Authors: Lisa Lutz
Monday, April 24
1235 hrs
“See,” I said, “that should help my case, right?”
“Wrong,” Morty replied. “It will be inadmissible. The only thing that matters is that you violated the TRO. Extraneous circumstances wouldn’t matter unless you pulled him from a burning building. Besides, you threatened him.”
“I didn’t threaten him.”
“He has you on tape saying, quote-unquote, I am going to make you pay for what you’ve done.”
“I don’t mean to nitpick, but doesn’t my particular threat rely upon Subject having done something wrong? How can it be a threat if he hasn’t done anything?”
“Why aren’t you taking this seriously? Your livelihood is at stake. You get that, right?”
“Yes. But two women are missing and they both had direct contact with Subject before they disappeared. I think that’s more important than my job. Wouldn’t you agree, Morty?”
But I get ahead of myself once again.
CHAPTER-3
Sunday, March 12
Until I received that phone call from Sheriff Larson on my third night of leprechaun watch, I had tried to keep my mind off of Subject. At least, his suspicious behavior had ceased occupying my everyday thoughts. I had moved on to other topics, like, say, motorbike sabotage, copycat vandalism, an unfaithful brother, and an AWOL best friend.
But then Subject earned my attention once again, and my other mysteries faded into the periphery.
I shared my latest dirt on our neighbor with Rae, who helped me keep a ’round-the-clock vigil on Subject. We observed nothing unusual in his routine. He loaded topsoil into his truck and made the rounds to various gardens in the Bay Area, planting, watering, weeding, and doing whatever it is that landscapers do. I saw him speak to a woman for approximately five minutes and hand her his card. I saw no further daytime swapping of packages, but he did return to that Excelsior district home and pass that same blonde woman another paper bag. I would have to look into her involvement with Subject more thoroughly.
Wednedsay, March 15
0900 hrs
After three full days of avid Subject-watching, Rae and I were no further along in our investigation. Then we spotted Subject taking out the trash, and Rae and I turned to each other in understanding.
1
“Five dollars,” I said.
“Twenty,” Rae replied.
“Ten,” I said.
“Twenty-five,” my sister replied.
“Fifteen,” I said.
“Thirty.”
“You’re supposed to go down, not up.”
“There are no rules.”
“Ten,” I said.
“Thirty-five.”
“Okay, fine. Twenty,” I said, and pulled a bill from my wallet.
Rae took the money and headed for the door. In my family, if one loses a negotiation, we like to pretend that we have won.
“I would have given you thirty,” I said.
“I would have done it for five,” Rae replied.
Ten minutes later, Rae and I were in the basement sorting through two separate bags of trash.
“Did you get his trash or recycling?” I asked.
“One of each,” Rae said, breaking into one of the forty-gallon garbage bags.
“That smells,” I said.
Rae, wearing yellow dishwashing gloves, dug through the refuse like a champ.
“There have to be at least four banana peels in here,” said Rae. “Now that’s suspicious.”
“Some people like bananas, Rae. They call it the perfect snack food, because it comes with its own wrapper.”
“Suzy Franklin eats at least one banana every day. And she is completely insane.”
“Don’t judge a person by their produce preference. He sure shreds a lot of paper. Do you have any paper in that bag?”
“Paper towels, but that’s it. I think this really is just trash,” Rae said, trying not to breathe through her nose.
“Get rid of it,” I replied.
Rae placed the opened bag inside of another trash bag and headed outside. I watched her through the window as she returned the garbage to Subject’s can. Then she came back to the house.
“Why did you put his trash back in his own bin? He might have seen you.”
“Where was I supposed to put it?”
“Uh, inside our trash bin.”
“What if he noticed his trash was missing?” she asked.
“Most people don’t keep a tally of their waste.”
“They do if they’re keeping sensitive items in it that might incriminate them,” Rae replied.
Sometimes the soundness of her logic trumps the principle behind it. I let the argument drop. The single bag that remained was a pillow of shredded papers. We spread the contents on the floor to see if there was anything that stood out. My sister and I were looking for anomalies. Most of the confetti in front of us was from plain white paper, but if we could find something different in it, then we could look for the same and match it.
I focused on shards of laminate, thinking it might be possible to gather all the pieces of a shredded identification card. Rae noticed the distinct heading of an e-mail and tried to piece that together.
Three hours later, I could say for certain that an identification card had been shredded, but whose ID, and whether it was a library card or a driver’s license or a frequent buyer’s club card, I could not say. Rae fared somewhat better. Shortly before she threatened suicide
2
if she had to go on, she taped together the following e-mail:
m James
om: Alley Cat [alleycat25@
Nora [jj2376
ck box tomorrow. Then call
“Mystery solved,” I said, as I lay back on the floor and shielded my eyes from the unforgiving light.
“Four hours of my life I can’t get back,” said Rae. “What a waste of time.”
“He’s shredding his papers and then separating them and throwing them in different trash bags.”
“How could he know we’d do this?” asked Rae.
“He couldn’t,” I replied. “He’s taking precautions because this has happened to him before.”
“Now what?”
“I have to get into that room.”
PART-II
Thursday, March 16
Almost twenty-four hours later, after an uneventful night watching the Chandler residence, I was back in David’s old bedroom, keeping watch on Subject’s apartment. When Rae came home from school, she joined me. In between text-messaging her friends, she made casual conversation.
“Are you going to sit here all night?” she asked.
