OUTSIDE MRS. PARMENTER’S FRONT DOOR I TURNED my head to the left, as she must have done Saturday night, when she said she looked out of her apartment and saw Ruth. All I could see was the door of 302, and just a sliver of Ruth’s door, 303. I walked to the front hallway and knocked on the door of 301. No answer. I positioned myself at Ruth’s front door. The space around me was rectangular, roughly eight by ten feet, and I noted locations as though they were hands on a clock. The hallway leading to the rear of the building was directly to my left, at nine o’clock. At ten o’clock was a short bare wall, the other side of Mrs. Parmenter’s dining area. The laundry room was at eleven o’clock, running along Mrs. Parmenter’s living room wall. On my immediate right, at three o’clock, was the door to 302, the empty unit. That would put the elevator and Lena Copeland’s apartment, 301, at one and two o’clock respectively.
At twelve o’clock, directly in front of me, I had a clear, unobstructed view of the hall that led to the trash chute and the stairwell door. I walked slowly down the hallway. The wall to my left was about twelve feet long. The right-hand wall, housing the elevator shaft, was shorter, perhaps eight feet. The hall itself was narrow, not quite three feet wide, and just being there made me feel claustrophobic. Shooting Sam Raynor in the back must have been like shooting fish in a barrel.
The crime scene tape had been removed from this area too. Someone, probably the manager, had tried to scrub out the blood that stained the beige carpet midway down the hall, but blood is hard to remove. No doubt this section of carpet would have to be replaced. I raised my eyes from the rusty brown splotch to the trash chute door, an eighteeninch square, hinged at the bottom. The chrome handle at the top, about four feet off the floor, still showed the residue of fingerprint powder. The chute itself was directly opposite the metal fire door that led to the stairs.
Piece of cake, I told myself. So easy to do, in just a matter of seconds. Shoot Sam Raynor in the back, step over the body, drop the weapon down the trash chute to the left, and exit to the right, down the stairs to the lobby. You couldn’t see anything, unless you were standing at the head of this hallway, or right in front of Ruth’s apartment.
I turned and walked back up the hallway, pausing to check out the laundry room. A long table, about waist high, and two coin-operated washing machines stood on the left, the wall shared with Mrs. Parmenter’s living room. Opposite them were two dryers and a large plastic trash can. One of the washing machines quivered and whirred as it went through a spin cycle, accompanied by a steady thump sound as clothes went round and round in a dryer. Between them, the two appliances made a lot of noise. Enough to muffle a gunshot?
I returned to Ruth’s door, my arms crossed, looking toward the murder scene as I listened to the sounds around me, filtering out some, identifying others. Someone on the floor below was playing rock music too loud. I heard several metallic growls, then a hum as the elevator moved in its shaft, the light on the indicator above the door telling me that the car had dropped from the second floor to the ground level. Once the elevator stopped, traffic noise seeped into the building. I heard the nearby squeal of brakes, an impatient car horn, the wail of a siren in the distance.
Saturday night in Oakland can be noisy, especially in this neighborhood, bordered by well-traveled arteries like Piedmont Avenue, MacArthur Boulevard, and Broadway. There must have been plenty of background noise the night Sam Raynor was killed, including Mrs. Parmenter’s television set. The elderly tenant had to be mistaken about the timing of the shot she said she heard, as well as Ruth’s supposed trip to the trash chute to dump the murder weapon. If I believed Ruth when she denied killing Sam—and mostly I did.
Ruth’s story was that she had taken a bag of garbage to the chute right before Sam got off the elevator. Given the location of Mrs. Parmenter’s front door, and her own statement that she’d simply poked her head out the door rather than stepping into the hall, the elderly woman could not have seen Ruth at the trash chute. She’d only seen Ruth walk out her front door, with something in her hand, then return to her apartment. According to Ruth that was before the gun went off. But Mrs. Parmenter said after.
