeans and an old button-down shirt, like it was the middle of the day, and fifty degrees instead of eighty-five. He filled the doorway, blocking her entry. She said, “I heard you – you were taking out your trash. And I went to the kitchen to… I thought I heard someone in the hallway outside my do
or…”

  He just blinked at her, like he had no idea what she was referring to.

  “… and I thought maybe I heard them come downstairs,” she finished.

  He said, “Door down here is locked.” He meant the door he was standing beside.

  “I know it is,” Bobbi said. “Or supposed to be. But… maybe you left it open by mistake? Or maybe you, um…? What about the back door?”

  Gilbert studied her, and she grew self-conscious, suddenly aware she wasn’t wearing a bra, just the T-shirt and these lightweight pants, and she crossed her arms over her breasts.

  He’s big, this guy. He’s massive.

  “The back door is locked from the outside, no key.” Gilbert turned and regarded the door beside him. He seemed to do everything in slow motion. He touched the doorknob with a calloused finger, pressed the locking catch in and out a couple of times. “This is old, though, can just slip a credit card in there or something and pop it.”

  “Okay. Well the property manager never told me that.” She tried a laugh to lighten the mood but it felt brittle.

  “We had this place broken into before,” Gilbert said. “They didn’t get anything, just urinated in the hallway.”

  She paused. “Someone broke in? Peed in the hallway?”

  He nodded, slowly as everything else.

  “How long have you lived here?” she asked. “We’ve never really been introduced. I’m Bobbi.” She held out her free hand, still gripping the phone in her other and hugging her chest with her arm.

  He looked at her outstretched hand then shook it. For the size and roughness, his grip was like a little old lady’s, and brief. “Frank. I been here fourteen years. My name is on my door.”

  “So, one break-in in fourteen years? I guess that’s not too bad.”

  “Two. That I know of.”

  “Okay. Still pretty good.”

  A car turned in from Saranac Ave and headed down their street, both of them watching it pass, Bobbi staring a little at the driver, who was just a dark shape.

  Someone had been outside her door. She was 100 percent sure of it.

  Okay, ninety-five.

  “Alright,” Bobbi said, and Gilbert seemed to get the picture. He faded back into the building, clearing the way. She offered a smile in passing, said, “Good night. Sorry if I disturbed you.” She felt like adding, Even though you were out there rattling around like a lunatic.

  And even if you’re freaking me out a little bit.

  “Good night,” he said. Then, as she was about to climb the first flight of stairs, he asked in a quiet voice, “You going to call the police?” He was staring at her phone.

  “I’ll talk to them,” Bobbi said. “I know a state police investigator. I’ll mention it to him. Good night.”

  She hurried back to her floor, feeling safer but still vigilant, and when she reached her door, she turned over her feet to give the bottoms a look, the skin gray with dirt. She considered a shower but thought it might just wake her up even more.

  The door was ajar. She’d hurried out and hadn’t locked it behind her. Or the front door, when she’d gone over to the church. Someone could have slipped into her apartment when she was out.

  “Hello?” She heard the fear in her voice then spoke again, louder and with more authority, not worrying about her neighbors anymore. “Jamie? Jamie… come on. Are you in there?”

  She waited, listening while she remained in the hallway. She could just hear Gilbert’s television downstairs. She had the phone ready again, but she still had nothing; her neighbor confirmed he’d been moving around, and anything else could’ve been invented in her own mind.

  “Is someone in there? I have my phone and I’m ready to call the police.”

  Bobbi backed away. A floorboard groaned under her weight, giving off the same sound she’d heard before. She hurried down the hallway to the stairs, took them two at a time. Then she halted, listening again, waiting for that telltale creak of the floorboard as Jamie, or whoever it was, slipped out of her apartment, coming after her…

  Nothing.

  Down another flight, back to the first floor now, standing in front of Frank Gilbert’s door. She knocked. She took a long, deep breath through her nose, let it out. Knocked again, more urgently. She heard shuffling, then the lock, and the door swung open. Gilbert stood there with a blank expression.

  “Hi,” she said in a volume just loud enough to be heard above the TV. “I promise you I’m not crazy, but someone might be in my apartment. Would you… Could you come have a look with me, just to be sure? I’m really sorry to bother you…”

  She tried on a smile. Gilbert stared down at her then looked over his shoulder, walked to the TV, shut it off. She got a glimpse of his apartment – not what she’d expected. Everything was very neat, lots of books, an expensive-looking computer on a desk in the corner. He might’ve been odd but she decided Gilbert was harmless.

