“What do we do?” he says.
I’m looking toward the balcony outside of Tash’s unit. It’s about thirty feet away. I can see from here that the sliding door to the unit is partway open.
“I want to take a look inside that condo.”
“How?”
I look toward the balcony next to the one Harry and I are standing on. There’s a span of about six feet between metal railings, a three-story drop and jagged cliffs below that, white surf crashing on the rocks. I would have to negotiate two of these spans to make it to Tash’s balcony. It’s not a long reach. It’s just the fall if you miss.
“You’re crazy,” he says.
“Do you know any other way to get in there?”
“We could ring the buzzer. Knock on the door.”
“And what if Boyd is in there? He’ll kill Tash in an instant. Cut his throat and throw him off the balcony.” As I’m talking to Harry, I’m sliding the belt out of the loops in my pants. Leather, about an inch and a half wide.
“Give me your belt,” I tell him.
“I’m not going over there.”
“No, you’re not. I’m going alone.”
“As long as we have that settled.” Harry whips his belt out of the loops of his suit pants and hands it to me. I string the two belts together, putting the tip of one belt through the buckle of the other, the tongue through the first hole, and pull on them making sure they will support my weight. Then I loop the belt over the steel railing and buckle the ends together. I adjust it for length, and look at Harry.
“Wish me luck.” I ease myself over the railing, my feet through the wrought-iron spindles so that my toes are supported by the concrete deck of the veranda. Harry has me by one arm looking at me like I’m crazy. He is no doubt right.
I slip my right foot into the loop made by the belts and use it to swing out just a little at first, testing it. I can feel the pain in my chest pulling where Boyd nailed me.
Then, with my foot in the belt supporting my weight, one hand on the railing near Harry, I swing out once, come back; swing out twice. On the third try I catch the far railing, plant my foot through the spindles and in less than two seconds I’m over the railing.
I signal to Harry to uncouple the belts, and carefully he tosses them to me. I set up the arrangement on the far railing nearest to Tash’s apartment. I avoid looking down, though it’s hard to ignore the sound of the crashing surf below me.
I swing out. This time I catch the railing on the second try, put my free foot through the spindles and ease myself over the railing. Now the belts are behind me, left on the other balcony. The only way out is through the door in Tash’s apartment.
The slider is open about four inches. The vertical blinds are pitched so that I can see everything in one direction, the right side of the room. To the left, visibility is more obscured by the canted blinds that dance and clatter in the breeze from the open door.
There is no other movement in the living room. Two lamps are on. I slip my shoes off and step to the other side of the balcony. From here I can see slivers of the kitchen, visible through the openings as the blinds waft back and forth. Though I can’t see it all, there are no shadows being cast, and the kitchen lights are all on. If there was an energy crisis, you wouldn’t know it from Tash’s condo.
There’s a smaller window a few feet over from the sliding door. This looks into the bedroom. While the lights are off in this room, I have no difficulty seeing in, reflected light streaming down the hallway. The bed is neatly made. I can see the door to the master bath. There’s no one home.
I signal to Harry, shaking my head. He hangs by the railing, watching. I motion that I’m going in. He nods.
I pick up my shoes and quietly slide open the door, stepping through the vertical blinds.
I am focused to the front, the hallway off to my right, the kitchen to the left, sock toes buried in the deep pile of Tash’s carpeted living room, wondering what I’m doing breaking and entering, stealing across some stranger’s living room with my shoes in my hand.
“Hi, Paul.”
When I turn, he’s behind me. Frank Boyd is seated in a tall wingback chair in the corner, his back against the wall at the far left of the sliding door: the one blind spot in the room. In his lap is a short double-barreled shotgun, the muzzle pointed lazily in my direction. His finger outside the trigger guard, but close enough that I’m not going to argue with him.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t come,” he says. Frank’s face is etched with deep lines, a countenance that is tired, worn, showing no emotion, a lifeless mask. His hair that hasn’t seen a barber in months is hanging ragged halfway down his ears. There is a kind of wild look in his eye, the glassy gaze of some jungle cat on the prowl.
“I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he says.
I smile. “Oh, no. Not at all.” I touch my chest. “Just a little bruise.”
“That’s good. Why are you carrying your shoes?”
I look at them, a sick smile. I give him a face, shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should put them on,” he says.
“May I sit?”
He nods. “Sure.”
I back into a chair across the room from him, a tufted sofa back.
“When did you figure it out?” he asks.
“Figure what out?”
“Don’t play games,” he says.
“Oh, you mean. .”
“Yeah.”
I take a deep breath. “Tonight.”
If he’s surprised, his expression doesn’t convey it. “When I put all the papers together and looked at them,” I tell him.
“You mean if I hadn’t come by your office, you wouldn’t have. .”
I shake my head.
His eyes look away, a quizzical grin, wonder on the level of a galactic riddle. “Shows to go you,” he says. “I thought for sure that when you picked up the file from the house you were on to me. Huh.” A vacant stare, like how can he go back in time?
“I heard Crone got off,” he says. “It was on the radio.”
“Earlier today,” I tell him.
“That’s good. I always felt bad that he was being blamed for something he didn’t do. I had to take care of it,” he said. “Did pretty good, don’t you think?”
“You mean the suicide note?”
He nods. “Never was any good at typing. It took me a while. One finger at a time. But then he wasn’t going anywhere. He was a tall one, a long drink of water. I didn’t think the ladder was gonna be high enough. The note-I had to play with it to get it right. Wrote it out longhand at home first. Took it with me. The printing was a bitch,” he says. “I almost called Doris to ask her if she could help me over the phone. That woulda been a mistake.”
“Doris doesn’t know?”
“She has no idea.”
“Why did you do all of this, Frank?”
“What do you mean?” He says it as if killing two people and lying in wait for a third is a normal evening’s work.
“I mean Kalista Jordan.”
“She ended the program. Penny’s program. What do you think I was gonna do, just sit there?”
I don’t argue the point. His finger slides toward the trigger. I try a different subject.
“How is Doris?”
“What?”
“Doris and the kids?”
“Oh. They’re fine. Fine.”
“Where were they tonight? I tried to call.”
“Doris is out of town. Took the kids with her.”
“Where did they go?”
“Took a few days off. She needed to get away. They went to her mother’s up in Fremont. We had an argument.”
I don’t know whether to believe him or not.
“Did she leave tonight?”
He looks at me as if he can’t quite figure this out. “What day is it?” he asks.
“It’s Friday night.”
“Oh.” He thinks for a second. “I guess she left a couple of days ago.”
“What did you argue about?”
“The file,” he says.
“The file from Penny’s project?”
He nods. I can see him flinch with the mention of his daughter’s name. It’s as if something has rubbed this point raw on his soul.