If Ruth shot Sam, she could have wiped the gun on her clothes, then dropped it down the chute. There was no logical reason for her to go back to the apartment, then dump the gun. So Mrs. Parmenter must have seen her earlier, when she’d dumped the garbage. But that was when Sam got off the elevator, surprising Ruth in the hall. Why hadn’t Mrs. Parmenter seen Sam? She also said Ruth had been arguing with a man outside her apartment, before Ruth made her trip to the trash chute. If the man Mrs. Parmenter had seen wasn’t Sam, who was it? Kevin Franklin, who’d driven his sister and niece home that night? Another question to ask Kevin.
I shook my head. Someone was confused—or lying— about the sequence of events late Saturday night. Was it Mrs. Parmenter, or Ruth Franklin Raynor?
I worked my way through all three floors of the building, knocking on doors and talking to those tenants I could find at home. It was a useless exercise. Of those who had been home, only one had heard anything resembling a gunshot, and she thought it was a backfire from a car out on the street. The tenants I spoke with were uneasy, appalled that murder had soiled their building, their refuge from the world. Not safe anywhere, even at home—I heard the words over and over again. Even though these people lived behind the locked doors in a supposedly secure building, they didn’t feel safe, in their homes, on the street, in their neighborhood.
I retraced my steps to that short hallway on the third floor, staring at the murder scene, wishing for enlightenment. The elevator dinged and I heard the door open. As I rounded the corner, I saw a woman in a bright red dress standing at the door of apartment 301. Lena Copeland had come home from work.
She was facing away from me. Her long black hair had been braided into cornrows, the ends decorated with colorful beads that clicked whenever she moved her head. On her left hip she balanced a brown paper sack full of groceries. As a result, her dress was hiked up on the left side, revealing the lace hem of her slip, a wide strip of pale blue under wrinkled red linen. The thin strap of her leather handbag slipped off her right shoulder, catching on the white cuff at her elbow. She stuck a key into the dead-bolt lock above the doorknob, then I heard her swear under her breath. The lock stuck and she swore again, aiming a sharp kick at the bottom of the door with the pointed toe of her red leather pump. Judging from the number of scuff marks on the lower third of the door’s surface, she kicked the door frequently. The grocery sack slipped an inch or so down her outthrust hip and threatened to escape her grasp altogether.
“You look like you could use some help,” I said, walking toward her.
Her braids flew as she whipped her head swiftly to the right, the beads clicking and rattling together, brushing the red metal hoops in her ears. I saw a long nose, a wide mouth painted bright red, and a pair of suspicious brown eyes in a coffee-brown face. She looked about twenty-five, but weariness pulled her visage into tired lines, as though she’d already worked a forty-hour week and here it was only Monday. Her low voice was decidedly unfriendly.
“I don’t need any help.”
She set the grocery sack on the carpet at her feet and grabbed the doorknob with her left hand, pulling it toward her while she twisted the key with her right. The lock shifted with a click. She pulled the key out of the dead bolt and stuck it into the spring lock in the doorknob itself. The door opened a few inches and she kicked it wider, bending over to shove the grocery sack inside.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions about Saturday night,” I said quickly, before she could escape into the refuge of her apartment.
“I already talked to the cops,” she said harshly, ready to slam the door in my face. But the grocery sack was in the way. Swearing under her breath, she kicked off her shoes and used one foot and one hand to maneuver the grocery sack into her apartment. Then she straightened and reached for the door, long red fingernails like talons as she grasped the edge.
“I’m not a cop. I’m a private investigator.” I put my left hand flat on the door she was trying to shut as my right reached into my handbag. “My name’s Jeri Howard. You’re Lena Copeland?”
I held one of my business cards under her nose. She didn’t say anything, nor did she take the card from my hand, but she didn’t slam the door in my face either.
“Who you working for? Her?” She jerked her chin in the direction of Ruth’s unit. The beads in her hair swayed and clicked.
“Yes. I’ve been talking to some of the other tenants in the building, to see if anyone saw anything Saturday, the night of the shooting. No one seems to know how the victim got into the building, since the front door is always locked. Mrs. Parmenter in 304 suggested that you may have propped the door open.”
Lena Copeland’s red-painted mouth twisted and her voice crackled with resentment. “That nosy old bitch. Minds everybody’s business but her own. I did not leave the front door open. I did once, a couple of months ago, just to move something in. That cracker manager acted like it was a federal crime. So now anything goes down in this building they all blame me.”
