by David Bell
I parked in the tiny lot at the back of the building. It was dark by the time I returned home after my dinner with Paul. I was tired. The streetlights were coming on, their yellow glow leaking through the canopy of trees that grew over the back of the apartment building.
I never felt unsafe in my neighborhood, or anywhere in Dover for that matter. The town had its share of small crimes – cars got broken into; apartments and houses were burgled, usually when people forgot to lock their doors. Around campus, we experienced the typical array of drinking and drug arrests, but there were few assaults and almost never a murder.
But Mom’s death had put me on edge. On the drive home, I considered calling Dan or stopping by his place, which would inevitably lead to spending the night with him again – and not spending the night alone in my apartment. But a river of complications flowed from that one simple act, and I needed more than anything else to keep things as simple as possible. And I needed to not be a baby, to not let what happened to Mom filter into my mind so much that I started running scared and jumping at my own shadow.
So when I stepped out of the car into a surreally calm night, I told myself that it was my imagination, my own creeping fears and insecurities preying on me rather than any real disturbance or threat. But the area was dead quiet. Dead. None of the sounds that usually dominated the neighbourhood – music, conversation, cars – were there. And it was too early for things to be so quiet.
Why?
I looked all around me, swivelling my head like a soldier on combat patrol, as I moved to the side of the building where a rickety wooden staircase led to my apartment at the top. I cursed myself for not carrying pepper spray or having taken a self-defence class – all the things I was supposed to do as a young single woman living on her own in the big world. But my mother had lived the most cautious life imaginable. She locked every door and window and would never open her house to a stranger. Once darkness fell, she did everything in her power to not leave the house. And what had that prudence done for her?
A door slammed somewhere. It sounded as if it had come from behind me, from another building or maybe a car. I turned to look back but saw nothing. I had reached the base of the stairs and started up, hurrying as best I could while carrying my laptop bag and my books – my graduate student tools, the things I carried with me everywhere I went.
The staircase went up three storeys, zigzagging up the side of the building like in an Escher drawing. I reached the first landing and heard someone coming down towards me. Enough space existed for two people to pass without touching each other, but unconsciously I moved to the edge, towards the outer railing, when I heard the steps coming. The person was moving fast, faster than would be normal. I expected it to be one of my neighbours, one of the guys who lived below me who were always hustling off to a basketball game or the library. In the darkness the figure coming towards me looked big – short, yes, but hulking and big, his face obscured and turned away from me in the half light. He brushed past me, his left arm hitting mine and nearly knocking the bag out of my hand. The force of the contact spun me around a quarter turn, giving me a clear view of his departing back.
‘Hey!’ I said.
But he didn’t stop. He thumped down the stairs, his body just barely maintaining control and remaining upright. The body didn’t look as if it belonged to a student. It looked … older somehow. A professor at our building? Was he slumming?
The man disappeared into the night. I listened for the sound of a car door or engine, but it didn’t come.
‘Asshole,’ I muttered, then continued my trek to the top. And when I made it there, slightly out of breath, my arms weakened from hauling my gear, I understood why the man had been in such a hurry.
My door sat ajar, the wood around the lock splintered into hundreds of shards and pieces.
I didn’t enter my apartment, not alone. I turned and went back down the steps, only to reach the halfway point and realize that the man I’d passed – the one who was very likely responsible for breaking into my apartment – could be lingering at the foot of the stairs. Or somewhere in the darkness of the parking lot. I hadn’t heard a car start. Hadn’t heard anything to indicate he had left the scene.
I had no way of knowing whether he was the one who’d broken into the apartment. I’d been gone all day, and since my unit sat alone on the top floor, no one would have noticed the shattered door.
I went one floor below, to the two apartments beneath mine. I didn’t really know my neighbours. I suspected they were grad students just like me, given their ages and monklike habits. They were quiet as well, never disturbing me with loud music or parties. But I had spoken to a guy in one of the apartments. Once. A pipe beneath my kitchen sink had sprung a leak one night during the previous winter, causing water to run all over my floor and cascade into his apartment. Fortunately, he was home, and he came up and found the shut-off valve for the water. We didn’t say much to each other – what do you say to someone whose apartment you’ve just flooded? – but he seemed friendly enough. Polite at least. A little nerdy. A little awkward. Some kind of science grad student, I guessed at the time. Maybe engineering.
I knocked on his door, hoping like hell he’d be home. If he was, he was moving slowly, so I knocked again. I was ready to step over to the next apartment, where God knows who lived, when the door opened.
His brow furrowed when he saw me. I didn’t think he recognized me, and maybe he wondered what I was carrying in my arms and trying to sell on a fall evening. He looked ready to object, to send me on my way with a polite but stern ‘Thanks but no thanks,’ when some flicker of recognition crossed his face.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Do you live upstairs?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘Can I come in? My place has been broken into.’
