by Jude Hardin
He climbed the stairs and walked to Anna’s door and rang the bell. No answer. He knocked, and then knocked louder, finally deciding that she must either be out of the apartment or a very sound sleeper.
Or intentionally avoiding him.
That was another possibility.
Maybe, after their date, she had run some sort of background check on Kei and had decided to bail before things went any further. Understandable, in a way, but Kei hoped that she would at least allow him explain the circumstances behind all of that before giving up on him forever. All he wanted was a chance.
He turned to walk away, and then he noticed that the front window of Anna’s apartment didn’t have any curtains. It wasn’t that they were drawn, or partially drawn. They just weren’t there. He cupped his hands against the window to block the reflection from the light over the stairwell, saw right away that the floors and walls were bare.
Miscellaneous bits of trash on the carpet, wires sticking out of the cable TV outlet.
Kei had stepped in for a couple of minutes when he picked Anna up for their date, and the apartment had been fully furnished at that time. In fact, Kei had made some sort of comment about it, complimenting Anna on her taste in décor.
Now the place was totally empty.
Kei stood there for a few seconds, trying to imagine how this could have happened. Anna hadn’t mentioned anything about moving. Seemed like she would have, but maybe not. Maybe she wanted to see how things went before revealing any details about an upcoming relocation. Then maybe she’d gotten scared off by the background check. If she’d done one. Which she probably had, Kei decided, the more he thought about it.
So that was that. Anna had changed residences and she wasn’t returning Kei’s calls and there was nothing he could do about it except move on.
And he would have. He would have given up right then if it hadn’t been for the old man at the hospital.
IT’S ME! ANNA!
TOMORROW LIKE YESTERDAY.
Kei had decided that the old man’s verbal and written attempts to reach out were nothing more than a series of strange coincidences from a fearful and confused mind. Kei the former physician had decided that. Kei the scientist. It was the only rational explanation.
But the fact that Anna had suddenly cleared out of her apartment made him start thinking about everything again. Was it possible that Anna had somehow communicated with the old man? Was she the one who needed help?
Not likely. In fact, it was so unlikely that Kei started wondering about his own thought processes over the past few days. It was quite possible that his infatuation with Anna had affected his ability to think strait. As a former medical professional, he knew that such issues were fairly common. But even as this realization sunk in—knowing that pursuing the matter any further would probably qualify as obsessive behavior on his part—he stepped over to the unit next door and rang the bell.
The peephole darkened, and a few seconds later a man wearing gym shorts and a sleeveless white T-shirt opened the door. Thirty-something, overweight, heavy black stubble on his face and neck, tan lines on his arms just below the deltoid muscles. He was holding a beer in one hand and a disposable butane lighter in the other. The last half inch of a filter-tipped cigarette dangled from a dry and crusty pair of lips, severely chapped, probably from overexposure to the sun.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m looking for the woman who lived next door, and I was wondering—”
“Ms. Parks. Yeah. Some guys came and got all her stuff yesterday. Woke me up with all the bumping and banging. There was a truck out in the parking lot for about two hours. At least.”
“Have you seen Ms. Parks around here lately?” Kei said.
“It’s been a few days, I guess.”
“Did she mention anything about moving?”
“Not to me. But it’s not like we hung out or anything. I didn’t even know her, to tell you the truth.”
The man finished the rest of his beer in a single gulp, dropped the smoldering butt into the can. The hot ash sizzled when it hit the wet aluminum. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a fresh cigarette, held it and looked at it but didn’t light it.
“Did you happen to notice the name of the moving company?” Kei said.
“No. It was just a plain white truck. The guys wore jeans and T-shirts. So what’s going on? She in some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Kei said. “Does the landlord live here somewhere?”
“There’s a married couple that manages the property. Mr. and Mrs. McFadden. They’re usually in the office during business hours. They live down in one-sixteen, but they really don’t like to be bothered after hours unless it’s an emergency. You a cop or something?”
“Just a friend. Thanks.”
The man thumbed the flint wheel on his cigarette lighter as Kei turned and headed back toward the stairs. He thumbed it several times, as if he was having a hard time getting it to light.
Kei walked down to 116. Mr. and Mrs. McFadden answered the door together. They stepped out onto the stoop together. They didn’t look very happy. They didn’t invite Kei to come inside. Kei explained the situation. Mrs. McFadden walked back into the apartment for a few seconds, and then she came back out.
“We found this in our mailbox this morning,” she said.
She handed Kei a standard sheet of copy paper, creased where it had been folded in thirds. It was a note from Anna, apologizing for vacating the apartment on such short notice and acknowledging the consequential loss of her security deposit. No explanation for the seemingly abrupt decision to move, no forwarding address. The note had been printed out from a computer and signed at the bottom in black ink.
“Are you sure this is her signature?” Kei said.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. I’m just trying to understand why she would—”
“I’ll be right back,” Mr. McFadden said, snatching the note from Kei’s hand.