  He came walking back in this stiff sort of gait he had, where his arms didn’t swing. “Let’s take a look,” he said.

  She found herself nervously prattling as she climbed the stairs ahead of him, explaining to him over her shoulder that she wasn’t prone to this type of behavior, this was really something of an anomaly, but with what had recently happened to one of her co-workers, she wasn’t taking any chances.

  They reached her floor. Since she’d gone down to Gilbert’s, no one had tried to leave the building, and so if someone was in her place, he had to still be in there – they had him trapped.

  Her door was still about six inches ajar. With Gilbert looming over her shoulder, she pushed it open the rest of the way.

  The apartment was as she’d left it, lights turned off but illuminated in gray and dark blue tones, amber splashes from the street light nearby. Jolyon’s graphic novel lay forgotten on the living room floor. She checked the bedroom with caution, including the big closet, then the bathroom between the bedroom and living room, flicked on the light, even slurped a breath and drew open the shower curtain. She moved to the kitchen, passing Gilbert – who stayed just inside the doorway – glanced in the kitchen, then to the far end of the living room, and finally circled back.

  “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Thank you so much.”

  “Not a problem,” he said in that deep voice. “You should…”

  He trailed off, looking past her. She followed his line of sight through the living room windows and beyond the stone church, where her street intersected with Saranac Avenue.

  A figure stood beneath the street light. He was looking in their direction, no question. Bobbi moved toward the window, and he jerked into motion as if he saw her, too. Then he hurried away.

  Twenty

  She was tough, that Bobbi. Which was part of what made her so tantalizing, but not because she was actually tough. She wasn’t. Chicks like her liked to think they were tough, they tried to convince themselves, but it was laughable nonsense. What was the saying? “Feminism: strong, smart, and independent until things get a little bit difficult.”

  What made her tantalizing was that she thought she was something extra special, just like Alison Hadley. And just like Hadley, she’d decided she was too good for him, too. Bobbi had slipped through his grasp once, but she wouldn’t again.

  He walked the dark streets, once again pleased how things took shape. It was hard when you were a young man – a few people might remind you that being normal was unexciting, that being different was being superior, but it still hurt, it was still a lonely road.

  And the people who said that had their little place in society all carved out. It was easy for them; it hadn’t been easy for him. He’d discovered too soon that the world was a selfish place full of selfish people, that in the name of a better society, people played God. But then, everyone went home at night and who did they care about? They cared about themselves. The rest were lies, lies and masks he could clearly see through and had been able to see through for some time.

  He stepped to
the water’s edge and looked out over its black surface. Maybe he was shining the light on a problem that plagued humanity.

  But, then, that would be his own ego getting in the way of things, tainting things, just like their egos did. No, the point here was not his own exultation. The point was to…

  * * *

  He stopped, once more having lost the thread of his own consciousness, and realized he’d waded into the water and was standing up to his knees. That smell was back, the stink of something chemical, burning in his nostrils, twisting in his stomach. He bent toward the water and threw up, then swirled it clear with his foot. He checked to make sure no one was watching; no one had been. It was late, or maybe early, and it was time to set things in motion again.

  He grew excited: This next step was going to be something almost religious.

  * * *

  “Okay,” Mike said, “where are we at?” He was tired; sleep hadn’t come easy the night before. Today marked a week since Harriet Fogarty had been discovered. It felt like the case had multiple identities, only one of them true. Or none of them, which was depressing to consider.

  Murders in the red longer than a week rarely got solved.

  He was gathered with Lena and her chief of police, Brewer. Reggie Hume, his BCI supervisor, was on the phone from Albany. Mike had it on speaker.

  “We’ve got a couple of main directions on this thing,” Mike said. “One, I got a call early this morning from Bobbi Noelle, who says she had an intruder at her apartment last night. So that whole line of inquiry might be top drawer again; I sent a trooper over there this morning to have a look, and I’m going to talk to Noelle as soon as I can.”

  “She thinks it was Rentz?” Hume asked.

  “First she thought it was her neighbor, mucking around, but then she was with him when she saw someone down the street, she says, looking at the building, then moved off. She couldn’t offer much for a physical description, he was about 100 yards away. Maybe he had a lot of hair, she says. If it was Rentz, his appearance may have changed.”