THE CONDOMINIUM BUILDING WHERE Kendrick Haymes had lived was off of Galer, on Queen Anne Hill. Twenty-eight or thirty large units arranged in a wide H-shape to maximize sun and privacy. And profits.
It was seven in the morning. A lousy time of day to break into a place, with all the neighbors likely to be home and getting ready for work. But if I waited, I might lose my chance to be the first inside.
I turned onto the cross street and parked a few doors down. The morning was damp. A black vinyl carrying case that had belonged to my grandfather made a warm rectangle under my jacket. I’d found the case the week before, where it had been hidden behind the ventilation mesh in one of the house’s eaves. Dono had kept it out of the reach of a standard police search.
As I walked back to the building, I heard a mechanical clacking and the gate to the parking level began to rise. A late model Acura flew up the short ramp from the garage and zoomed down the street without pausing. I ducked under the gate before it closed again. A good omen.
Kend’s driver’s license had listed his unit as #D8. I found the garage stairwell and went up. The fourth-floor hallway was dead quiet, and carpeted in a deep wine color that matched the accents on the wallpaper. Nicer than any room in my house.
Number D8 was at the end of the hall. It had a cream-painted door, like all the other apartments. And like the others, a Baldwin brand single-cylinder, jimmy-proof deadbolt. I rang the bell. No answer. I could barely hear the chimes from out in the hallway. Another point on my side. High quality condo equals good soundproofing.
I opened Dono’s vinyl case. Inside, held in place by elastic loops, were a dozen key rings. Each ring had multiple keys. All of the keys had their jagged cuts filed down to stubby points.
Bump keys, arranged by brand name—Schlage, Kwikset, Master, and more—and by type of lock. I took out the Baldwin ring, and picked the key that matched the 8200 series. It went into the lock like it was coated in goose fat.
The hallway was still quiet. I took a screwdriver from the case, put a little tension on the bump key, and tapped it with the screwdriver’s rubber handle. A couple more taps, and the pins inside the lock lined up neatly on the shear line, and the key turned.
Now came the fun part. I stepped inside and closed the door.
Ten seconds. The air inside the condo was stale and odorless. Twenty seconds. No blaring siren. I locked the door behind me.
The entryway was wide enough to allow for a bench, and a wrought iron coatrack hung with half a dozen coats. A man’s coats, mostly, leather and microfiber jerseys and Gore-Tex from a higher price range than most outdoor enthusiasts could afford. There was one woman’s jacket, a sleek waterproof raincoat in dark green. Assuming it was Elana’s, she might have chosen it to match her eyes.
There was a narrow chance that the condo had a silent alarm. I searched around the entryway for a telltale keypad, and found only a closet stuffed to the ceiling with more clothes and shoe boxes.
His home was spacious. I guessed it at two bedrooms and maybe thirteen hundred square feet. But despite the size, the apartment felt stifled, like a cocoon. The soundproofing blocked any exterior sound, creating a private little world.
The first piece of furniture after the bench was a thin table with a stack of junk mail on it. The envelopes were addressed to Kendrick B. Haymes, or K. B. Haymes, or to just to Resident.
The flat anonymity of Resident summed Haymes up for me, too. Beyond his famous name, he was a blank. Had Kend been a violent whack job who’d killed his girlfriend in a rage and then taken the express train to Hell himself? Was he just some sorry bastard tormented by depression or fear? That was another kind of victim, I supposed. But any pity I might have felt was swept away by the memory of Elana’s wings.
Kend must have had friends, other than his girl. His phone had given me a few names and numbers. Maybe I could learn more here, find the people closest to him. Or I could paste the pieces of his life together myself. Figure out what he was thinking behind that crooked smile in his license picture.
You think that will explain anything? Willard had asked.
I started in the bathroom, checking the medicine chest. Kend had a Mantelukast prescription for seasonal allergies. Elana had a mild antidepressant. I’d taken shit a lot heavier when I’d been in therapy. There was nothing in the cabinets to imply Kend was bipolar or fighting anything more serious than clogged sinuses. Nothing that might signal that the poor bastard was a risk for suicide. Unless of course he’d decided to flush his meds.
In the living room, a brocade sectional couch took up a majority percentage of the living space. Broad sliding glass doors revealed a narrow balcony. Real hardwood floors and eight-foot ceilings, with the walls painted the color of eggplant. The furniture was sleek and low to the ground. It was a toss-up which had cost more: all of the furniture, or the eighty-inch flat-screen that looked like a glass tabletop bolted to the wall.
Everything was so immaculate there had to be a regular cleaning service. Even the appliances shone. I wondered what days the service came, and what time. Hopefully not first thing in the morning.
The living room also had a black walnut desk with a Macintosh laptop in a docking station. I tapped the space bar and saw the password prompt. No checking Kend’s e-mail, unless I wanted to steal the machine and find a way to hack into it. Better to leave the forensics for the cops.
There were photographs in wooden frames on the shelves, and taped to the fridge. One on the wall showed Kend as a young boy, red curls flying as a woman who I guessed was his mother swung him around. I didn’t see any pictures of Kend’s famous father, Maurice. Elana appeared in half a dozen pictures, in groups at parties or candid shots. She looked good in the candids, striking when she turned her gaze on the camera. A few faces repeated in the party pictures. I took snapshots of each with my phone.
