''Because it had
With this Tripp lets out a roar, pulls his arms off the table, and brings them down upon it again. Big-time laughter, muscular and fierce as a shouted threat.
''Thomas, listen to me now. Whose blood was it?''
''It wasn't
''No? Then whose?''
He comes in close, leans across the table far enough that I can smell his yeasty breath.
''Krystal's. It was Krystal's blood,'' he says. ''Do you want to know how it got there?''
''First things first. Where's the shirt now?''
''It's funny, actually.''
''Thomas, tell me exactly where the shirt is. I'm serious. Right now.''
I check my watch.
''Locked inside the freezer, down in the garage out behind the building. They must have thought it belonged to the neighbors or something.''
''Where's the key?''
''Which key?''
''To the freezer.''
''Inside the flour jar in the cupboard. But the apartment's locked, and I don't know where
''Not to worry. But listen carefully now: I advise you,
His eyes endure a spasm of repeated blinks and his lips fold together and disappear into his mouth, but he says nothing more. I have no choice but to take this as confirmation of his word.
I get up and knock on the door, concentrate on keeping my breath even. But the guard takes longer than he should, and before I get out of there I hear Tripp's voice over my shoulder. Words I have to turn and have him twice repeat before I catch them.
''Melissa is my daughter's name,'' he says.
As I leave I glance back and see him being brought to his feet by the two men who will return him to his cell, his head shaking in wonder and a trembling smile of pride on his lips.
Late that night I go for a walk by Tripp's apartment. The convenience store below is dark, which I expected, the hours of business stuck on its door stating that it closes at eleven. The apartment above is dark as well. In fact the only light the building emits comes from the reflective band of yellow police tape that crosses the doorway to the staircase up to Tripp's. No car, homecoming drunk, or nocturnal dog walker has passed by since I've been here, which must be something close to half an hour.
I head up the lane that runs between the convenience store and the house next to it to where the garage is. Sticking my face up to its window I find the freezer, a lunar glow reflecting off its white enamel surface.
From there I pass through the side lane once more and around to the door up to Tripp's, ripping the police line off and sticking it into the pocket of my overcoat. Then I set to work on the lock. Although I've never done this sort of thing before, I've had the benefit of defending enough car thieves, b & e artists, and other unofficial locksmiths that I've acquired a pretty good idea of the techniques through osmosis. And as it turns out, this one isn't much of a challenge anyway. An old handle lock with a gaping keyhole that, after sticking my nosehair tweezers in and fiddling around for a couple minutes, clicks open without any trouble. Then up the stairs to Tripp's door, tweezers again at the ready, but there's no need. The fools left it open, and with a quick turn of my gloved hand I'm in.
Tripp was right about the key: buried in a Mason jar of enriched-white above the stove. But I don't leave yet. Move around the corner and into the living room, lit only by the orange fog that seeps through the window from the streetlight outside. Everything neat and tidy, teacherly even: the bookshelves organized according to binding (one wall of hardcovers, the next coffee-table books buttressing stacks of alphabetized paperbacks), the fourteen-inch TV topped by old greeting cards (''Lordy! Lordy! Look Who's Forty!''), the beige furniture arranged in a careful square on the perimeter of the matching beige rug. I'm expecting pictures of the daughter everywhere but there's no sign of her. The room little more than a low-budget stage set of a room, a bachelor pad before the bachelor has moved in.
But the bedroom's a different story. The police have left the catalog pages on the wall, every inch plastered with the crinkled gloss of giggling, pointing, hand-holding girls. On the bed, a fresh pile of clippings and stacks of
I hold my breath and back out, pull the door shut behind me, breathe again. Down the stairs I pull out the police line I'd ripped off on the way in. Tack it back to the door frame using the back of a hardcover
More lock luck there, or at least further evidence of the local constabulary's stupidity, for while the main door for the admission of cars is locked, the side door for the admission of humans isn't even properly closed, let alone bolted shut. Once in I pause for my eyes to gather enough light so I can shuffle over to the freezer. Trying to stick the fussy little key into its fussy little lock in the semidarkness results in a pounding chest pain so great, it can only be the final precursor to a full-blown coronary. Then, with my hand shaking in widening loops, the key suddenly slides in buttery smooth as though toying with me from the beginning, and the garage's silence is broken by the cryptlike squeak of the freezer's lid as I heave it open. For a moment my eyes are blinded from the light of the internal bulb reflecting off the crusted ice within. Then I see it, lying in a bundle next to a stack of frozen T-bones and tub of rainbow sherbet: a blue-striped button-down with a dozen dime-size stains over the arm and shoulder. I was expecting something more explicitly horrible, splashes of gory crimson on perfect white cotton or a clear plastic bag clotted by telltale pools and smudges. But it's just a shirt with spots on it.
I pull it out and tuck it inside my coat. Then I'm out the door, down the lane, and back in front of Tripp's building, half expecting the street to be clogged with police cruisers, curious neighbors, and snuffling search dogs. But there's not a soul but me. One arm across my chest holding Tripp's shirt in place, I walk back to the Empire Hotel with long strides, wondering whether anyone who looked my way would see a man who'd just done something wrong, or one whose head was lowered only to shield his eyes from the rain.
chapter 17
Someone slips a note under my door. Standing in the middle of the honeymoon suite, my body still dripping from the shower and in it comes--a flash of white traveling across the floor. The shadow of another's hand playing across the light from the other side, the brief, awkward flight of the paper--all a too-easy betrayal of walls, locks, and doors.
After waiting for the sound of the messenger's footsteps to recede back down the stairs I squint over the note's childish print, made less readable by the almost dried-out purple marker used in its execution:
