Perhaps I hadn’t looked at him either, concentrating on the information rather than the man, both then and now. But I didn’t know that this was the time for a look-see, standing this close, tensed for what I would see when he opened the door, Brody looking right at me.
“I’m just telling you to be careful,” he said. I could smell his last cigarette, the coffee he’d had at his desk or on the way here. And something else, something that triggered a memory I couldn’t quite retrieve. A door opened on the floor above us but it didn’t close and there were no footsteps either. Brody leaned closer. “Don’t let him rush you,” whispering now. “He’s going to try. When you’re ready to let him get his things, it might be a good idea to have your husband here with you, not be here alone.”
“He’s dangerous, this—what did you say his name was?”
“He’s used a variety of street names. When he called it in, he told the responding officers his name was Parker Bowling. But he’s also been known as Dick Parker, Richard Lee Bowling and Parker Lee.”
“Is he a suspect?”
“There’s been no crime.”
The door upstairs closed. We heard the cylinder turn over, the security chain go on.
“I’m just letting you know that he’s not a trustworthy individual, Mrs. Alexander. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It’s Ms.,” I told him, regretting it immediately. He’d been fishing and I’d taken the bait.
“Alexander’s not your married name?” Glancing at the hand holding the leash.
“You said ‘he called it in,’ Detective. You mean the accident? Does that mean he was here when it happened?”
“Actually, no. He claims he went out early to meet a friend. When he came home a few hours later, he found Tim and called 911.”
“He must have been pretty upset.”
Brody nodded. “Yes, ma’am. Who wouldn’t be?”
“Was he…?”
Brody didn’t seem to be listening. He reached into his pocket and took out a card, pulling out a pen and writing something on the back of it.
He was bigger than me, somewhat taller, lots more muscular, his jacket a little tight in the shoulders. I could see where his holster was, pushing at the fabric from underneath. Jacket and tie, I thought, even in the heat of summer. His neck was wide, but not like a football player’s. His hair was a mousy shade of brown, cut short, standing up straight like newly mowed grass. When he looked up, I saw that his eyes were brown, but not that deep, dark brown that looks almost black. His were a more washed-out shade, like the freckles some dogs have on their chests and paws, but with flecks of green in it. Old eyes, older than the man. And there was gray at his temples, too, though he looked to be in his mid-forties, and gray in his whisk-broom mustache, trimmed neatly above the line of his mouth.
“I can be here with you when you decide to let Mr. Bowling come to collect his things.” Very businesslike now. “If you’d rather not be here alone.”
“I wouldn’t be,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll have Dashiell.”
I looked down. Dashiell looked up and wagged his tail. Then he looked at the door to O’Fallon’s apartment. I felt the same way. The hallway was starting to feel too small for two people and a large dog. There was no air circulating and the round fluorescent ceiling light made everything appear slightly green. Even Dashiell looked sickly in O’Fallon’s hallway. Besides, if I was going to do this, I wanted to get started. I bent and began to unhook Dashiell’s leash.
“Is this okay?” I asked.
“As long as he doesn’t disturb anything.”
“He won’t,” I told him, wondering what there was that Dashiell might disturb.
“How much time do I have today?”
“Whatever you need,” he said, unlocking the door, both locks with the same key, and pushing it open. That was a New York trick—two locks to deter a would-be thief, only one key to carry. Brody stepped out of the way to let me go in first, but of course it was Dashiell who rushed ahead, walking onto the faded Oriental rug and stopping cold a moment later, his mouth open, swallowing the air.
I tasted the air, too. Something like Lysol. Whatever it was, it was overwhelming, used, I was sure, to mask another odor. Still, that was underneath the chemical smell, something metallic and gamy, a smell that brought the food I’d eaten a couple of hours earlier back up to my throat. I thought I could smell smoke, too, the stale odor you get in a place where someone has a long-term habit, or after a politically incorrect party, everything monitored nowadays, even your bad habits. I could see a few ashtrays from where I stood, emptied but not washed. But the odor was faint and I wasn’t sure that was the source of the smell. It might have come from Brody, who was standing right behind me.
