“LET’S GET OUT OF HERE,” Yuri said, his voice shaking. “Now!”
I started to obey, then realized we couldn’t just leave. “We need to check to see if he’s dead.” Reluctantly, I headed into the room.
“No way he’s alive,” Yuri said, but he didn’t try to stop me. “Don’t step in the blood.”
“I have to make sure. I would never forgive myself—”
“You’re right, of course we have to check.” Yuri stayed in the doorway, aiming his flashlight at the man’s head. Or what was left of it. The man had obviously been hit with something from behind. Hard. Maybe more than once. “Make it quick.”
I knelt down, trying to avoid touching the dark circle of blood on the floor, and felt for a pulse. After only a few seconds, I was sure. “Nothing. Not even a hint of life.”
“Let’s go then.” Yuri turned away, and the room was suddenly dark.
“Hey, I need to see where I’m stepping,” I yelled. Yuri quickly turned back in my direction and shined the light on the floor to guide me to where he was waiting.
Before stepping outside, we checked to make sure there was no one in the alley. After shutting the door, Yuri looked around again and asked, “Have anything to wipe the doorknob with?”
“I’m having second thoughts. Maybe we shouldn’t wipe it clean. The murderer’s prints could be on it.”
“But if we aren’t going to call the police….”
“Aren’t we?”
“Dammit, Cameron. I don’t want to get involved. Do you?”
“No, but—”
“Okay, let’s leave the prints. We can admit we followed them here. We can even admit we tried the doorknob. But that’s it. Okay? Now let’s get going.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would we try the doorknob, find the door open and not go inside? I mean, why would we try the doorknob in the first place if we weren’t trying to get in?”
“We can talk about this after we get away from here.”
Not at all convinced we were doing the right thing by running away, I followed Yuri back to my car, pausing before getting in to state the obvious: “If there is a camera, they will know we went inside and, if there’s a timestamp, they will also be able to tell how long we were in there.”
Yuri got in the car and motioned for me to join him. Reluctantly I took my place behind the wheel, turning to look at him before starting the engine. “Are we absolutely sure we want to just drive away?”
“No, I’m not sure, but I want time to think about it before we do something we’ll regret.”
I started the car and pulled away from the strip mall, slowly, not at all certain that we weren’t doing something we were going to regret, big time. “Where to?”
“My place,” Yuri said. “We need to think this through.”
Yuri lived only a few miles away. We didn’t talk much on the way there. I didn’t know what was going through his mind, but I was envisioning being questioned by the police and them offering me a deal if I would rat on Yuri. I was also thinking about what P.W. would say. Would she fire us? Even with an unlocked door, entering someone’s campaign headquarters at night without permission was unquestionably still a crime. And fleeing the scene of a crime, was that a misdemeanor? A felony? What if I ended up going to jail? Worst case scenario, what if they thought one of us was responsible for the man’s death? Or that we had colluded to commit murder? That was a pretty convincing argument for reporting our discovery sooner rather than later.
Yuri’s condo was the end unit of five connected, three-story structures. Each was painted brown with a different color accent on the second-floor dormer and window trim. Yuri’s accent color was bright green, like Knight’s signs. Eerie. In spite of working with him for over a year, I had never been inside his condo before. I was surprised to see how neat everything was. Given how sloppy he was at work, I had expected clutter everywhere. It almost looked like he had hired an interior decorator to create a comfortable space with masculine accents, the overall effect softened by the artwork on the walls and coasters on the low coffee table in front of the brown leather couch with brass studded armrests.
“Have a seat,” he said. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a drink.”
“Have any wine?”
“Red or white?”
“Red.”
He went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of red wine for me and what looked like whiskey for him. “Here’s what I think,” he said as he handed me my wine. “I think we need to call P.W.”
“What?” I almost spit out the mouthful of wine I had sipped. It was the last thing I’d expected to hear from him.
“Hopefully she’ll understand why we ran, and she will be able to give us some perspective on this.”
