“Someone broke into the apartment,” I said, handing him the glass. He leaned heavily against the wall. “I thought you were an intruder.”
“I saw you come up,” he said. He takes a few sips but keeps coughing. “The door—was—open.”
He was looking at me as if he’d never seen me before, which I get. I am half his size and I just knocked him to the ground and held a knife to his throat. Formerly, he saw me as a little girl, someone he watched grow. I guess he won’t be seeing me that way again. I am all grown up.
“I came to give you this,” he said.
He held out an envelope, my name written across in Paul’s scrawling handwriting. “He brought it to me a couple of weeks ago.”
I took it and stared, hefting it in my hand. It is small but heavyish, something, not paper, inside. I opened it and found an oddly shaped key, nothing else. No note or any indication to what the key might open. I held it in the palm of my hand.
“Did he say anything else?” I asked.
“Just that it was important,” he said, looking at the tarnished key. “You don’t know what it is?”
“No idea,” I said. I looked in the envelope again, but there was nothing else. I put the key back inside and stuffed it in my pocket. It’s not like Paul to be cryptic. I thought of his panicked eyes, his warning, this trashed apartment. I bit back a pulse of fear.
“Is he okay?” Mr. Rodriquez asked, still staring at me wide-eyed. He edged toward the door, away from me, maybe wondering if I’m going to attack him again.
“He’s alive,” I said. “But he’s—not doing well.”
He ran a hand through his graying hair, He nodded solemnly. His wife, Elmira, used to cook for us sometimes when Paul was working late and she knew I would be home alone. She’d bring pork, or chicken, with yellow rice and black beans, plantains. She would bring a ton, and we’d eat for days. Paul helped get her nephew out of a vandalism charge, gave him a scared-straight talking-to. They were good neighbors to each other, friends.
“He said if anything happened, I should give this to you,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m sorry. About attacking you.”
He lifted a hand, tried for a smile. “You’re stronger than you look.”
“I’m really sorry, Mr. Rodriquez.”
“Who did this?” he asked looking into the living room. “Should we call the police?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. He has his eyes on me, dark, wondering. “No police.”
He nodded as if he understood, even though he didn’t. I didn’t even understand. But if the police came, it’s another thing to deal with, and I couldn’t handle more. And meanwhile, I was the last person who needed to be talking to the police.
“Did they take anything?” Mr. Rodriquez walked around the room, started picking up books and putting them back on the shelves. He righted the couch, the chair, the table, and I moved over to help him. The furniture was cheap, insubstantial. It didn’t take much to put things back the way they were. The pillows were ruined, though, slashed and oozing stuffing.
“He didn’t have anything,” I said. “What were they looking for?”
“Cash, jewelry,” he said with a shrug, a lifelong New Yorker resigned to crimes like these. “Anything they could sell. But how did they get in?”
He looked back at the door.
“The door was open,” I said. “I must have forgotten it when we left.”
He shook his head. “I came up,” he said. “I’m sure I locked it.”
He must have been mistaken. There were only three keys to this place. I had one, Paul did, and Mr. Rodriquez. I was sure of that.
“Let me help you finish cleaning up,” he said.
“It’s okay. I’ll handle the rest.”
I wanted him to leave, and he must have sensed that because he started moving toward the door. I had to think, figure this out.
“Call me?” He kept his eyes on me, wary, concerned. “Keep in touch about Paul, and let me know what you need, okay? I’ll go see him tonight. We been friends a long time, Miss Zoey.”
It’s a term of endearment, not a way of indicating status. All I could do was nod, not trusting my voice. And then he was gone. I turned back to the apartment and moved into the mess. I had to figure out what they were looking for. Whoever they were.
fourteen
Chad Drake pulled his car into the lot, tires crunching on the gravel, and came to a stop under the oak tree in the north corner, far from the other vehicles. Most people parked as close as possible to their destination, but not him. He killed the engine and sat in the dark, letting the quiet wash over him. The days—how did they get so hectic, a rush, a mash of work and family and this demand and that worry? He was so tired all the time. Was it normal to be so tired?
The door to Burgers and Brew opened, and an arc of amber light and laughter and the sound of footfalls spilled out.
Please don’t be drunk, he thought. Please don’t make me get out and ask if you’ve been drinking.
He squinted into the dark and saw that it was Dr. Sherman and his wife, Lainey—walking steady, holding hands. He watched them make their way to their older but well-maintained Volvo. He got the door for her—nice. And then he climbed in the driver’s side. The Shermans were good people, two boys in school with Zoey—one a year ahead of her and one a year behind. There were a couple of other pediatricians in town, but everyone said he was the best—careful, honest, slow to prescribe. Zoey had been his patient since she was a few hours old.
The Volvo’s engine came to life after a couple of minutes, then the headlights. Then they pulled slowly from the lot and onto the main road.
Thank you, he said silently.
If only decent people—the ones that didn’t have to be taught how to live without hurting others—knew how much cops appreciated them.
He rubbed his eyes, waiting. Paul was late, which was not like him. Chad got out of the car and stretched long. Too much sitting—slouching in the prowler or hunched over the desk doing paperwork. There were two hard knots of pain between his spine and each shoulder blade. Only his wife, Heather, could work them out. She’d straddle his lower back and use the hard knobs of her elbows and get in deep, deeper while he howled.
“Big baby,” she’d say. “Try to breathe into it. Release it.”
“Stop, Heather,” Chad would beg. “Please.”
“What are you so worried about?” she’d ask. “What are you carrying around?”
Some of it she knew. Some of it she didn’t. Some of it she’d never know, not if he had anything to do with it.
The twin beams of Paul’s headlights caused him to raise a hand, shielding his eyes from the brightness. The beat-up old Suburban pulled to a stop beside him, and the man he thought of as a brother climbed out. They were brothers, closer than brothers because there was none of the sibling baggage.