I found one other picture, facedown in the desk drawer. The photo showed two white women in their midtwenties, both in glossy black dresses. The woman on the left was short and gamine, with bobbed hair the shade of thick honey. The other was taller and darker. A beauty mark accented the corner of her mouth. The girls were winking broadly and brandishing champagne flutes at the photographer. Both of them were good-looking. That seemed to be the kind of circle Kendrick Haymes ran in. All the men were rich, all the women beautiful. At the bottom of the picture was a line written in neat feminine cursive—Barr and Tru at Bob’s wedding.
The rest of the slim drawer was full of Post-its and bits of notepaper. The one on top read You’re So Much Marvelous, Mister written that same cursive, inside a felt-pen heart. Love notes that Elana had written to her man, and a few that Kend had scrawled back. The notes ranged in tone from cute to NC-17 for sexual content. None of them seemed to have been written as apology, or in anger. Maybe the lovers only kept the nice ones. Sweet, even if they were all stuffed in a drawer.
My phone buzzed. It was Bill Eberley. Major Eberley, of Eberley Tactical. Calling to give me news about the possible job, most likely. It buzzed once more while I decided. The walls here were probably thick enough.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice low.
“Van?”
“’M in a library, but didn’t want to miss your call.”
“Okay. I’ll do the talking. It’s not good news. We couldn’t make the deal with the Oregon state troopers. They want us, but February’s just too late to get onto their budget for the year. I’m still talking to Olympia, but those conversations are looking bleak. Short answer, I don’t think we’re going to have capacity for extra resources soon. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks for letting me know fast.”
“Like I said, these things wax and wane. Oregon might have funds free up later for extra SWAT training. But I expect you’ll be settled into another job well before that.”
In other words, don’t stare at the phone expecting it to ring. I said thanks again and we hung up.
Shit. Double shit. I had been counting on that job, maybe more than I’d let myself realize. But I couldn’t dwell on my employment situation right now. I might not have much time left in Kend’s apartment. Kend’s really upper-fucking-class apartment.
I went to the master bedroom. It had the same dimensions as the living room, with the same identical set of glass doors to the balcony. Framed large-print photographs decorated the blue walls, artfully time-lapsed prints of a Japanese street, a casino floor, an empty restaurant. In the nightstand drawer by the California King bed I found sticky buds of pot in an unlabeled aspirin bottle, along with rolling papers and an ashtray with a few layers of smudged resin. I examined the nightstand surface and the inside of the drawer closely. Addicts nearly always kept their works close to the bed, the better to collapse. There were no pinprick holes or scratches, like clumsy handling of a syringe might leave. No scorch marks in the soft wood from a hot pipe set down quickly.
Elana’s things were neatly tucked away in the dresser and the closet. She had lived simply. Almost minimalist. I got that. When you relocated every couple of years, you found you could cast off a lot.
There was something else I hadn’t found, I realized. No box of 9mm Parabellums, or a carrying case or gun cleaning kit. Had Kend lifted the Glock from somewhere? Or had he kept it hidden?
A small dog barked in the hallway. Then more barks, loud and frantic, right outside the door.
Crap.
I liked dogs. K9 units had saved our company’s collective ass in the Army more times than I could count. None of that kept me from wanting to punt this particular canine through uprights from twenty yards out.
The owner called to it from farther down the hall. The little terror kept up with its yapping. Finally I heard footsteps and the dog protesting as it was being carried away.
I couldn’t stay much longer. Maybe I’d been heard on the phone. Or the neighbor down the hall would start thinking about his dog’s sudden interest in the Haymes apartment.
I’d searched Kend’s place for drugs, or signs of psychological distress. There were other ways a person might be pushed to the limit. Even a rich man. Romantic woes. Family suffering. I knew a little something about that.
An antique rolltop desk and matching file cabinet took up the bedroom corner. I rummaged through stacks of bills on the desk. Most were standard. I found a bank statement and a car registration. Maybe Kend had been buying himself new wheels. He could’ve done all the window-shopping he wanted at Willard’s card game.
The registration wasn’t for a purchase, I realized with a second look. It was the seller’s record for a Porsche Panamera, two years old. Kend had signed over the car to someone named Torrance X. Broch about three weeks ago. There was no entry in the space labeled Sales Price.
I glanced through the recent bank statement. Kend’s checking account had less than two hundred in it at the time the statement was printed. His savings were nonexistent. Maybe he had another account, or kept all his money elsewhere.
A rich guy with a practically zero balance. Thirty seconds earlier I would have said I had nothing in common with Kendrick Haymes. But based on the quickest of glances, he looked just as broke as I was.
The file cabinet was a mess. I had just figured out which drawer held the scattered piles of bank and credit card statements when I heard voices from the hall.
“. . . a court order if we have to, but given the state of the family . . .” said a man’s low voice.
“Of course. Let me just . . .” Keys jingled.
Terrific. I was missing the mutt already.
I grabbed the stacks of papers and stuffed them into a canvas messenger bag that was next to the desk, and slung the bag over my back. The key turned in the front lock just as I eased open the sliding door to the balcony.
Fourth floor. I’d have to hope Kend’s downstairs neighbors weren’t at home. I climbed over the railing to clamber down and hang. My feet touched the railing on the third-floor balcony below. I jumped down and without pausing did it again, down to the second floor, and then I dropped the last ten feet to the alley.
My landing slammed my knees all the way up to my chest and gave me an instant headache. But no busted ankles. I eased back to a standing position and walked away, picking up speed and a little more oxygen as I went.