I didn’t wait for an answer. I went inside and put my things down. I pulled out my phone and dialled 911, reporting the problem to the dispatcher, who asked me three times if I was someplace safe or in any immediate danger. The third time she asked I turned to my neighbour, who was standing in the same spot, his mouth slightly open, and asked, ‘She wants to know if I’m in any immediate danger now. Am I?’
He shook his head.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. I told her where I was so the police could find me when they arrived, and we ended our call. ‘They’re on their way,’ I said to the neighbour, the guy whose name I didn’t know.
‘Okay,’ he said.
He didn’t offer me a seat or a drink. I didn’t care. I asked, ‘Did you hear anything unusual upstairs today? My lock is totally shattered.’
He thought about the question for a minute, then said, ‘No, I didn’t hear anything. But I was gone most of the day. I had a lab. And tonight I had my headphones on.’
‘Physics?’ I asked.
‘Astronomy,’ he said. ‘I’m a TA for Professor Landon.’
Astronomy. Made sense.
‘Did you have a friend over here tonight?’ I asked. ‘Right before I came home?’
‘A friend?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘A friend. Or an acquaintance. Did you have someone to your apartment tonight?’
‘Are you suggesting I know the person who broke into your apartment?’ he asked, his back stiffening with indignation. Grad students could be touchy.
‘I passed a man on the stairs when I came home,’ I said. ‘A stocky little guy. I thought maybe he was here to see you.’
His posture eased. ‘No, he wasn’t. I’ve been alone.’
‘Is anybody home next door?’ I asked.
He looked at the wall as though he could see through it and into the next apartment. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s ever home.’
‘I guess I never see him either.’
‘He might have a girlfriend,’ my neighbour said. ‘I talked to him once. He’s getting a doctorate in English.’
It was then I realized my hands were shaking. Really shaking. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t
know what to do about anything.
My neighbour said, ‘So if the guy wasn’t here and he wasn’t next door, that means you probably passed the guy who broke into your apartment. You must have just missed walking in on him.’
‘That seems to be the case,’ I said.
Our conclusion didn’t do anything to slow my shaking, so I just waited for the police to arrive.
17
I met the police on the stairs outside my neighbour’s apartment. During the short minutes we waited, he and I managed to introduce ourselves to each other. His name was Jeff. I apologized again for the kitchen flood. He blinked at me a couple of times. I thought maybe he’d forgotten about it. Then he said, ‘You’re providing all the excitement for the building.’
The police – two young officers, both with crew cuts – told me to wait in Jeff’s apartment while they went and checked out my apartment. That was fine by me. When they were finished, they called me up to assess the damage.
Having never been burgled before, I didn’t know what to expect. My laptop went with me everywhere, and it mattered the most. I didn’t own expensive jewellery or rare antiques. My television was close to ten years old, and I rarely turned it on. When I stepped into the apartment, I saw a mess. That’s the simplest way to describe it. It looked like a small tornado had blown through, kicking up papers and knocking cushions off my love seat and chairs. The desk drawers had been yanked out and dumped. One of the cops emerged from the small bathroom and announced that the door to the medicine cabinet hung open, its contents scattered across the floor.
‘Meth heads,’ his partner said. ‘Do you see anything missing?’
I looked around the room. ‘Tidiness and order,’ I said.
‘Ma’am?’
‘I don’t see anything missing,’ I said.
‘The TV and DVD player are there.’ He looked around. ‘Phone. Toaster. Do you have a computer?’
‘A laptop. It was with me.’
‘Lucky. They take electronics and sell them to get money for drugs. Or they just steal drugs if you have them.’
‘I saw the man,’ I said. ‘I passed him on the stairs as I was coming home.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
I told them what had happened – the man passing me, bumping into me. His rush down the stairs. I told them he looked like an older man, not a junkie.
‘They come in all ages,’ the cop said. ‘Anything else you can tell us about him?’
I thought about it. ‘It was dark.’
‘Was he white or black? Anything?’
‘I really couldn’t tell,’ I said. ‘White, I guess.’
The other officer came out of the bathroom. They stood side by side, surveying the damage. They were both solidly built, former football players or marines or something. They looked like law enforcement bookends. Giant law enforcement bookends.
The one closest to me said, ‘Well, we can file a report. If nothing significant is missing, then you probably don’t want to bother your insurance company with it.’
‘I don’t have renter’s insurance,’ I said.
‘Then you should probably have your landlord get a locksmith over here,’ he said. ‘And have them put in a dead bolt this time. That lock you had was pretty flimsy. Especially if you’re living here alone.’
‘There’s something else,’ I said.
Both officers turned to listen to me.
‘My mother died – she was murdered this past weekend.’
I’d managed to say it out loud. Murdered. My mother. All in the same sentence to complete strangers.
Recognition crossed their faces. They must have heard about it. I was sure everybody in town knew.
‘Do you think the two could be related?’ I asked. ‘Someone kills my mother in her home, and then someone breaks into my apartment this way.’
The two officers nodded sympathetically. They seemed to be taking my concerns seriously and giving them their full weight. But I don’t think they bought into it.