“No,” I replied. “I have a plan.”
“Is that why you’re wearing black?” Rae asked.
“Yes.”
“Does your plan have anything to do with the ladder that’s propped against the back fence?”
“It might.”
“What are you waiting for?”
“Subject needs to leave for me to implement my plan.”
“I see,” Rae said. “What about the Chandler job? Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day.”
“They won’t strike until after midnight. I’ve got plenty of time.”
Subject Exits His Apartment…2300 hrs
I put on a black skullcap and grabbed a screwdriver from Dad’s tool kit. I put my cell on vibrate and told Rae to call if Subject returned home unexpectedly. I reminded her not to get sloppy. Rae rolled her eyes and I exited our house through the back door.
I extended the painting ladder on the ground and propped it up against Subject’s building. It reached approximately two and a half feet below his office window. This might be a stretch, but I was feeling lucky. I climbed to the top of the ladder and then used the wall for balance as I stepped up the last few rungs, until my feet were on the second rung from the top and my hands were clutching Subject’s windowpane. I pulled the screwdriver from my back pocket and jimmied open the window.
The office was dark inside; I held a flashlight in my mouth to get a visual on the inside. Several different kinds of printers and computers lined the walls. There was a high-volume paper shredder on the floor and two phones. Just below the window was a file cabinet. I would have to slide myself over it to gain entry. I put the flashlight back in my pocket and the screwdriver on top of the file cabinet. I stepped onto the final rung of the ladder to heave myself inside.
My foot hit the top rung at the wrong angle and the ladder flew out from under me. My grip on the window was purely for balance. The twelve-foot drop happened in an instant.
The wind was knocked out of me and I didn’t come around until maybe five minutes later with Rae standing over me, a look of genuine fear in her eyes.
“Should I call 911?” Rae asked.
“No way,” I tried to shout, but the pain dampened my voice. “I’m fine,” I said, although that fact had yet to be determined.
Slowly getting to my feet, I happily discovered that all my limbs were still in working order. We circled the perimeter and entered the Spellman residence from the back.
“Get rid of the ladder,” I said to Rae before we went inside.
Rae dragged the ladder into the garage, while I checked myself for injury. There was a small cut on the side of my face, and a nasty scrape on my arm, but nothing that would require stitches. That was the good news. The bad news was that every time I took a breath it felt like I was being stabbed, not that I know what being stabbed feels like.
“You might have a broken or cracked rib,” Rae said. “I’ll be right back.”
I took a shot of my dad’s whiskey and tried to find a comfortable spot to lie down on the couch. There was no painless position, so I simply chose the most endurable angle.
Approximately fifteen minutes later (the time frame, apparently, required to do ample research on rib injuries on the internet), Rae returned with a medical degree.
“Show me where it hurts,” Rae demanded with an air of professional authority.
I showed her.
“Does it hurt if I touch it?”
“Ouch!!!”
“Yes, it hurts.” Rae jotted this down in her notes. “Does it hurt when you breathe?” Rae asked.
“Yes.”
“Does it hurt when you cough?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t needed to cough.”
“You don’t know how to fake-cough?”
“I assume that it’s going to hurt if I fake-cough, so I don’t see the point.”
“You should do it just to be sure.”
I fake-coughed just to shut her up. “It hurts,” I said. Rae jotted that down in her notes.
“Is your breathing rapid and shallow?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Pour me another shot of whiskey.”
“It doesn’t say anything about drinking whiskey in my research.”
“Does it say anything about
not
drinking it?”
Rae skimmed her recently printed sheets of paper. “No.”
I poured myself a shot, since Rae was otherwise occupied.
“I need to check your pulse rate and see if it’s elevated,” Rae said, and then placed two fingers on my wrist and eyed her watch.
“What’s it normally?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Then how am I supposed to know if it’s elevated?” she asked.
“I don’t think it’s elevated,” I said, finishing my second shot of whiskey. Finally the pain was starting to dull.
“Are you coughing blood?” Rae asked.
“No,” I replied. “Would you like me to try fake-coughing up blood?”
“You could try.”
After forty-five minutes of Rae’s version of triage, I convinced her that I was not in serious danger and a hospital visit was not necessary. I was fairly certain said hospital visit was suggested so that she could practice driving.
I took three Tylenol and attempted sleep. But the pain made that utterly impossible. I watched four hours of late-night television and then clocked approximately two hours of sleep right before dawn. I awoke at seven
A.M
. sharp when the telephone rang.
“Huh?” I answered.
“Isabel,” said a stern woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“Happy St. Patrick’s Day.”
I was too exhausted, weak, and in pain to argue, so I allowed Rae to drive me the two blocks to Mrs. Chandler’s residence. She was already in clean-up mode, adding the cans of Guinness to her recycling bin and sobering up her leprechauns. My Copycat Vandals had struck in the earliest hours of St. Patrick’s Day while I was in bed, writhing in pain.
In my pajamas I got out of the car and walked across the lawn to Mrs. Chandler. Her harsh expression softened when she saw the condition I was in.
“What happened to you?”
“I had an accident.”
“A car accident?”
“No,” I said, calculating a response. See, I had to come up with a lie that my mother could not disprove if it was repeated around her.
“I tripped and fell down a flight of stairs.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, dear.”
“You and me both.”
“Go home and back to bed,” she said.
“I’ll get them the next time,” I said. “I promise.”