“Hey, I don’t know how it happened,” I said with a placating shrug. “Nobody’ll cop to letting him in. Maybe the door was propped open. Maybe he slipped in while someone was coming in or out. Doesn’t really matter.” It did matter, though. If Sam Raynor came through the front door while someone else was in the building lobby, that person could tell me whether or not Raynor was alone. “Either way, he’s just as dead.”
Lena Copeland crossed her arms over her red linen bodice and tilted her head to one side. “From what I hear, he had it coming.”
“Some people seem to think so. Why do you?”
“I talked to Ruth a time or two, in the laundry room. Enough to figure out her old man had been beating up on her. She had a restraining order on him, didn’t she? So he comes in here, tries to mess with her, slaps her around. I don’t blame her for blowing him away.”
“Maybe she didn’t.” An expression flitted across Lena’s face, too brief for me to assess. “So you were home Saturday night?”
Her response was a humph sound that might have been a yes and might have been a no.
“You must have been, if you’ve talked to the police. If you were here, maybe you heard something, saw something that could be important. You’re close enough to Ruth’s apartment to hear most of what went on. Especially the gunshots.”
Behind her a bird began to trill, coloring the silence with melody. Lena sighed and dropped her hands to her hips. “Come on in and let me shut this door. I’m not supposed to have so much as a goldfish in this apartment. If that cracker manager hears Sophie, he’ll be wanting to throw me out.”
I followed her into the apartment. In one corner of the living room a cage hung on a stand, occupied by a bright yellow canary that had scattered bird seed all over the carpet. As Lena Copeland approached the cage, making kissing noises, Sophie rewarded her with a burst of song. Then Lena walked to the kitchen and hoisted the bag of groceries to the counter that separated the two rooms. As she put away the contents, I walked to the living room window, which looked down on Howe Street. The drapes were open, with a row of house plants in ceramic pots at intervals along the sill. I gazed out at the construction site on the opposite corner.
“So what is it you want to know?” Lena asked as she walked from the kitchen to the living room. She sat down on her floral print sofa and massaged one nylon-clad foot, then the other.
“Did you hear the gunshots?” She nodded. “Tell me about it. Everything you can remember.”
She sighed. “I wasn’t sure about the first shot. I was listening to some music while I got ready for bed. I thought maybe it was something I heard on the radio. But that second shot. It was right outside my apartment. I knew what it was. I used to live in East Oakland. Lots of drive-by shootings in that neighborhood.”
“What did you do?”
“I just froze,” Lena said, shaking her head. “I mean, I’m standing here in my nightgown with a jar of face cream in my hand, singing along with Anita Baker. Then comes this bang, and I’m thinking, girl, you didn’t hear what you just heard. That can’t be coming from inside this building. It has to be out in the street. I go to the window, peek out, I don’t see anything. Then I realized it must have come from out in the hall.” She glanced toward the front door of her apartment and shuddered. “I was ready to crawl under the bed. The phone was right there, but it never occurred to me to call the police. All I could think about was, my God, Maurice just left.”
“Who’s Maurice?”
“The guy I was out with Saturday night. I was worried about him.”
“What time did he leave? How long was it before you heard the gunshot, the one out in the hall?”
Lena tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Five, ten minutes. I’m not sure. You’re thinking Maurice let the guy in?”
“I’m thinking he may have seen something, or someone.”
“I called him that same night,” Lena protested, “to tell him what happened and make sure he was all right. He didn’t mention seeing anything strange.”
“He might not have thought it was strange or out of the ordinary. When Maurice left, did he take the elevator or the stairs?”
“When I closed the door, he was waiting for the elevator. Then when I opened it again—” She stopped.
“When did you open the door again, after you heard the shot?”
“Are you crazy? For all I knew there was still some nut out there with a gun. Only time I opened the door after I heard the shot was when the cops came knocking.”
There was an armchair opposite the sofa, its faded blue upholstery covered with a plaid blanket throw. I sat down and leaned toward her. “But you opened the door after Maurice left and before you heard the gunshot? Why?” She flashed me that look again, the one I’d seen when we were standing in the doorway, when I said maybe Ruth didn’t kill Sam. “Come on, Lena. You must have had a reason. Don’t hold out on me.”