Kei and Mrs. McFadden shared an awkward moment of silence under the yellow porch light while they waited for Mr. McFadden to return.
He came back out with a copy of the lease.
“Looks the same to me,” he said, comparing the signature on the rental agreement with the signature on the note.
He handed the papers to Kei.
“Yeah,” Kei said. “So I guess that’s it.”
“Better that it happened now instead of later,” Mrs. McFadden said.
Kei had told the McFaddens that he and Anna were engaged to be married. Otherwise they probably wouldn’t have shared any information. It was a wonder they had anyway.
“Thanks so much for your time,” Kei said.
He walked back out to his car, pulled his keys out of his pocket, stood there for a few seconds looking at his own reflection in the front driver’s side window. He was thinking about that first kiss on the beach when a gunshot rang out and the glass shattered and he fell to the pavement.
5
The interview room at the sheriff’s department substation could have used a fresh coat of paint, especially the distressed section of sheetrock Kei faced as he sat down in the hard wooden chair at the rectangular wooden table. The wall was grimy in certain spots, maybe where suspects had placed their palms against it while being patted down.
Kei had been told to wait there at the table until one of the detectives could come in and talk to him.
So he waited.
After the gunshot, he’d stayed down on the asphalt and called 911 on his cell. Three cruisers came within a few minutes, blue lights flashing and sirens pulsing as they sped into the parking lot and surrounded the Camry. One of the officers did a quick assessment to make sure Kei was all right, and then some more cars came and there was a lot of radio communication and some yellow crime scene tape and a helicopter with a searchlight. It was a big deal, as it should have been. But they didn’t catch anyone. Not that Kei knew of, anyway. Th
e officer who’d driven him to the substation said that the bullet had probably missed him by less than an inch. It had passed straight through the Camry, leaving a fat jagged hole in the front passenger’s side window as it exited. No telling where the slug had ended up. Kei doubted that the police would ever find it.
The door to the interview room creaked open, and a man wearing khaki pants and a black polo shirt walked in and sat across the table from Kei. Blond hair, goatee, dark circles under his eyes. Kei guessed him to be around thirty-five years old. He had a yellow legal pad and a shiny black pencil with no eraser.
“I’m Detective Hollinger,” he said.
“Kei Thrasher.”
“I understand you had a bit of a close call earlier this evening.”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“Could you tell me exactly what happened, and the nature of your business there at the apartment complex?”
“I stopped there to talk to a friend. When she didn’t answer—”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
“Anna Parks.”
“She’s your fiancé, right?”
Detective Hollinger must have spoken to Mr. and Mrs. McFadden on the phone before coming into the interview room.
“She’s not my fiancé,” Kei said. “I made that part up.”
“You lied about that. Okay. Continue, please.”
“When she didn’t answer her door, I peeked in the window and saw that all her furniture was gone. Which was strange, because she hadn’t said anything to me about moving. I talked to one of her neighbors, and then I went down and talked to the couple who manages the property. The McFaddens. I guess you’ve been in contact with them already. They showed me a note they’d received from Anna. Supposedly from Anna. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m not so sure about anything anymore. It was in their mailbox this morning. The note, that is. Anyway, I was getting ready to open my car door and leave when someone tried to kill me.”
“What makes you think someone tried to kill you?”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I was just standing there minding my own business when a bullet whizzed by and tore through my car window. If I’d been standing an inch or so—”
“It was probably a random drive-by,” Hollinger said. “That’s what we’re thinking right now. Unless you have reason to believe someone is actually out to get you.”
“Well, some really strange things have happened over the past twenty-four hours.”
Kei told him about the old man at the hospital.
“You think the old man tried to kill you?” Hollinger said.
“Of course not. But can’t you see that all these occurrences must be connected somehow?”
Hollinger jotted something down on his legal pad.
“You want some coffee?” he said.
Kei shook his head. “Are you listening to me? I think I might have stumbled onto something really bad. Anna wouldn’t have just disappeared like that.”
“She didn’t just disappear. She left a note.”
“What about that stuff at the hospital?”
“There are plenty of women named Anna,” Hollinger said. “And that song title is a common phrase. I think you’re trying to connect some dots that just aren’t there.”
“I forgot to tell you about the man in the dark blue suit. A few seconds after the confused old man woke me up, some guy rushed in and tried to convince him to go back to his own room. The guy in the suit gave me a funny look, like he might be trying to—”
“Let’s get back to what happened tonight,” Hollinger said. “It was just one shot, right?”
Kei took a deep breath, tried to bridle his frustration. “Yeah. I dropped to the pavement so I wouldn’t be such a good target. Maybe the shooter thought he got me. I don’t know. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
“Like I said, it was probably just a random thing. One in a million.”
“But you’re going to check into everything, right?”
“Sure.”