I stepped into O’Fallon’s living room, a book-lined room with an old, worn, oversized, cloth couch with loose back-and side pillows, a plaid blanket lying over the back of it; an oak desk piled with folders and papers; framed photos on every inch of the walls. There were plants everywhere, too, some thriving, others having seen better days, like the couch. I noticed a plastic dinosaur in the dirt of one of the larger ones, an old corn plant that stood in a corner near the windows. There were books piled on the floor, stacks near the desk, and more near the old couch. There was a winter coat over the arm of the couch. What was that about in all this heat? Smack in the middle of the room, there was a gym bag, its contents bulging, the zipper half open. The Oriental rug had a few worn spots, and in front of the couch a flat patterned kilim lay on top of it, another small rug in front of the daybed, which was against the front wall, under the windows. There were a small TV, a radio, an ancient teddy bear with black buttons for eyes, all on one of the wider bookshelves. A cool north light came in through the shutters that covered the front windows, the bottoms closed and latched, the tops partly open, the light spilling through the slats making lines on the carpet and up the wall of closets that divided this part of the apartment from the back.
Someone had done an amazing job, I thought. Where was the blood spatter, the amoebalike stain on the rug? Where was the shattered wall? I looked at Brody. He was leaning against the wall near the doorway, staring straight ahead. I decided not to ask him anything just yet. Perhaps that was why the blanket was over the couch, I thought. Or perhaps that was the reason for that second rug in front of the couch, taken from the entranceway and put there to cover the place where O’Fallon’s life had leaked from his body.
But that couldn’t be. Dashiell had gone nowhere near that rug, nor had he paid any attention to the couch. In fact, he was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he was in the kitchen, at the south end of the apartment, looking for water. And then I heard him sneezing, clearing his nose for an odor that interested him, the sound coming from the west end of the kitchen, the part I couldn’t see. Perhaps the accident had occurred there, O’Fallon sitting at the kitchen table with his cleaning kit and his gun, distracted by grief, careless in the most unforgiving way. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d left a roast in the oven, I thought, chiding myself silently for being irreverent.
Brody stayed where he was, near the doorway, while I walked around, getting a feel for the place. I sat at the desk for a while, looking through the folders, all the paperwork I’d have to deal with as soon as the apartment was unsealed. I picked out a recent bank statement, his checkbook, a pile of bills that needed to be paid, and found an envelope to put them in. Then I noticed a briefcase leaning against the desk. I put the envelope in that and put the briefcase near the front door.
I looked at O’Fallon’s books—lots of technical manuals on crime-scene investigation, fingerprints, a book on interrogation, one on forensic pathology. There was a shelf of true-crime books as well—Ann Rule, Jack Olsen, James Ellroy, Philip Gourevitch, and three about the O.J. Simpson case. There were books on learning Spanish, a bartender’s guide, some old photo albums. I pulled one of the albums from the shelf and slipped it into the briefcase, look
ing at the pictures on his walls as I walked around, all those same kids whose photos were in his wallet. A family man. A serious cop.
Then I went to the kitchen to empty the refrigerator of all the perishables. No need to wait and make the cleanup any more difficult than it was going to be. Dashiell was in the kitchen, standing and staring at me, his brow lined. I felt the same way. What the hell were we doing here in this stranger’s house?
Brody had moved to the kitchen with me, perhaps as a silent way to remind me he was waiting, to hurry me along. There was no sign of violence in the kitchen either. I wondered if O’Fallon had used a small-caliber gun, if the bullet that did the damage had never exited his body and gone into a cabinet or the wall. You could easily clean the floor in here. Maybe that was it. Maybe that’s why Dashiell had come into the kitchen as soon as the door of the apartment was opened.