“I heard voices,” she said finally. “In the hall. Yelling. Must have been when Ruth’s old man busted in.”
“And right after Maurice left. How long?”
“Long enough for me to get my dress off and hang it in the closet,” Lena said. “That elevator door is right by my front door, so when people get off the elevator I can usually hear them, but I don’t pay any attention. People talking in the hall, and the elevator itself, it’s background noise. I’m used to it. This was different, though. This was yelling, first in the hall, then farther away, like they’d gone into an apartment.” She sighed and shook her head again. “I wondered about Ruth, ‘cause I knew she was scared of her old man. I put on my robe and took a peek outside, to see where those voices were coming from. But Ruth’s door was closed. When I poked my head out, I didn’t hear the voices anymore.”
“You didn’t see anyone in the hall?”
Lena looked perplexed. “Not really.”
“Either you did or you didn’t.”
“When I opened the door, I was looking toward Ruth’s apartment.” She shifted position on the sofa and pointed to her left, bringing her hands into play. Then her other hand pointed to the right. “But I had this impression that someone had moved out of sight, into the laundry room, or that hallway that leads to the stairs. Maybe I saw somebody’s shoe or pant leg. It’s like I saw something out of the corner of my eye.” She snapped her fingers. “It was just that quick, not enough to register as a person, but someone was there. I just know it. I feel it.”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“I started to,” she said, “but those cops were more interested in what I actually heard or saw, not what I thought I saw. Besides, they’ve got themselves a pretty good suspect, don’t they?”
“Ruth.” I nodded. “Mrs. Parmenter says she looked out into the hall after the shooting and saw Ruth walking toward the trash chute, with something in her hand.”
“That old bitch is just foolish enough to stick her head out the door and get it shot off,” Lena declared. “Besides, she can’t see shit from her front door. How does she know what Ruth was doing?”
I didn’t have an answer to that one. Mrs. Parmenter seemed sure of her version of the facts, just as sure as Lena was of her story. “You said you were listening to the radio when you heard the gun. What station, and what song?” Lena looked surprised, then rattled off the call letters of a local rhythm and blues station and the title of Anita Baker’s latest hit. I could check the station playlist and find out what time the record had been aired. That could help me pinpoint the time. “I need to talk to Maurice, Lena.”
She sighed again, reluctant to give me her friend’s phone number. “Give me your card. I’ll have him call you.”
Outside Lena’s apartment I walked past the elevator and turned right, intending to leave the building by the same route Sam Raynor’s killer had. I was halfway to the stairwell door when I heard an imperious voice behind me.
“You! Hey, you!” I turned and saw a belligerent red face bearing down on me. “Who are you? What are you doing in this building, bothering the tenants?”
The manager, author of the printed sign on the building door. Mrs. Parmenter had said his name was Sullivan. And Lena Copeland referred to him derisively as a cracker. I took my time answering, looking him over. He was my height, about sixty, pale blue eyes topped by a gray crew cut, with a thickset body in a green shirt and a pair of brown slacks.
“Who says I’m bothering anyone?” I asked, my voice neutral. One of the tenants I’d talked with earlier must have called him.
He shook a stubby finger at me. “Don’t get smart with me, honey. I know you’ve been ringing bells on every floor, pretending to be a cop, or some such. We’ve already had the cops in here. Who are you? Who let you in?”
“I’m a private investigator. You must be the manager, Mr. Sullivan.”
“Private investigator,” he repeated with a snort. “Sure you are, honey. How did you get in here?” He slewed his eyes in the direction of Lena Copeland’s apartment. “Was it that colored girl in 301? I’ve had nothing but trouble since she moved in. Leaves the front door open, lets anyone in the building.”
“I came to see Mrs. Parmenter. Ask her.”
Sullivan looked a bit nonplussed. Mrs. Parmenter must have been on his approved list, unlike Lena Copeland. I already had him pegged as a petty tyrant whose world revolved around building rules and regulations, and now I added racist and sexist to the description. I turned my back on him and headed for the stairs.