I wave at him and knock on the driver’s side window, but he ignores me and shifts the car into reverse.
I tap on the hood loud enough for him to press the break. His lips are moving, regrettably cussing me under his breath. I press my police badge against the glass.
He puts the car in park and removes his sunhat, scratching his head and casting me a brief glance. When he turns away, I notice him closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath, debating whether or not to talk to me or drive away.
Eventually, he powers down the window and glances in my direction without making eye contact. He’s waiting for me to speak, holding his hat on his lap and fiddling with the frayed ends of it.
I lean in and say, “Mr. Redding, I’m Officer Jack Ballinger.”
“I’m in a hurry, Officer.”
“This won’t take long.”
He waits for me to continue. “By any chance, would you have a key to Cora Findings’ apartment?”
“Hasn’t there been enough police activity around here?”
“Two people are dead,” I start to say.
“I know it. I’m getting death threats and half of my tenants are invoking their leases and moving out because of this shit show.”
“It’s procedure, sir,” I say. “I’m just doing my job.”
“Well, I’m about to lose mine if you don’t wrap this up quickly and keep the newshounds from writing anything else about my business.”
“I’ve got no control about what is printed, Mr. Redding. But I can assure you that I’m trying my best to get to the bottom of what happened.”
“Yeah. Well. You better do it fast.” He trails off and sits his hat rakishly atop his head, shifting in his seat and gripping the steering wheel. “I don’t need any more negative publicity.”
“The faster we move to solve the case, the quicker it will be over, and you can go on with your life.”
“All this murder will be the death of my job,” he says, swinging the door open and stumbling out, cane in hand.
“Do you need some help?” I ask, as he slams the car door and stumbles around me, limping back to his office thirty feet from where we’re standing.
He grunts and shakes his head at me, waving his cane in the air as if signaling the start of bad things to come.
We are not inside his cluttered office more than five minutes before I start sneezing and coughing from the heavy dust motes flying through the confined space.
He opens a desk drawer and rummages inside it, pulling out a ring of silver and gold keys. His hands are gnarled with arthritis. I ask if I can assist him.
He ignores me, lamenting about my intrusion, and finally removes a rigid old gold key and tosses it across his desk for me to catch.
Shutting the desk drawer hard, he ambles past me to the front door. “You’ve made me late, Officer. Follow me. And close and lock the door behind you.”
I palm the key and follow him in his tracks back out to the end of the driveway, shutting and locking the office door as instructed.
As he struggles to get back into his seat behind the steering wheel, moving the seat backward to make room for his paunch belly, he yells at me across the yard before closing the door and driving off, “Return the key to my mailbox outside my office door when you’re done!”
* * * *
I climb the stairs to the second floor and walk to the end of the hall to Ms. Finding’s apartment.
Turning to the other closed doors behind me, I begin to wonder if anyone had seen anything from behind their peepholes when the two victims died.
I pull the key out from my pocket and slide it into the door slot, turning it and waiting for it to click before I grip the cold handle and swing the door open.
My arrival interrupts somebody already inside the apartment, and I reach for my gun in my holster, hearing movement coming from somewhere in the curtain-drawn room, blocking out the morning light.
I yell, “Police,” then hear shuffling and a door sliding open. I race into the dark apartment, running my hand over the wall for a light switch. “Police! Stay where you are.”
A long shadow falls across the back wall as I bump into the edge of a table and knock something to the floor. The carpet muffles the sound of the crash, and breaks the fall.
I run to the balcony window, the floor-length curtain dancing in the summer breeze like a flailing ghost. I run outside and notice a shadowy figure climbing down to the ground and landing with a thud, moaning as he jumps into a rhododendron bush.
His voice is loud and deep and familiar, and he is agile.
“Stay there!” I yell, aiming the gun below.
I can see the intruder as he makes a break for it, staying close to the edge of the property, then he is out of my sight, hidden beneath the awning of the apartment building.
As I lean over the railing, I glimpse the figure running through the thicket of pine trees at the end of the property, a baseball cap pulled over his face, concealing his features.
But the limp in his gait triggers a niggling reaction I had seen in my partner Ryan’s movements when I watched him walk away after declining his offer to meet up with him for a beer.
I smell pipe smoke in the air as I wander around Ms. Finding’s apartment, looking for clues from the intruder’s break-in.
Except for the fallen flower vase I had knocked to the floor, there is nothing else out of place.
Nothing I notice.
Except!
Wait a minute.
I navigate through the apartment, detecting the scent of a dog in every room, my eyes watering and itchy from the animal’s hair, fighting to dispel a sneeze.
In the victim’s bedroom, I notice the jars and bottles of face powders and night creams and arthritis ointment strewn across her bureau.
Orange prescription bottles lie on the carpet by the queen size bed, blue and yellow and white pills spilled across the floor.
The room looks like it has been ransacked, like someone was looking for something.
Except when I examine closer and notice a dark spot absorbed into the plush carpet.
