We sat in Murray’s car in the parking lot of Skeen’s condo. I’d taken my flashlight out of my car. I asked, “Skeen’s in town for a relatively short time, but he buys a luxury condo?”
“He could probably buy most of the town. Tyler Skeen was used to living in luxury.”
“Where does the entourage live?”
“They rented an immense old mansion on the other side of the tracks from you. The much better side of the tracks about a mile or so down toward the ballpark. When you drive to the park, it’s the huge pink place.”
I raised an eyebrow. I remembered the huge old Victorian mansion.
“The last owner was eccentric.” He pointed to the condo. “Sometimes partygoers stayed overnight in the condo. There’s lots of rooms.”
I rolled down the window. The restive night noises of insects and critters pulsated in the air. I could feel the heat radiating from the still-warm surface of the parking lot of the luxury enclave. In front only two of the visitors’ spaces were filled. Tenants parked in the back. The condo overlooked an artificial lake. No street lights, no sodium arc lights, just trendy “spots” that illumined little except the five-foot diameter circles they shed.
Crime scene tape hung on the condo’s front door, but there was no guard. An overgrown, potted evergreen bush with yellowing leaves blocked the entryway from the view of the parking lot. Skeen’s condo was the end unit. One of the trendy spots lit about half the entrance.
Murray unlocked Skeen’s door. We ducked under the tape and slipped inside. The first thing I noticed was the air-conditioning was off. We didn’t turn on any lights. I dug out my flashlight and narrowed the beam to a pinpoint.
Lights from a shallow pool with live fish sparkled off the mirrors on the vaulted ceiling of the entryway. The marble floor was first class. Bland paintings filled with multi-colored blobs hung on the stucco walls.
I eased open a door on the right side of the hall and found a theater with twenty seats. The first door on the left led to a ten-foot-deep closet with designer clothes crammed in every available space. The drapes in each room were closed. I carefully wiped each surface I touched. I whispered to Murray to do the same.
In the living room, empty potato chip, nacho, and cheese popcorn bags mingled with bones of buffalo wing leftovers. These along with bowls of rotting dip covered everything: the coffee table, end tables, the cushions on the sofa, any random flat surface, which included a great deal of the floor.
In the kitchen, bottles and cans of beer filled the refrigerator. Empty liquor bottles obscured the entire surface of every cabinet. Several large basins on the floor contained two-inch deep placid bits of water, probably remnants of ice. Two four-foot tall metal garbage cans overflowed with liquor containers and party detritus. Cigar and cigarette butts spilled from overflowing ashtrays. Some smokers had even stubbed them out on tabletops, leaving reeking butts and smears of burn scars. Bits of chips crunched on the European Eucalyptus flooring.
I’m not big on cleaning, and I have a few ex-boyfriends who will attest to my predilection for untidiness, but this was out of control.
Keeping my voice low, I asked, “He doesn’t have a cleaning service?”
“Maybe they only come in every other day.”
“From the looks of this place, they’d have to come in every other minute.”
In an office there were papers strewn across the top of a desk. They seemed to be ordinary bills and messages. Nothing of consequence. No stack of threats.
In the living room a DVD player connected to a fifty-six inch flat screen television: lots of DVD’s, mostly old westerns, two porn tapes, heterosexual couples on the covers; no books to read anywhere.
No bottles of drugs. No stacks of pills. Nothing in any shirt or pants pockets we hunted through. The police had been thorough, or there was nothing to find.
The bed in the master bedroom wasn’t made. Piles of clothes sat on the floor. The message light on the answering machine blinked.
I played the message. A mechanical voice said, “Message received at twelve eighteen Wednesday morning.” That would have been a few minutes before we turned the key in the lock. The message itself came across muffled and low. It said, “I know you two are in there. Stay as long as you like. You’ll die soon enough.” I flicked off the flashlight.
“We better get the hell out of here,” Murray whispered.