I took a bowl from the cabinet and filled it from a Brita pitcher standing on the sink, putting it down for Dashiell, but he never touched it. I opened the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a couple of D’Agostino bags for the garbage. Then I took everything that would spoil, if it hadn’t already, out of the refrigerator and put it all in the bags, tying the handles on top twice to make sure things stayed put. Last, I took the watering can off the sill so that I could take care of the plants. There were beer bottles on the sill, too, and empties all over the counter and on the table—beer cans, liquor bottles, wine bottles. The sink had dishes in it and not just one night’s dinner dishes. Pots and pans and plates and glasses were piled almost to the tap. I imagined that washing those would fall to me now. Unless I merely pitched them out, too. I remembered that when Lili and I were doing my mother’s apartment, the longer we worked, the more readily we threw things away, anxious to be done with it, to breathe the air outside, eat pizza, make love, anxious not to be thinking about death.
I headed for the bathroom to fill the can in the bathtub. That’s when Brody moved. Fast.
“Rachel, wait!” His hand on my arm. I turned to face him. “Don’t go in there.” Grim, he was. I turned again, to look at the closed bathroom door, then back to look into Michael Brody’s brooding eyes.
“He was cleaning his gun in the bathroom?”
Brody took the watering can from my hand. “We can get water in the garden,” he said. “There’s a hose.”
I was going to tell him we could use the Brita pitcher to water the plants. What difference did it make now? Instead, I said, “Why don’t we just take the plants out.”
I put the can back where it had been. Brody picked up an angel-wing begonia from the kitchen sill, its cheerful pink flowers at odds with the reason we were here. He put it on the round table near the second door and went back for another plant. Without speaking, we gathered the rest of the small plants. Then Brody opened the door, unlocked the garden door, propping each open with a plant. I began taking the small plants out while Brody went back to the living room for the big ones.
As I stood holding a coleus and a wandering Jew that for some reason were sitting on the counter instead of hanging from the two hooks in the ceiling over the sink, looking for a good place to put them down, I thought I might suggest the neighbors adopt them sometime before the cool weather settled in. That’s when the garden door to the west opened and Jin Mei came out, Yin Yin in her arms.
“Oh, Rachel. You’re back so soon.”
And before I had the chance to tell her to shut up, wishing I could say it in Cantonese or Mandarin or whatever the hell she spoke so that I could get the message across surreptitiously, I could smell him behind me. Right behind me. There was Dashiell, too, going right up to Jin Mei, lifting his front paws off the ground so that he could stick his big nose in the little Abyssinian’s butt.
“We’re bringing Tim’s plants out,” I said. Not knowing what else to say. Not wanting to turn around and look at old stone face. “I thought perhaps the people who share the garden might take a few each at the end of the summer.”
Jin Mei nodded. Her straw hat bobbed. Her mouth trembled and for a moment I thought she was going to cry. “Tim promised that when the time came for me to meet my ancestors, he would find a good home for Yin Yin. Now I have to find someone else to do that. It’s good Tim’s plants have you to make sure they get a good home.”
When all the plants were placed out in the garden, with Jin Mei’s considerable input, I walked back inside, Dashiell following, Brody bringing up the rear. I still hadn’t looked him in the eye. I’d only glanced at the ground as he passed me with the corn plant, noticing that the shine on his shoes had gotten messed up by the wet soil in the communal garden. I wondered if he’d noticed. But he probably shined them every night, no matter what.
When he closed the kitchen door, I could no longer hear the birds singing. And there was that smell again, reminding me of where I was, and why. The only sound in the house was the cylinder of the lock clicking into place. And the sound of Dashiell, his nose welded to the bathroom sill.
I followed Brody to the couch. We sat on opposite ends, as far apart as possible without breaking off the arms. I didn’t lean back on the blanket. Neither did he. As if death might be catching from the things the deceased had left behind. I thought I’d bring rubber gloves with me when I came back. I was sure I wouldn’t be sorry to have them.
“The apartment should be unsealed by late afternoon tomorrow,” he said. “Or Thursday at the latest. I’ll call you tomorrow and give you the exact time. It’ll be okay to”—he turned and looked toward the kitchen—“to use the bathroom then.”
“I only came by this morning to see where it was,” I said, my forehead as pleated as Dashiell’s gets. “I could see the garden from the front door, so I walked through. By. And went out. That’s how I met Jin Mei. I didn’t go into the apartment, of course.”
Brody nodded. “No problem.”
So why was I acting as if I’d been sent to the principal’s office? I wondered. He wasn’t even wearing a uniform, so it couldn’t be that.