‘I understand this is disturbing,’ one of them said. ‘Especially in light of such a tragedy. But these meth heads break into apartments all the time. We’ve had a little rash of them around the edges of campus lately. It happens. I don’t think it was directed at you.’
The other one said, ‘They were clearly just looking for something to sell to buy drugs.’
I looked around too. I agreed with them about one thing: whoever that man was, he was definitely looking for something.
18
Since I didn’t have a lock and not even much of a front door, and since someone seemed to think my home was a ripe hunting ground for whatever they were looking for – drugs or something else I couldn’t even imagine – I needed someplace to sleep. A call to Dan would provide the easiest solution. I knew he’d be only too happy to open his door – and his bed – to me. But easy didn’t always mean simple. And I worried about leading him on too much, making his life as well as mine more complicated.
So I called Paul and asked if I could spend the night in his spare bedroom. He readily agreed, and it was only when I showed up on his doorstep and saw him again, still looking tired and hangdog, that I wished I hadn’t bothered him. The stress of my mother’s death hung from him like heavy chains. I felt as if I’d just added a couple more links.
But I felt safe in his house. I locked the bedroom door when I went to bed and woke up every hour on the hour thinking someone was smashing the window to pieces and coming into the house after me. And once I woke up because I heard someone yelling from the other room. It was Paul, in the grip of some nightmare. I jumped up and went to his bedroom door, knocking lightly. When I called his name, he stopped yelling, but didn’t say anything else.
I stood there in the darkness, feeling very much like a lost and scared child. Two hours passed before I was able to fall back asleep.
Paul, the perpetual early riser, sat at the breakfast table when I walked into the kitchen the next morning. He looked showered and shaved, and some of the colour and vitality seemed to have returned to his cheeks. He smiled when he saw me and pointed to fresh bagels and a dish of fruit.
‘I have cereal and oatmeal if you want it,’ he said. ‘And there’s coffee made.’
‘Thank you.’
The bagel and coffee brought me back to life. I needed it. My eyes were raw and aching from a lack of sound sleep. My landlord was supposed to have the new lock – a dead bolt – installed early in the day. I hoped so, so I could take a nap later – if I could manage to sleep in my apartment again.
‘Sleep okay?’ Paul asked, although I suspected he knew the answer.
‘Could have been worse,’ I said. ‘How about you?’
‘Not too bad,’ he said.
I told him about his nightmare, and how I’d gone to his door and knocked until he stopped yelling. He listened to my story, his smile turning wry.
When I was finished, he looked more shaken than I would have predicted, and I wished I hadn’t told him. He said, ‘I’ve had quite a few of those dreams since … you know. I think in all of them your mom needs my help, and I can’t give it to her. Sometimes we’re kids in the dreams. It’s weird. The dreams are disturbing, but I almost like having them.’
‘Because she’s alive again,’ I said. ‘Even just in your head.’
Paul stood up and started doing the dishes. He didn’t say anything else and didn’t need to. We understood each other.
Paul promised to see Ronnie early that day. Not only did I have a stack of student essays to grade, which had been sitting in my briefcase since before Mom died, but I also woke up to two messages on my phone. One was Detective Richland asking me to call him back. I assumed the two officers who’d responded to the break-in at my apartment had told him about it, and he wanted to get the straight story himself.
The other call was from Mom’s attorney, Frank Allison. He too wanted me to call him back about, as he put it, a matter concerning my mother’s estate.
Estate, I thought to myself. Such an expansive word for describing the worldly possessions of someone who didn’t have that much. I thought Detective Richland’s call would be more complicated, so I called the attorney first. I hadn’t heard from my landlord about the lock. I opted to head to a local coffee shop and grade my papers there. I was on my way, cautiously driving with one hand on the wheel and holding the phone with the other, when I was connected with Mr Allison.
‘Ms Hampton?’
‘Yes?’
‘Sorry to bother you, but I wanted to touch base with you about filing your mother’s will.’
I skirted the edge of downtown and headed north towards campus and the Grunge, my preferred coffee and grading hideaway.
‘I know I have to do that,’ I said. ‘Everything’s been crazy.’
‘Oh, no, no,’ he said. ‘I’m not calling to put pressure on you.’ His voice practically boomed through the phone, his tone somewhere between commanding and jolly. ‘I just wanted to let you know about a phone call I received.’
‘Okay,’ I said as I slowed to allow pedestrians to pass in front of me. Classes were changing. It was close to nine, and the intersections around campus swelled with students. Traffic backed up at every crosswalk and corner.
Mr Allison continued. ‘Someone called, a woman, asking about Leslie Hampton’s will. At first I thought it was going to be you. Your mother named you executrix, after all. But it turns out it was someone asking if the will had been filed yet. Apparently this person thought she might be named in there and wanted to know if she could do anything to speed the process along. I guess she needs the money.’
‘Who was it?’ I asked.
‘She didn’t leave a name. All I could tell her was that the will hadn’t been filed for probate yet. You know, there’s no time limit on such things. But you may want to tell your relatives that you haven’t gotten around to it yet.’