A clattering inside, perhaps a chair falling over.
"Open up, please. We just have a few questions."
"The hell you guys want?"
"Sir, open this door now." Thumping footsteps across the room. "Last chance, then I'm sending in tear gas." Glancing over at me, Cal shook his head reassuringly.
He strode down the hall, lifted a fire extinguisher from its mount, and returned. He pulled the pin and tossed it to me across the door, then loosed a carbon-dioxide blast through the window's gap. A shriek, and then Collins stumbled into the hall, arms raised.
Cal spun him against the wall and frisked him. "Let's go back inside."
The apartment smelled of pot. As Cal stood Collins up against the wall, I strolled around the front room. A table had been pushed into the corner by the alcove kitchen. A fork protruded from a pot of reheated SpaghettiOs. A chair lay overturned, resting on the bright orange button-up shirt that had been slung over it.
"I didn't do anything, man. I can't have a third strike. I can't."
Cal asked, "Where were you the night of January twenty-second?"
To his credit, Collins looked baffled. "I don't know. When was that?"
In the sink, shoved halfway down the disposal guard, was a dime bag. I glanced up from the sink, and Collins was looking over at me, terrified.
"Thursday, three nights ago," Cal said.
"I was working."
"Between ten-thirty and two?"
I walked over and righted the chair, pulling up the still-hooked shirt with it.
"Working, man. You can check my time card, talk to my manager. I'm a stocker. I work nights."
"Where?"
I looked at the familiar logo stitched into the button-up's fabric at the breast. To say I felt chagrin would have been a significant understatement. Cal looked over and caught sight of the uniform just as Collins said, "Home Depot."
Cal chuckled once, but it caught fire and he doubled over, hands on his knees, laughing.
Collins said, "Wait a minute. What's going on?"
From the kitchen I asked what was, in hindsight, a stupid question: "You remember selling anyone electrical tape?"
"I don't work the floor. I just unload. Electrical tape, sure. Crates of it. Listen, if you talk to my manager, please don't tell him about my record. I lied on the application. I'm sorry. I couldn't get a fresh start, not with the drug charges."
"Don't worry about it," Cal said.
Collins was still staring at me. "I'd be so fucked if I got a third strike. Twenty-five to life. I got child support I gotta pay. I been clean for anything that matters. I been clean."
In my fervor I'd made a big leap, transforming Collins from pot-head to savage killer. In doing so, I was ready to fuck up his life worse even than mine, and he didn't have a handy brain tumor to get him off the hook. Pretending to wash my hands, I let the water push the Baggie of marijuana down into the disposal.
"Don't worry about it," I said.
Cal didn't talk to me as we walked back down the stairs to the car. Before leaving he'd gotten the Home Depot manager on the phone and confirmed Collins's hours the night of January twenty-second. I'd taken away one piece of information, but it came loaded with so many variables as to be nearly useless. If the wrapping had come from the killer's electrical tape, then he'd bought it at the Home Depot in Van Nuys. If he'd shopped close to home, that would make him a Valley boy. Two ifs weren't going to advance the home team's cause significantly.
We climbed into the car. I expected Cal to yell, but he just looked over and smirked. "Don't quit your day job."
Lloyd called me on my cell phone as I was driving home from Cal's. "How'd it go?"
I told him.
"Ouch," he said. "Sorry to pile on, but the DNA tests came back from Broach's body and the drop cloth we found in your trash. It's yours. Not that it undermines your alibi, but I just wanted to give you a heads-up."
I thanked him and hung up. Heading home reminded me of my damaged front door and Preston's note about the dangers it might leave me vulnerable to. I called information and got one of the alarm companies I'd seen advertised on metal posts shoved into neighborhood flower beds.
"Sorry, pal. Can't get someone in to wire you until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday."
"You sure you don't work for the phone company?"
"Sorry?"
"Never mind."
I gave him my address and made an appointment. Then I called Home Depot, figuring they owed me one or I them, beeped my way through an elaborate menu, and left a message for the door department that of course stood no chance of being returned but left me feeling as if I'd fulfilled due diligence in addressing my editor's notes.
Richard Collins. Professional electrical-tape handler. Don't quit your day job indeed.
I decided I'd give myself the rest of the drive home to feel discouraged. But I blew my deadline. I was too worn down for a cigar on the deck, so I plopped into my reading chair, mulling over my missteps. After a while I tired of myself and clicked on the TV.
Humidity was low, terrorist chatter was high. Another day in America. Guess what was reairing on TNT? Hunter Pray. Sure enough, there was Johnny Ordean, wearing an ill-fitting priest's collar and holding a scumbag's dripping head above a rank toilet bowl. "Cough it up or we go another round on the baptism."
Good God.
The resultant gurgling spurred my thumb to action. A seductively named hurricane was ravaging the Georgia coast. Newscasters were emboldening the terrorists. A teen singer had been in a fender bender at Fairfax and Le Brea, and a news unit was there to capture each cracked taillight and curse word.
While I'd been occupied, public attention had moved on.
I punched the button and sat in the relative darkness. There is no silence quite as plaintive as that of an empty house when the television turns off. Now that the media were no longer mistreating me, I felt left out.
The back cushions on the couch, strewn by Preston, jarred loose a recollection of Genevieve. Before we'd watch a movie or an opera on PBS, she'd pull apart the whole damn couch like a kid building a fort, and rearrange it to her liking, which usually entailed transforming it into a faux-suede nest, elevating her like Cleopatra on the barge. From her regal perch, she studied me now with those imploring French eyes.
"I'm working on it," I said. "Everyone has setbacks. Remember Waterloo?"
She vanished at the ring of my cell phone.
"Who's the mack daddy?"
"Barry Bonds?" I guessed.
A sound of disgust. "Chic Bales, that's who."
I told him about Richard Collins, the innocent, pot-smoking Home Depot felon.
"Don't despair, Chicken Little. I got us a spray artist. We ride at first light."
After the call I stared at the couch, but Genevieve wouldn't reappear. I didn't blame her. I was lousy company, and I might have shoved a boning knife through her rib cage.
Upstairs I dozed sporadically, finding myself wide awake at 1:00 a.m. The Genevieve hour. Each whistle of the wind was a screen being slit, every creak in the house a foot set cautiously down. Turning on the lights before me, I retrieved spare cuts of plywood from the garage and hammered them across the broken windows in my front door.
Back in my bedroom, I lay in the darkness, surrounded by familiar shadows.
You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.
I'd looked stupid. It wasn't a first. I'd spent the evening spinning my tires. Not like I had anything better to do. I'd played a card with Cal I could've saved for later. So what? I had more up my sleeve. Tomorrow could bring a graffiti-artist eyewitness, another body, a rise in the ocean that left us all breathing through snorkels.