“Isn’t what Detective O’Fallon did a bit unusual,” I said, “cleaning his gun in the bathroom rather than at his desk or at the table?”
“No, ma’am. Not particularly.”
“But…”
“One could sit on the edge of the tub, have the kit on the vanity, avoid the chance of getting oil on the carpet.”
One could? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“So you’re saying he was fastidious?”
“Ma’am?”
“Rachel’ll do,” I told him. “I was asking if he was…” And then I stopped, shook my head, changed my mind. I wanted to know which way he fell after he was shot, whether he fell backward and hit his head—and did it matter at that point?—or if he crumpled forward, landing on the bath mat or the tile, the gun skittering across the floor, stopping when it hit the door. But what difference did any of that make now? He cleaned his gun at the desk, he cleaned his gun in the bathroom. The man was dead. I needed to inform his sister of his untimely demise, get her here to pick up whichever of his possessions she wanted to keep, settle his estate and get on with my life. I didn’t need to be here torturing Brody with my questions. Except for one more.
“What’s with the gym bag?” I asked. “Was he going somewhere? I mean, was he planning to, before?”
“That’s Parker’s. Or so he says. When the uniforms arrived, he was busy packing that with his things.”
“Before they told him he had to leave?”
“Yes. And when one of the officers examined the contents of the bag, they found some things they suspected didn’t belong to Mr. Parker.”
“Such as?”
“A silver ashtray, some gold coins, two wristwatches, a small silver box with the initials ‘T.W.O.,’ and some clothes that may or may not have belonged to Parker.”
“And the winter coat?”
“I imagine he’d planned on taking that as well.”
“He and Tim were the same size?”
>
“Wouldn’t matter to Parker.”
“You mean he had sticky fingers? It was there, he’d take it.”
“Has sticky fingers,” he said. “Don’t turn your back when he’s here packing up. And don’t be afraid to question anything he claims is his. Anything you’re unsure of. Anything that has value.”
What difference would it make if he took Tim’s clothes? I thought. Tim didn’t need them any longer. But for Brody, it was the principle of the thing. So I didn’t bother to voice my opinion.
I stood and whistled for Dashiell. Brody stood as well. I picked up the briefcase and Dashiell’s leash. Brody took the garbage bags. I walked out ahead of him but he didn’t come right out. I waited on Horatio Street. I wasn’t sure why. It seemed the polite thing to do.
When he came out, a few minutes later, I opened a garbage can for him and he dropped in the bags. He’d bagged the empties, tying the tops of the bags as I had. It sounded like an explosion when they hit the can.
“If there’s anything else I can help you with, don’t hesitate to call me. I put my cell phone number on the back of the card I gave you. Don’t worry about the time. It’s always on.”
I took out one of my cards and gave it to Brody. “Same here,” I said. “My cell phone number’s on there, too, in case you think of anything else I should know.”
I turned to leave, but curiosity got the best of me once again.
“Was he your partner, Detective?”
He blinked once.
“No, Ms. Alexander. He wasn’t.”
He pointed east, his eyebrows raised. I shook my head and pointed west. I’m sorry for your loss, I thought as I watched him head up the block. I was, too. For all the loss he saw.
Even though it was out of the way, I headed toward the river. I’d wanted to get away from Brody and his unspoken grief. And from O’Fallon’s apartment. At the moment, I was wishing I weren’t quite so curious or quite so stubborn.
Walking south along the Hudson, the breeze felt good on my face. Dashiell seemed to have forgotten the scents that had wafted toward him from under O’Fallon’s closed bathroom door. He was now occupied with new smells, the air redolent of the fish and birds that populated the shoreline. My thoughts were still back in that apartment and I was barely aware of my surroundings. I didn’t think Brody was being particularly forthcoming with me, which came as no surprise. I hadn’t exactly been George Washington myself. Had Jin Mei not been out in the garden, I wouldn’t have mentioned having been there earlier. Nor had I bothered to mention Mary Margaret’s peculiar little note. I thought I’d speak to her first and find out what it meant, then tell Brody. Or not.
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