Next to Die

Bobbi walked softly in that direction, thumb still poised to send the call. She grabbed the banister and swung around to the steps, started down, her feet light. She reached the second floor, stopped, and listened. It sounded like someone was still one floor below her. She moved down the hallway to the next flight of stairs, checking the two apartment doors as she passed, these doors not hung as high but still dark around the seams, no TV noise or anything indicating a neighbor awake. As she started down the next flight of stairs, she thought she heard the front door to the building shut. If it was Gilbert, he’d gone back outside.

The door to his apartment on the first floor was closed, his TV on but muffled – it sounded like Sports Center or something. Was he in there? Had he gone outside? Was it someone else?

She moved to the front door, cautious, willing herself steady. She brought the phone to her ear, opened the door with her free hand, and looked out. There were three steps and a walkway bisecting the shabby excuse for a front lawn with its dirt and bits of crabgrass. No one out there; no one on the street. Maybe they’d hooked around the building and gone into the alley where she’d first seen Gilbert.

Keeping the phone to her ear, Bobbi took that direction, reached the mouth of the alley, then stopped. It sounded like a door closed on the church.

Someone from the frigging church?

She dared to get closer. The door was thick wood, a half-circle of stained glass at the top, and she found it locked. She left the alley and returned to the street, looked along the row of parked cars including her own Honda CR-V, and still saw no one.

The other way, past the church and the school, a vehicle slipped past. She listened to the murmur of its engine fade as it headed toward Main Street, then everything was quiet.

Her NASA T-shirt clung to her skin with all the heat and sweat. She turned around to head back inside, stopped short, her breath catching, heart in her throat.

Gilbert was standing in the doorway she’d just come through, looking confused. Bobbi almost pressed the Call button but exhaled, lowered the phone, and moved down the walkway, stopped a few yards away from him. “Hi, Mr. Gilbert. Were you just upstairs, on the third floor?”

He had a sagging face – pouches beneath his eyes big enough to store pennies, cheeks that hung like basset hound jowls. He did a slow shake of his head. “No.”

“Okay… well, I heard someone up on my floor. Then it sounded like they went out the front – did you hear them?” She got a little closer. “Like, before I came downstairs, did you hear anything?”

“I don’t know.” His voice was baritone. He wore jeans and an old button-down shirt, like it was the middle of the day, and fifty degrees instead of eighty-five. He filled the doorway, blocking her entry. She said, “I heard you – you were taking out your trash. And I went to the kitchen to… I thought I heard someone in the hallway outside my door…”

He just blinked at her, like he had no idea what she was referring to.

“… and I thought maybe I heard them come downstairs,” she finished.

He said, “Door down here is locked.” He meant the door he was standing beside.

“I know it is,” Bobbi said. “Or supposed to be. But… maybe you left it open by mistake? Or maybe you, um…? What about the back door?”

Gilbert studied her, and she grew self-conscious, suddenly aware she wasn’t wearing a bra, just the T-shirt and these lightweight pants, and she crossed her arms over her breasts.

He’s big, this guy. He’s massive.

“The back door is locked from the outside, no key.” Gilbert turned and regarded the door beside him. He seemed to do everything in slow motion. He touched the doorknob with a calloused finger, pressed the locking catch in and out a couple of times. “This is old, though, can just slip a credit card in there or something and pop it.”

“Okay. Well the property manager never told me that.” She tried a laugh to lighten the mood but it felt brittle.

“We had this place broken into before,” Gilbert said. “They didn’t get anything, just urinated in the hallway.”

She paused. “Someone broke in? Peed in the hallway?”

He nodded, slowly as everything else.

“How long have you lived here?” she asked. “We’ve never really been introduced. I’m Bobbi.” She held out her free hand, still gripping the phone in her other and hugging her chest with her arm.

He looked at her outstretched hand then shook it. For the size and roughness, his grip was like a little old lady’s, and brief. “Frank. I been here fourteen years. My name is on my door.”

“So, one break-in in fourteen years? I guess that’s not too bad.”

“Two. That I know of.”

“Okay. Still pretty good.”

A car turned in from Saranac Ave and headed down their street, both of them watching it pass, Bobbi staring a little at the driver, who was just a dark shape.

Someone had been outside her door. She was 100 percent sure of it.

Okay, ninety-five.

“Alright,” Bobbi said, and Gilbert seemed to get the picture. He faded back into the building, clearing the way. She offered a smile in passing, said, “Good night. Sorry if I disturbed you.” She felt like adding, Even though you were out there rattling around like a lunatic.

And even if you’re freaking me out a little bit.

“Good night,” he said. Then, as she was about to climb the first flight of stairs, he asked in a quiet voice, “You going to call the police?” He was staring at her phone.

“I’ll talk to them,” Bobbi said. “I know a state police investigator. I’ll mention it to him. Good night.”

She hurried back to her floor, feeling safer but still vigilant, and when she reached her door, she turned over her feet to give the bottoms a look, the skin gray with dirt. She considered a shower but thought it might just wake her up even more.

The door was ajar. She’d hurried out and hadn’t locked it behind her. Or the front door, when she’d gone over to the church. Someone could have slipped into her apartment when she was out.

“Hello?” She heard the fear in her voice then spoke again, louder and with more authority, not worrying about her neighbors anymore. “Jamie? Jamie… come on. Are you in there?”

She waited, listening while she remained in the hallway. She could just hear Gilbert’s television downstairs. She had the phone ready again, but she still had nothing; her neighbor confirmed he’d been moving around, and anything else could’ve been invented in her own mind.

“Is someone in there? I have my phone and I’m ready to call the police.”

Bobbi backed away. A floorboard groaned under her weight, giving off the same sound she’d heard before. She hurried down the hallway to the stairs, took them two at a time. Then she halted, listening again, waiting for that telltale creak of the floorboard as Jamie, or whoever it was, slipped out of her apartment, coming after her…

Nothing.

Down another flight, back to the first floor now, standing in front of Frank Gilbert’s door. She knocked. She took a long, deep breath through her nose, let it out. Knocked again, more urgently. She heard shuffling, then the lock, and the door swung open. Gilbert stood there with a blank expression.

“Hi,” she said in a volume just loud enough to be heard above the TV. “I promise you I’m not crazy, but someone might be in my apartment. Would you… Could you come have a look with me, just to be sure? I’m really sorry to bother you…”

She tried on a smile. Gilbert stared down at her then looked over his shoulder, walked to the TV, shut it off. She got a glimpse of his apartment – not what she’d expected. Everything was very neat, lots of books, an expensive-looking computer on a desk in the corner. He might’ve been odd but she decided Gilbert was harmless.

He came walking back in this stiff sort of gait he had, where his arms didn’t swing. “Let’s take a look,” he said.

She found herself nervously prattling as she climbed the stairs ahead of him, explaining to him over her shoulder that she wasn’t prone to this type of behavior, this was really something of an anomaly, but with what had recently happened to one of her co-workers, she wasn’t taking any chances.

They reached her floor. Since she’d gone down to Gilbert’s, no one had tried to leave the building, and so if someone was in her place, he had to still be in there – they had him trapped.

T.J. Brearton's books