Kei had a strong feeling that Detective Hollinger wasn’t going to check into everything.
Which meant that Kei would have to check into everything himself.
“Are we done?” Kei said. “Can I go now?”
The door opened and a uniformed officer—a woman in her twenties with short brown hair and a shiny black gun belt—stepped in and handed Hollinger some papers.
“Thanks,” Hollinger said.
“No problem,” the officer said.
She exited the room and closed the door.
Hollinger looked the papers over.
“It says here that you did some time,” he said. “Want to tell me about that?”
“Not really.”
“It also says that you were treated for extreme anxiety at one point while you were incarcerated. A mental breakdown, one of the corrections officers called it.”
“It was nothing. They put me on some medication for a while.”
“Are you taking anything now?”
“No.”
“There’s a clinic not far from here if you think you might need—”
“I’m fine,” Kei said.
Detective Hollinger sat there and stared at the table for a few seconds, and then he sighed and shook his head, seemingly unconvinced that Kei was fine, yet too weary to pursue the matter any further.
Thunder rumbled in the distance as Hollinger wrote something else on his pad.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. “Give me a call if you need anything.”
“What about my car?”
“I think it’s been cleared, but check with the desk sergeant on your way out.”
Kei got up and opened the door and walked out of the room.
6
Kei had to wait another hour to get his car back. Some sort of mix-up on the paperwork at the evidence lot. They’d taken some pictures and had performed an inspection, but it was obvious that the bullet had gone in one side and out the other, so there was no reason for them to hold onto the vehicle. Kei called his insurance company to make sure the broken windows were going to be covered, and then he drove to the gym and took a quick shower, wrapping his new IV site in plastic first so it wouldn’t get wet. From there he went to the storage unit and fell asleep on his twin size air mattress. He was dreaming about Anna when his cell phone trilled and woke him up.
“Hello, Mr. Thrasher. My name is Kim Hutchins. I’ll be administering your medication this afternoon. We’re all set for three, right?”
Kei looked at his watch.
“I’ll be here,” he said.
“Great. See you then.”
It was a little after ten, so Kei had a few hours to get some things done before it was time for his medicine. He pretty much knew how it would go. The nurse would arrive and introduce herself and perform a quick physical assessment, and then she would spend a few minutes teaching him about IV drug administration. Just the basics. Once all the paperwork was taken care of and everything was hooked up, the drip would run for thirty minutes. The nurse would probably stay while this first dose went in, to make sure there weren’t any problems and to observe Kei while he disconnected the tubing and flushed the line himself. If all went well, she would probably be finished with him by four-thirty. He was supposed to work five to close at the restaurant, so time was going to be a little tight.
He got up and put some clothes on, walked outside and saw that it had rained while he was asleep. The streets were wet, which probably meant that the interior of his Camry was wet. He’d thought about taping some plastic bags over the windows, but he’d been too tired. Physically and mentally. He grabbed his gym bag and some towels and walked out to the parking lot, wiped down the steering wheel and the cracked leather seats and the frayed floor mats. Then he climbed in and drove to the grocery store.
It was only a few blocks away, and traffic was light. He parked and walked inside and went straight to the deli, hoping to see Anna behind the c
ounter stirring up some macaroni salad or something. Instead he saw a man in his mid-to-late fifties feeding heads of cabbage into a big stainless steel shredding machine.
“I need to speak to the manager,” Kei said.
“Is there a problem, sir?”
“I’m looking for Anna Parks.”
The man turned the machine off and walked through an opening that led to the back room. A woman in a business suit followed him out to the service area a minute or so later.
“This gentleman would like to speak to you about Anna,” the man said, nodding toward Kei and then walking back to resume his duties with the cabbages.
“Jan Kennington,” the woman said. “What can I help you with today?”
“Kei Thrasher. I’m a friend of Anna’s, and I was wondering if she’d left word with you about where she might be going.”
The manager shrugged. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Anna Parks. I’m assuming she gave you some sort of notice.”
“Are you telling me that Anna is planning to quit her job?”
Kei looked down at the meat and cheese displayed under the countertop. Maybe not, he thought. Just because she’d left her apartment didn’t mean she was leaving her place of employment.
“Did she say anything to you about moving?” Kei said.
“Are you a family member? Boyfriend?”
“Boyfriend. Kind of. We’ve only been out once, but—”
“Look, if you have some questions regarding Ms. Parks, I suggest you talk to her yourself. I really can’t discuss any of the employees’ personal matters.”
“She’s not answering her phone.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”
“Could you tell me when she’s scheduled to work next?”
Jan Kennington faked a friendly smile. “Just a minute,” she said.
Her heels clicked against the hard tiles as she turned and walked away. She was gone a long time. Kei stared at the meat and cheese some more, and then he took the opportunity to study the ingredients in several brands of gourmet crackers. By the time Jan Kennington returned, he was an expert.