“Who’d you tell we were coming here?”
“Nobody. I swear to God.”
“Your brother-in-law?”
“He’d never say anything. I didn’t tell him when I was going. We get along great.”
“Then somebody’s watching the place.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“Maybe they’re in here. Maybe they’re watching us right now.”
I whispered, “We need to be more careful, and more quiet. We need to check all the exits.”
Murray headed for the front door. I grabbed his elbow.
Murray said, “What if he can watch all the exits, windows and doors and everything?”
I said, “And there could be more than one person out there. I want to look at each exit and see which one is darkest.”
The condo was built on a slope, two floors in front but three in back. Floors one and two didn’t show any unlit easy exit. We headed up to the third floor. We kept to shadows and moved quietly on the thick carpet past two unfurnished bedrooms to a fully furnished one. To the left as we entered, an open door revealed a shadowed bathroom with a sunken tub. A large plate-glass sliding door led to a third floor balcony, which was surrounded by a wrought iron railing.
Moonlight flooded the doorway and the room in front and to the left of us. Deep darkness covered the right half of the room and the right half of the sliding door. I could hear night sounds from outside. Murray bulled forward. I grabbed him and pulled him back.
“What?”
I pointed. In front of the left side of the door, I saw an irregular mound.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I inched closer.
Murray huddled behind me.
It was a body.
It wasn’t moving.
It was Czobel.
The amount of blood around the body seemed to preclude a need to feel for a pulse, but I needed to be sure. Keeping to the shadows as best I could, I got next to the body, knelt on one knee, and touched the cold skin over the carotid artery. He was dead. Shards of plate glass lay between him and the outside. The screen had two round holes in it. Two bullets passing through the screen must have shattered the glass. The other floor to ceiling pane of glass was still intact.
The part of the door that could be unlatched and opened was halfway ajar.
One pool of blood began just above his belt. The black hole in his forehead showed where the other entered.
“Is he dead?” Murray rasped from the darkest corner where he’d sunk to his knees.
I said, “Yes.” I was frightened and dismayed. I’d seen death before, and despite the comments of the office help, I was not used to corpses of those I’d made love to. He’d been vibrant in my arms not that many hours ago. Now he was dead, and there had been the hostile and menacing message on the machine.
Murray was drawing ragged breaths. He said, “I may be sick.”
“Puke in the bathroom.”
He stumbled from shadow to shadow to the door and scrambled inside. While Murray heaved, I checked Czobel’s pockets. Nothing unusual.
I heard the toilet flush. A few seconds later when Murray crawled out, even the little light that existed exaggerated his paleness.
I said, “We should call the cops and wait for them.”
“We can’t. We’re not supposed to be in here. Besides, Rotella, the police chief, hates me. He’d arrest me and you.”
I hadn’t been much impressed with Rotella. I’d rather not have to deal with him.
We stole to the half-open sliding screen door. Seconds later we crept outside. We huddled in the shadowed side of the balcony from which we could peer over the railing to the ground. The bit of the parking lot we could see was silent.
Large trees grew on either side of the balcony. They were a long leap away from a possible climb down. So large and thick-limbed, they must have predated the building.
“Less light than out any other door,” I whispered.
“Can we climb down those trees?” Murray’s voice was hushed.
I muttered, “We may have no choice.”
My clothes clung at every fold and crease that came in contact with flesh. The puffs of breeze that reached us seemed to rearrange the humidity rather than bring relief. Clouds obscured the moon. Distant light glinted off the glass of several doors to our left and on a few of the tenants’ vehicles in the lot below.
Murray’s voice trembled. “There’s no better way out?”
“I didn’t see one.”
I saw a distant flash. The other plate glass window shattered.
“Holy shit,” Murray gasped.
We dove to the floor. Another flash and a hole appeared in the wall six inches to my left. I thought I caught the sound of popcorn being popped at a far distance. The shooter had to be quite far away with a very powerful rifle.
