“Let me think. Do I want to deliver to Keri her dead brother’s belongings? I think that’s a no.”
“Come on, kemo sabe. It would save me a lot of time.”
Ben frowned. “I’m entirely too soft. But I missed you, you big lug.”
Mike fluttered his eyelashes. “I love it when you sweet-talk me.”
Half an hour later, Mike parked his TransAm in front of a dilapidated flophouse just a few blocks from central downtown. Some parts of Tulsa’s downtown area had been refurbished in recent years, giving people more and more reason to venture northward, even during nonwork hours: Greenwood, the Brady, OSU-Tulsa, Gilcrease Museum. Almost every time Ben came downtown it seemed he discovered something new and charming. But there were also isolated pockets of the past, places where it seemed nothing had changed for decades—except maybe for the worse.
Kirk’s apartment—his room, to be more accurate, was barely habitable. The two-story house was a faded grayish color, so ill-maintained and uncared for that as he looked at it, Ben wondered that it could even remain standing. This place could be a poster house for landlords everywhere: DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!
Kirk had the room at the top, a converted attic, which Mike informed Ben he had rented for a whopping twenty dollars a week. As Ben stepped through the creaking door, he was almost knocked over by the putrid odor that assaulted him.
“How could anyone live here?”
The tiny room was so cluttered with stuff the two men could barely get from one end of it to the other. Despite the haste of his move, Kirk seemed to have taken with him everything that was of the remotest importance to him.
“Anyway,” Mike said, “you can see that most of this clutter is just personal junk. Not going to help us understand anything about the murder. Not worth anything to anyone, except maybe his sister. And in most cases, probably not her. But someone has to take it.”
Ben pushed his way through the room. “Funny, isn’t it? Or not funny at all. Depressing. Some of this stuff must’ve been special to him. He may have used it, or looked at it, every day. But now he’s gone and—pow. One week later, it’ll all be on the scrap heap.”
Ben saw some books, a few CDs. Kirk seemed to favor country-western, not exactly surprising for a boy from Stroud. Several Bibles, also not a gigantic surprise. Ben picked one up and found numerous passages underlined in red. In some cases, messages were scrawled in the margins, in what had to be Kirk’s handwriting.
“Kirk was seriously into the Good Book,” Ben murmured.
“No surprise there,” Mike replied. “Don’t get me wrong. The Bible’s a great read, especially the King James Version. But it’s also a standard volume in the library of virtually every psycho you’ll ever meet in this neck of the woods.”
Ben kept sorting. He found a couple of magazines on tattooing and other means of “bodily enhancement.” “There are magazines about tattooing? Three different ones?”
“Ben, there are magazines about everything. We live in the era of the niche audience.”
“I guess so.” He was surprised that he found only one photograph, of Kirk’s sister, Keri. It had to be several years old; Keri looked thirteen at best. But it was lovingly framed, even cleaned, unlike everything else in the room.
“He loved his sister so much,” Ben commented. “I can’t even conceive of devotion of that magnitude.”
“Just as well you can’t,” Mike said. “Given what it led him to.”
Ben continued looking. He realized this was not much different from sorting through a dead man’s pockets, but it was fascinating, all the same. After pushing aside some decorative brass doodads, he found a large cardboard box. “What on earth could this be?”
He opened it up—and gasped.
“What?” Mike said, whipping his head around. “What is it?”
Ben stared into the box, his mouth open, his eyes wide. “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
“What?” Mike repeated. He stumbled toward his friend, knocking over items right and left. He peered into the box. “Okay, so what? I don’t get it.”
“No, you couldn’t. But I do.” Ben’s eyes seemed glassy and fixed. “Oh, my God. I do.”
Mike grabbed his shoulders. “Would you stop that? Tell me what’s going on!”
“I can’t.” He pressed his fingers against his forehead. “My God, how could I be so stupid? How could I be so blind?”
Mike was getting angry. “Would you please tell me what you’re talking about?”
Ben ignored him. He pulled away, grabbed his coat, and headed toward the door. “I’m sorry, Mike. I have to go. There’s someone I have to talk to.” He rushed out the front door and started down the decaying staircase. “Now.”
50
IT WAS TAKING HER an inordinate amount of time to answer the door, Ben thought, as he paced back and forth in the narrow hallway. He knew she was home; he could hear noises inside. So why wasn’t she answering? The delay was only increasing his tension level. Because, of course, deep down, he didn’t really want that door to open. He dreaded the conversation he knew would follow. But there was no avoiding it.
At last the apartment door opened, and a patch of disheveled platinum blond hair became visible through the opening. “Ben?”
Ben peered through the chained gap, not sure what to say first. “I need to talk with you, Keri.”
Keri licked her lips, then forced a smile. “Sure, honey. I want to see you, too. It’s just—I told you to call first. I want to look my best for you. Could you come back—”
“We need to talk now.”
“Couldn’t it wait until I’ve had a chance—”
“No. Now.”
With obvious reluctance, Keri slid the chain out of the lock and opened the door. Ben stepped inside. She was barely dressed, wearing only a T-shirt and panties, and the shirt was on backwards. Her near perfect figure was on display and impossible not to notice, but Ben tried to put it out of his mind.
Ben glanced around the apartment, which was a mess. Books were off shelves, tables were cleared. Large cardboard boxes cluttered the room. “You’re moving.”
The rise and fall of her chest did magnificent things to her near-transparent white T-shirt. “Yes, Ben, I am. You know this place is a dump. Now that the trial is over, I wanted someplace a little nicer—”
“You’re leaving town, aren’t you?”
She sighed. “Yes, Ben. For a while, anyway. I need to make a fresh start. Someplace where everyone doesn’t think of me as a former murder defendant.”
“Were you planning to tell me?”
“How can you say that? Of course I was. You know how … how I feel about you.” She reached out and twined her fingers around his. “Actually, I was hoping you might come with me.”
Ben slapped her hand away. “Stop that.”
Keri recoiled, staring deep into his eyes. “Ben, what’s wrong? Has something happened?”
“You could say that.”
“Something about the case?” Deep creases crossed her brow. “They’re not going to try me again, are they?”
“No, you’re off once and for all this time. Never in a million years could the D.A. get the appeals court to set aside an acquittal twice. Especially not after the case has gone to the jury.”
“Then what?”
Ben turned away. This was hard enough to do without having to stare at that magnificent figure, beautiful hair, deep blue eyes. “The police found the place where your brother was holed up. After he left here.”