I heard voices in the hallway coming closer. The police, it had to be. I’d stalled too long.
If I left the apartment now, they’d see me emerge. They’d see me in the hall.
Now it seemed to me there were only two choices. To hide somewhere in the apartment, probably in the bedroom closet, and hope that the police didn’t do a very thorough search. Not a risk I wanted to take.
Or...
I opened the sliding glass doors and stepped out onto the balcony. I did a quick calculation. Eight-foot ceilings meant approximately ten or eleven feet per story. Seven stories up was about seventy-five feet off the ground. Directly below was a narrow strip of grass and shrubs. Theoretically I could drop from the balcony and survive.
Or not.
Assuming I dropped onto the grass, I could sustain a broken ankle, which would be extremely inconvenient.
The adjacent balcony was twelve or fourteen feet away. Too far to swing and realistically hope to make it.
The balcony railing was about four feet high, a little less. The balcony directly below was a drop of ten or eleven feet. I’m six foot four, and with an arm extended, I can span around eight feet. That meant a drop of only a couple feet to the balcony below.
As long as no one was watching the front of the building, I could—
And at that moment I heard muffled voices outside the front door.
I couldn’t risk any more time thinking; I had to move.
Clutching the top of the railing, I pulled myself up, then lifted first one leg and then, with a quick readjustment of my hands, a second leg, and I was over the side. Hanging by my arms. Doing a pull-up. I felt a cool breeze in my hair. I could smell cut grass and hot asphalt. I lowered myself, my feet dangling in midair, the railing below just out of reach.
From the apartment I could hear the metallic scrape of a key turning in the lock.
I had to move.
Drop straight down and hit the dirt, maybe the asphalt. Likely injury, even death.
No, I had to swing my feet inward. Toward the interior of the apartment below. With one big swing I let go of my hands, and I dropped to the floor of the balcony below, relaxing my stance, knees bent, hands protecting my head, the impact hard and shuddering through my knees and thighs, my back thumping hard against the glass of the sliding door.
I craned my head and looked around and saw, through the parted floor-length curtains, the light on in the sixth-floor apartment.
Someone was home.
25
The floor-length curtains were half open. I didn’t see anyone, which probably meant that nobody had seen me. But almost certainly someone was there.
I did a quick survey of my limbs. I hadn’t broken or sprained anything. My legs were a little wobbly from the fall.
Then I had a disturbing thought: Is it locked?
It wasn’t out of the question that the sliding doors to this apartment were locked. That would mean I was stuck out here. I’d have to make my way down to the balcony below and try there.
Another thought: Who’d lock a sliding door to a sixth-floor balcony? Who could possibly come in?
I tried the door, gripping the recessed handle, pulling with my fingers, and the glass door scraped open a few inches, moaning as it went. It was unlocked, but apparently seldom used.
I stopped pulling it. I didn’t want to alert whoever was there, presumably in the adjoining room. Maybe in bed. Maybe in the bathroom.
I inhaled deeply.
A tendon in my right calf went twoingg.
Waiting out here on the balcony for the right moment was a bad idea. What if he or she chose at some point to look out through the glass doors? I’d be spotted immediately. The balcony was shallow and not very big; there was no place on it to hide.
I had to enter while I could and hope I wasn’t seen.
So I edged the door along its track slowly and steadily and as quietly as possible until it was open just wide enough for me to slip in. I parted the curtains, slid the door closed behind me, and entered. I was in what looked like a living room.
I heard the loud mumble of a TV in the next room, booming and vibrating in the walls.
This was good.
Whoever lived here was watching TV in the adjoining bedroom.
At first glance, the layout of this apartment appeared identical to Kayla’s, one flight up. That meant that, depending on where in the bedroom the bed was positioned, the occupant either did or did not have a sightline into the living room.
I had to proceed on the assumption that he or she did. Even if only peripherally.
Given my height and build, I probably wasn’t going to slip by unseen. Neither moving slowly nor sprinting by.
I’d be seen.
Standing there in the living room of a stranger’s apartment, hoping the resident didn’t see me here, I looked around and noticed a walker and a spare cane. So she was elderly. An old woman or an old man. Maybe both. Only one walker, so probably just one person.
Let’s assume it’s an old lady. If she saw me in her apartment, she would almost certainly scream and then call the police, and I couldn’t have that.
Since the lights in the apartment were on, I also assumed that she’d awakened for the morning, turned on the lights, maybe had a little breakfast, and then got back into bed to watch TV.
Based on the volume of the TV, I assumed also that she was hard of hearing. But not necessarily blind. It was fifteen or twenty feet from where I was standing to the front door, with an open bedroom door in between.
I didn’t know what to do.
So I began to game out my options.
One: I brazen it out, just walk boldly to the front door, open it, and leave. She’d probably see me and panic. Scream and call 911. The police dispatcher would immediately notify the police on the scene. I wouldn’t have time to run down six flights of stairs, or take the elevators.
This seemed like a bad option.
Two: I glanced at the light, lacy curtains that hung next to the glass sliders. There were six panels of curtains, each curtain about six feet long.
Knotted together, losing about a foot in length for each knot, that was thirty feet.
I could sustain a drop of around thirty feet to the grass or bushes below, if I had to. If I fell right.
Quickly I thought it through. I couldn’t do it without making noise. Plus it would take me at least ten minutes to remove the curtains, then remove the hooks from the fabric, and turn the curtains into a long rope and climb down from the balcony. Since this apartment, like Kayla’s, faced the front of the building, I’d risk being seen by anyone driving up — and by the police, if they happened to be leaving at the time.
Not a feasible option. I was stuck with the bad option.
Brazen it out.
Walk across the living room, as quietly as possible, and just hope that somehow I wasn’t spotted.
I took a breath, exhaled, and then began moving slowly, as light on my feet as I could be, toward the front door. One foot in front of the other.
When I took a third step I was able to see into the bedroom. I saw a slice of a bed, a brown bedspread or coverlet. A lump in the bed. Someone’s legs, presumably. The pallid blue-gray wash of the TV, just out of sight.
I took another careful step. Now I would see her head and shoulders, and she’d be able to see me. Unless her attention was riveted on the TV. Maybe her head was turned at such an angle that she wouldn’t see me in her peripheral vision. The door was about ten feet away from me. The TV chattered and blared and barked and reverberated.
The floor creaked audibly underfoot.