It was too dangerous to stay put. All other exits would be even more exposed. I pushed Murray deeper into the shadowed end of the balcony nearest the thickest tree limb. Darkness and the leaves of the tree would have to supply sufficient cover.
Murray eyed the distance from balcony to tree. He said, “We’re going to jump that?”
“We can’t go back.”
“I can’t jump that.”
“I’ll go first. I can give you a hand. Keep the trunk between you and the gunfire.” I figured Murray might know that, but I was reminding myself of it and felt the need to repeat it out loud.
The line from the W.H. Auden poem flashed in my mind, “Look if you like, but you will have to leap.” No time for doubts when gunfire could resume at any second. I placed a hand on the nearest wall, put one foot over the railing, pulled the other after, teetered on the lip of the balcony for an instant and then leapt.
The limb I clung to was at least a foot thick and held. I scrambled for a good hold then reached my hand back for Murray. He scuttled to the top of the railing and swayed there. He made as great a target as I must have. I heard shots. I couldn’t see their point of origin, but I heard several thunks into the limb between me and Murray. Splinters of wood shot by my left ear.
I saw Murray’s right foot and hand begin to slide. Seconds later he began to fall. I grabbed for him. A bullet ripped into where my head was seconds before. The asshole shooting must have a night scope or a lot of dumb luck. I caught Murray’s wrist and stopped his fall, but my reach pulled me several inches lower and loosened my grip on the tree. Murray swung closer to the trunk and got another hold on the far side away from the shooter. I twisted to a small branch. Safe. I moved five inches to my left so as much of the limb as possible was between me and where I best judged the point of origin of the shots to be.
After several moments of catching our breaths and tense waiting, Murray asked, “Now what?”
“We can’t stay here. The killer could move closer or simply change his angle. We’ve got to try and get to the pavement and back to the car.”
We scrambled the rest of the way down the tree as fast as we could. Murray slipped again. I caught him, but I lost his wrist when we were about ten feet from the ground. He landed with a thump and a yelp in the last inches of shadow cast by the condo. I clambered after him. “Hush,” I urged him. I put out a hand. He huffed and panted, but didn’t say anything.
I listened for a few moments, then put my lips next to his ear and whispered, “You okay?”
“I think I’m shot.”
“Where?”
He patted his left thigh. I leaned close. His pants were ripped from hem to crotch. A tree branch a thumb width’s wide protruded two inches out of his upper leg. I couldn’t see how much was inside.
“I can’t move.”
I took off my T-shirt, wadded it into a ball, and held it toward his mouth and said, “Bite on that.”
“What?”
“Do it!”
He bit.
I left the splinter in. I wedged my shirt around the splinter, his leg, and his jeans to keep the wound from being exacerbated. Blood oozed, but didn’t fountain. Nothing vital hit. Probably. I grabbed my T-shirt back, wrapped it around my hand, and applied pressure. His head lolled for a moment, but he rallied. Moments later, I removed my hand. I saw only small trails of blood. I tied the T-shirt around his leg, more as a bandage than a tourniquet. “Can you stand?”
He tried to get up and fell back with a cry.
I said, “We’re too exposed here.” I half dragged, half carried him behind the tree trunk. We hunched down in the relative safety of the two foot wide bole and a mild declivity in the ground.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
“I agree,” I said. We were both breathing hard.
He said, “We’re outside. Now we can call the police.”
I pulled out my cell phone. It was fully charged. I tried calling Duncan. I got the annoying beep that indicated I was out of the service region. I’d gotten the most wide coverage of any calling plan I could find. Even in the Rocky Mountains driving west it usually worked. But there were exceptions. This was one of them. I tried pressing buttons. The damn thing wasn’t about to work. Technology is not always our friend.
“My phone won’t get service.”
“Lots of them don’t,” he said. He reached in his pocket. His hand came back empty. “I must have dropped my cell phone in the condo.”