I bend down to touch the pocket of gold-colored carpet in the corner, and when I lift my hand to the bright light streaming into the room from the sliding glass door, my fingertips are stained with blood.
Chapter 9
In the car, I call Ryan’s number again but it goes straight to voicemail.
Frustrated, I hang up and toss the cell phone into the passenger seat. I drive three blocks from Firewood Road to the county hospital.
I park the department’s cruiser in a one-hour space in front of the building and head inside. I check with the medical examiner’s secretary, Malloy Lane, at the front desk and slide my badge across the counter at her.
She takes the badge in her wrinkled hand, examines it through her glasses, and flashes me a white, toothy smile. She picks up the phone, and in a hushed tone, I hear her tell M.E. assistant Emmett Carlson, “There’s a police officer to see you.”
She hangs up and passes me a clipboard to sign my name.
As she nods, her double chin waddles, and she points down the hall, handing me back my badge. “Last door at the end of the hall. Then take the stairs down to the ground floor. Mr. Carlson will meet you outside the elevators.”
Visiting morgues is the worst part of the job for me.
But today, I am here on my own accord, trying to piece together a few loose ends.
Dr. Carlson is waiting for me when the elevator doors slide open and I step out into a blazingly bright hall. He is wearing a white lab coat and a pair of goggles around his neck.
He reaches out his hand for me to shake.
I take it and pump hard.
“What can I do for you, Officer Ballinger?” he asks, as the elevator doors close and he leads me down the hall to his office.
He motions for me to take a seat, but I tell him I can’t stay long.
“What can I do for you?” he repeats, fingering his gray goatee and taking a s
eat behind his enormous wooden desk.
The air inside the cube-size office smells strangely like gingerbread and is too warm and claustrophobic for my taste. I am sweating under my uniform and at the back of my neck where I can’t reach the annoying itch beneath the shirt collar.
“I’m here regarding the death of Ms. Cora Findings. You picked up her body this morning.”
“Ah, yes.” He leans forward on his table and interlaces his bony fingers together, gazing up at me with a lazy eye.
“Have you performed an autopsy on her yet?” I ask.
“Actually, I finished an hour ago.”
“Do you have a time of death?” I walk to the edge to the filing cabinet next to the door and lean against it.
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind if I have a look at the report?”
He shrugs, and pushes away from his desk to stand. “I don’t see why not,” he says, grunting and complaining about getting older. “What exactly are you looking for?”
I hedge. “I might’ve missed something in my report. I’m just covering all bases.”
“Here you are, young man,” he says, handing me a two-page report. “It’s a tragedy, ayuh.”
I study the pages carefully in hopes I will find what I’m looking for. I should not be surprised when I find it, but I am, and it changes everything.
* * * *
By late afternoon, after running errands around town, I drive to my apartment to shower off the smell of the dead and leave a message for Steve. I tell him I miss him and hope everything is fine. “Please call me. I want to hear your voice.”
At my apartment door, as I’m fishing out my keys in my coat pocket, I hear the sound of a door opening behind me. I turn to see my neighbor Miles staring at me from his doorway.
“Hello again, Miles,” I say, sliding the key into the lock.
“How’s the investigation going?” he asks, still dressed in his threadbare bathrobe.
“We haven’t arrested anybody yet, if that’s what you’re asking.” I turn the doorknob.
“It’s a real shame, if you ask me. Two lives ruined.” He makes a clicking noise with his tongue.
“We’ll catch whoever is responsible.”
“I don’t doubt you. If I was a betting man, I’d say that you’d be the one to catch the killer.”
“Thanks. I think.” A pause, then, “Well…”
“Wait,” he says, stepping out into the sun-spilled hallway, looking left to right and lowering his voice as if worried someone might overhear him.
“What’s wrong, Miles?”
He looks frightened, his eyes bulging in terror.
I’ve seen that look before.
“There was a man here earlier,” he says, pointing at my door.
Again?
My hand tightens around the door handle, and I turn to it.
Sheridan.
“He didn’t stay long,” Miles says. “I only saw him briefly. His shadow, I mean. Not his face.”
My heart is pounding as I listen to Miles tell his story. I nod and thank him. “What would I do without you, Miles?”
“We keep each other safe, right?”
I wonder how much of his imagination is distorted by all the horror movies he’s watched.
“I do my best, and I appreciate it.” I jerk my head toward his apartment. “You better get back inside where it’s warmer.”
I feel a cold draft coming from somewhere.
“Be safe out there,” Miles says to me, turning and heading back to his door.
I hear the door closing and the clinking of a chain locking.
I take a deep breath before swinging my apartment door open and aiming my gun out in front of me.
It’s not Sheridan I worry about as I step into my kitchen, but a white envelope lying on the floor with my name written across the front of it that is unsettling.
* * * *
After looking around the apartment and making sure the balcony doors are locked, I examine the plain white envelope, turning it over, looking for a return address.
My name is the only thing written on the envelope in a black Sharpie, the hasty scrawl of a five-year-old.