“Or she’ll fire us and tell us we’re on our own.”
“No, I don’t think so. But you have to agree to calling her. We’re in this together.”
I thought for a minute. P.W. was stern but fair. She probably knew we pushed the envelope occasionally, but we never talked about it. Maybe Yuri was right. It would at least be backup for our story if we were caught. “Okay, when should we call her?”
“Right now,” Yuri said.
“But it’s 1:00 in the morning.”
“Could be worse.”
“What’s worse?”
“3:00 a.m.” He was already on his phone. Moments later he said, “It’s Yuri and Cameron. I’m going to switch to speaker.”
As he did so I heard P.W. say “okay.”
“We have a situation,” Yuri continued.
“That doesn’t sound good,” P.W. said, her voice even more raspy than usual. We had undoubtedly awakened her.
“It’s not.” Yuri quickly explained what had happened and that we were back at his place trying to decide what to do next.
“So, you verified he was dead,” P.W. said.
“Yes,” I said. “He didn’t have a pulse.”
“And the back of his head was, ah, not looking exactly intact,” Yuri added.
“Any idea how long he’d been dead?”
“No,” both of us said in unison.
“Were the sign thieves inside long enough to have done it?”
“It depends,” Yuri said. “One quick hit, perhaps. They didn’t act like people who had just killed someone when they came out though. But they dumped the signs somewhere, and that back room had a huge pile of Knight signs.”
“Was it possible for them to toss the signs in without seeing the body?”
Yuri and I exchanged looks, and I nodded. “We think so,” Yuri said. “Especially if they didn’t bother switching on the light.”
“And your fingerprints are on the back door?”
“Yes, mine are,” Yuri said. “We didn’t want to wipe the knob, in case there were other prints.”
“Hmmm. Someone left the door open. It’s possible your prints may be the only ones.” P.W. was silent for a moment. “There’s nothing else to indicate you were there?”
“Not unless there were cameras,” I said.
P.W. was silent again. Then she said, “We can’t take a chance. I’ll call it in and get back to you.”
“Will we be in trouble for leaving the scene?” I asked, trying desperately to keep my voice calm.
“You might be. You’re certainly on the hook for entering without permission. I’ll see what I can do. Stay where you are. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.” She hung up before we could say goodbye.
“Well,” Yuri said, “she didn’t say ‘you’re fired.’”
“No, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to.”
The next fifteen minutes ticked by with mind boggling slowness, as if the fifteen minutes was a life sentence. We decided we shouldn’t have anything more to drink in case we ended up having to talk to the police. So, we just waited. I sat on the coach staring into space while Yuri paced back and forth in front of the couch. Once he stopped and said, “I should have listened to you.” Then he continued to pace.
“I could have refused to participate. But I went along with it.”
He stopped in front of me again. “I didn’t have the right to put you at risk.”
“You didn’t force me into anything,” I countered. “I chose to go along. I’m an adult. I make my own decisions.”
“You have kids.”
“Mom can take care of them while I serve my sentence,” I said, trying to lighten up the conversation and failing completely. Yuri glared at me and continued wearing a groove in his carpet.
When the phone rang we both stared at it as if it were a bomb about to go off. Then Yuri turned it on and switched to speaker. “We’re here.”
“I should hope so.” P.W.’s voice sounded normal if somewhat cross. “Listen carefully,” she began.
She definitely had our full attention.
“I’ve spoken with Detective Connolly of Major Crimes. He’s sending a team out to Mann’s headquarters as we speak. He would like you to meet him there and verify your story. Understood?”
“Yes,” we said in sync.
“Be in my office first thing tomorrow morning.” The line went dead.
Yuri and I looked at each other for a moment without saying anything. “Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Yuri said.
“Let’s see, we committed criminal trespass, left the scene of a crime, and are being asked to return for a ‘friendly chat’ with a detective from Major Crimes. How bad can that be?”