He didn’t offer me a seat or a drink. I didn’t care. I asked, “Did you hear anything unusual upstairs today? My lock is totally shattered.”
He thought about the question for a minute, then said, “No, I didn’t hear anything. But I was gone most of the day. I had a lab. And tonight I had my headphones on.”
“Physics?” I asked.
“Astronomy,” he said. “I’m a TA for Professor Landon.”
Astronomy. Made sense.
“Did you have a friend over here tonight?” I asked. “Right before I came home?”
“A friend?”
“Yes,” I said. “A friend. Or an acquaintance. Did you have someone to your apartment tonight?”
“Are you suggesting I know the person who broke into your apartment?” he asked, his back stiffening with indignation. Grad students could be touchy.
“I passed a man on the stairs when I came home,” I said. “A stocky little guy. I thought maybe he was here to see you.”
His posture eased. “No, he wasn’t. I’ve been alone.”
“Is anybody home next door?” I asked.
He looked at the wall as though he could see through it and into the next apartment. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s ever home.”
“I guess I never see him either.”
“He might have a girlfriend,” my neighbor said. “I talked to him once. He’s getting a doctorate in English.”
It was then I realized my hands were shaking. Really shaking. I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t know what to do about anything.
My neighbor said, “So if the guy wasn’t here and he wasn’t next door, that means you probably passed the guy who broke into your apartment. You must have just missed walking in on him.”
“That seems to be the case,” I said.
Our conclusion didn’t do anything to slow my shaking, so I just waited for the police to arrive.
Chapter Seventeen
I met the police on the stairs outside my neighbor’s apartment. During the short minutes we waited, he and I managed to introduce ourselves to each other. His name was Jeff. I apologized again for the kitchen flood. He blinked at me a couple of times. I thought maybe he’d forgotten about it. Then he said, “You’re providing all the excitement for the building.”
The police—two young officers, both with crew cuts—told me to wait in Jeff’s apartment while they went and checked out my apartment. That was fine by me. When they were finished, they called me up to assess the damage.
Having never been burgled before, I didn’t know what to expect. My laptop went with me everywhere, and it mattered the most. I didn’t own expensive jewelry or rare antiques. My television was close to ten years old, and I rarely turned it on. When I stepped into the apartment, I saw a mess. That’s the simplest way to describe it. It looked like a small tornado had blown through, kicking up papers and knocking cushions off my love seat and chairs. The desk drawers had been yanked out and dumped. One of the cops emerged from the small bathroom and announced that the door to the medicine cabinet hung open, its contents scattered across the floor.
“Meth heads,” his partner said. “Do you see anything missing?”
I looked around the room. “Tidiness and order,” I said.
“Ma’am?”
“I don’t see anything missing,” I said.
“The TV and DVD player are there.” He looked around. “Phone. Toaster. Do you have a computer?”
“A laptop. It was with me.”
“Lucky. They take electronics and sell them to get money for drugs. Or they just steal drugs if you have them.”
“I saw the man,” I said. “I passed him on the stairs as I was coming home.”
“Oh, yeah?”
I told them what had happened—the man passing me, bumping into me. His rush down the stairs. I told them he looked like an older man, not a junkie.
“They come in all ages,” the cop said. “Anything else you can tell us about him?”
I thought about it. “It was dark.”
“Was he white or black? Anything?”
“I really couldn’t tell,” I said. “White, I guess.”
The other officer came out of the bathroom. They stood side by side, surveying the damage. They were both solidly built, former football players or marines or something. They looked like law enforcement bookends. Giant law enforcement bookends.
The one closest to me said, “Well, we can file a report. If nothing significant is missing, then you probably don’t want to bother your insurance company with it.”
“I don’t have renter’s insurance,” I said.
“Then you should probably have your landlord get a locksmith over here,” he said. “And have them put in a dead bolt this time. That lock you had was pretty flimsy. Especially if you’re living here alone.”
“There’s something else,” I said.
Both officers turned to listen to me.
“My mother died—she was murdered this past weekend.”
I’d managed to say it out loud. Murdered. My mother. All in the same sentence to complete strangers.
Recognition crossed their faces. They must have heard about it. I was sure everybody in town knew.
“Do you think the two could be related?” I asked. “Someone kills my mother in her home, and then someone breaks into my apartment this way.”
The two officers nodded sympathetically. They seemed to be taking my concerns seriously and giving them their full weight. But I don’t think they bought into it.
“I understand this is disturbing,” one of them said. “Especially in light of such a tragedy. But these meth heads break into apartments all the time. We’ve had a little rash of them around the edges of campus lately. It happens. I don’t think it was directed at you.”
The other one said, “They were clearly just looking for something to sell to buy drugs.”
I looked around too. I agreed with them about one thing: whoever that man was, he was definitely looking for something.
Chapter Eighteen
Since I didn’t have a lock and not even much of a front door, and since someone seemed to think my home was a ripe hunting ground for whatever they were looking for—drugs or something else I couldn’t even imagine—I needed someplace to sleep. A call to Dan would provide the easiest solution. I knew he’d be only too happy to open his door—and his bed—to me. But easy didn’t always mean simple. And I worried about leading him on too much, making his life as well as mine more complicated.
So I called Paul and asked if I could spend the night in his spare bedroom. He readily agreed, and it was only when I showed up on his doorstep and saw him again, still looking tired and hangdog, that I wished I hadn’t bothered him. The stress of my mother’s death hung from him like heavy chains. I felt as if I’d just added a couple more links.
But I felt safe in his house. I locked the bedroom door when I went to bed and woke up every hour on the hour thinking someone was smashing the window to pieces and coming into the house after me. And once I woke up because I heard someone yelling from the other room. It was Paul, in the grip of some nightmare. I jumped up and went to his bedroom door, knocking lightly. When I called his name, he stopped yelling, but didn’t say anything else.
I stood there in the darkness, feeling very much like a lost and scared child. Two hours passed before I was able to fall back asleep.
Paul, the perpetual early riser, sat at the breakfast table when I walked into the kitchen the next morning. He looked showered and shaved, and some of the color and vitality seemed to have returned to his cheeks. He smiled when he saw me and pointed to fresh bagels and a dish of fruit.
“I have cereal and oatmeal if you want it,” he said. “And there’s coffee made.”