It is sealed, and I think about fingerprinting the paper for evidence, but tear the seal and pull out a crinkled sheet of paper from inside. I unfold it.
We need to talk. Call me.
Ryan.
* * * *
When I get Ryan on the phone, I am not only surprised, but I can barely hear him over the booming sound of music in the background. It is the same spotty reception I heard when I answered the anonymous call earlier that morning.
“Ryan, I can’t hear you,” I say, walking around my apartment for clearer reception.
“I need to see you.” He sounds drunk.
“Where are you? Are you all right?”
“I need to talk to somebody.”
Through the blaring TV and rowdy voices in the background, my tone rises to an uncomfortable octave in order for him to make out what I’m saying. “Where are you?”
“Snake Eyes.”
I stare out the sliding glass doors to a day awakening in blinding gold light and a dazzling sunshine peeking through oaks and sycamores in the front yard.
I close my eyes to my former partner slurring his words. “I need to see you,” he says over and over.
I settle into a deep trance after listening to his repetitive voice, and I see Steve’s face interrupting my thoughts, and the dead stare of Cora Findings staring at me from within the dark corridors of my mind.
It can’t be, I tell myself, thinking back to Ms. Finding’s autopsy report.
Ryan yanks me out of my daze and back into the ambiguous dream of our conversation. “Yes, I’m here,” I say. “I’ll be right there. Don’t leave.”
“I’ve got nowhere else to go,” he says, stammering.
I hang up, rush out the door, and lock the apartment behind me.
Chapter 10
I arrive at the small, dingy bar on Clifton Street where college students hang out when they’re not in class or studying.
I’ve tossed back an occasional beer at the hole-in-the-wall bar before retreating back to my apartment to drink alone, drowning in self-pity.
I find Ryan hunched over a bar stool at the counter when I enter the near empty saloon near the downtown Post Office and the housing project apartments.
A pungent smell of booze and body odor assault me as I take a seat next to Ryan.
“Looks like you’re getting an early start,” I say, waving off the burly bartender who slides a napkin in front of me and asks for my order.
A line of a dozen shot glasses sits atop the counter’s edge, and the shaggy-haired man goes back to drying them, one by one, staring up at flat screen TV behind the bar, engrossed in a college football game.
I lean against the bar and turn to my former partner. “I’ve been trying to call you,” I say. “I’m worried about you.”
His eyes are bloodshot and heavy and glassy from too much alcohol. He smells ripe and in desperate need of a hot shower, a good night’s sleep, or a shoulder to lean on.
He looks like he needs to confess something to me.
His right hand shakes as he lifts a shot glass that looks like it is filled with vodka. A wince on his pasty face confirms my intuition as he empties the glass, and slams it down, raising a finger to signal the bartender for another drink.
“What happened?” I ask him.
He waits for the bartender to pour him another drink before he answers me.
The bartender is tattooed in elaborate tats from his football-thick neck down to his hairy arms, the designs in the shapes of stars and snakes.
I watch Ryan sinking into a sorry state of depression as he empties the glass and gestures the bartender for another. He smacks his lips, and reaches across the empty space between us, slapping my shoulder.
“I’m not cut out to be a cop,” he says.
I look at him,
surprised. “That’s the booze talking, not you.”
It comes out of nowhere when he slams his fist on the counter, and the impact urges me to sit up straighter on my stool.
Glasses clink and the salt-and-pepper shakers shift in their metal racks in front of us.
I notice the bartender glancing at us and turning back to the football game, unperturbed, as if he is used to inebriated customers.
The three sixty-something-year-old gentlemen with protruding beer guts sitting at one of the tables behind us are oblivious to Ryan’s outburst, their slurred voices distorted with talk and laughter as they share dirty jokes.
“What’s going on?” I ask. “I’m really concerned.”
“You’ve already said that,” he says, signaling for another drink.
I wave at the bartender not to approach us. “Maybe it bears repeating,” I say, vying for my buddy’s attention. “You’re my friend. You can tell me anything.”
The skin around his knuckles is broken, raw with dried blood. “What happened to your hands?” I ask.
He burps, and his face twists into an ugly grimace. “Heartburn,” he whispers, as he reaches for a glass in front of him.
“Ryan?”
He clears his throat. Swallows. “I punched a wall,” he says.
“Where?”
“My apartment.”
“Why?”
He struggles with the water glass.
I help him, sliding it across the counter into his shaky hand. “We’ve been good friends for a long time, Jack.”
He gulps the water down and beads of it trickle down the side of his quivering chin. He empties the glass and slams it down on the counter, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “I used to love drinking with you after our shifts,” he says. “It was a fucking release from the stress of the job.”
I touch his arm and give him a manly pat so he doesn’t get the wrong impression.
“But I can’t handle the job anymore,” he says. “The long hours. The stress.”
“I thought you were pissed off with me when I turned you down for a drink.”
His head is too heavy to hold up, I notice, and his eyes start to close.
I look around the room, but nobody, even not the bartender, notices us. I whisper to Ryan, “Let’s go. I’ll take you home.”
Past Sins Page 7