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Gary twisted the knob just enough to know the door wasn’t locked. A quick get ready signal to Lucas, he swung the door inward, keeping a firm grip on the knob. Swiftly withdrew his gun.
On reflex, the men crouched with their arms outstretched, both hands on the grip of their pistols. Facing in opposite directions, they readied themselves to return gunfire if needed.
Walking backward, they met in the center of the room, recognizing that it’s an office not another bedroom. Lucas aimed his gun at the closet. Gary advanced, turned the knob, moved out of the way fast. The closet was completely empty.
Holstering their weapons, trying hard not to laugh at themselves, they set about the task of learning what was so special about the room that the door needed to be kept closed.
“Closed but not locked. Interesting,” Lucas murmured.
Turning clockwise past the door, a waist-high three-tier metal shelf stood against the wall. A catty-cornered oak four-drawer filing cabinet in the corner. An oak computer desk with a built-in hutch. One wide rectangular window. An end table holding a large brass lamp. Loveseat with an oak coffee table. A tall and bushy plant resembling baby elephant ears. The closet. The door.
Custom-made shutters blocked out every ray of daylight. Lucas opened them. The landing for the fire escape stretched from that window to the living room window. He quickly closed them on the off chance he might be seen.
Several unopened envelopes were piled on top of the filing cabinet. Although wearing gloves, Gary got a pencil out of his coat, used the eraser end to separate them. Credit card statement. Utility bills. An assortment of flyers and ads addressed to Current Resident. Not one piece of personalized mail in the form of letters or cards.
Starting at the bottom, he pulled the drawers open one after the other. Two were empty. The next to the top held four green folders of receipts labeled: rent, utilities, phone, miscellaneous. The top drawer gripped his attention. A camera, and three snapshots of BJ. Two had been taken outdoors in a parklike setting. One inside of a bookstore. Each shot taken at a distance. Each with her wearing the blond wig he secretly disliked. He resisted disturbing the order they’d been placed in. Shut the drawer, reluctantly moved away, strangely happy the drawers weren’t locked.
“Look here.” said Lucas, still edgy over breaking into the guy’s apartment. He tilted his head at the desk, the only spot in the apartment not in pristine order.
Besides a computer, the rest of the desk and the hutch held the usual array of office supplies. A very old Royal typewriter. Many used and unused sheets of white copy paper scattered about. Four balled-up sheets of paper had been arranged to form a perfect square. Made no sense to the detectives. Several newspaper clippings of the alley murders, piled in random order.
Gary kept thinking about the photographs. How, and why, does this guy know BJ? He recalled one photo was taken in a bookstore. He’s just a fan? Gary didn’t think so. Why the outdoor photos? Seems to me he’s stalking.... “Damn.”
Lucas rolled one of the balled-up papers away from the others, and smoothed it out. It was a copy of the anonymous letter Gary had received. He assumed the guy didn’t care for the wording after printing it. The same message had been handwritten on the remaining crumpled sheets of paper, the lettering done in a childlike scrawl.
Gary got out his cell phone. Called BJ. No answer. Why is her phone off, or go unanswered, all the time? Does she have a second cell phone she doesn’t want me to know about?
“Lucas, you know a lot about computers. Think you can get inside this one? I want to know if he sent any email to BJ Donovan.” He opened the top drawer of the filing cabinet and held up one of the photos.
Lucas observed Gary’s pained expression more than the photo. “I can try. ‘Course if his email is password protected, I dunno. Mine’s not. Just click and go. I got nothing to hide.” He glimpsed at Gary. Unlike some people.
Gary recollected BJ saying something similar about her two email accounts.
Lucas pulled the desk chair backward over a clear plastic floor mat. Sat down, and walked the chair forward. He turned on the hard drive and monitor. Didn’t take long for him to learn a password was indeed needed to access the email account. Why? Doesn’t Jacob Wentzel live alone? It appears that he does.
He first typed words related to law enforcement. Cops. Robbers. Detect. Arrest. Lockup. Received the same message every time. Access denied. An old email account he used to have required an eight-letter password.
Lucas swiveled the chair in slow motion, observing everything in the room. Donovan’s novel was on the shelf. He didn’t understand how he missed such an important detail before. Next to it was a very pretty ornate box. Missed that, too. A little too girlie for a guy to own? Maybe it’s a gift. For Donovan? From Donovan? He glimpsed at her book again.
His eyes landed on the book’s title. Lucas typed ‘suitesue’. The account opened. Emails, mostly spam, cascaded down the screen. A quick search of Sent Mail. Lucas counted thirty-seven addressed to Suite Sue. A random read showed most, if not all, were nothing more than silly flirty crap.
“Certainly explains how he knows her.” Gary said.
“Any clue how he got her email address?”
“It’s on her website.”
“Makes sense. So, is there any reason you can think of for why he calls her Suite Sue instead of BJ? And how the heck did he get close enough to her to become so... friendly? Some of these notes are downright filthy.”
“Hold on, I think I heard something.” Gary left the room.
Lucas brought up the last email Wentzel had sent. Walked over and picked up the box on the shelf. Opened it. Drew in a deep breath, released it in a slow whistle.
“Shut it down,” Gary said in a loud whisper, rushing into the room. “Wentzel’s here. He’s in the hall talking with a neighbor. She probably saw me outside his door.”
Lucas put the box in the pocket of his overcoat. About to shut down the computer, the email he’d opened demanded attention.
Hey Suite Sue,
You think screwing Northcutt is going to keep you safe?
“Shiiit,” Lucas whispered.
“C’mon. We only have a second, two at the most.” Gary pulled open the shutters, unlocked and opened the window. Oddly, there wasn’t a screen to deal with. He went out. “Hurry!”
Lucas shut off the monitor and hard drive without closing everything down in the proper order. Rolled the chair under the desk the way it was before he used it. Tried not to think about the dents he had made in the plastic floor mat. Going headfirst through the window he fell on the fire escape, reached up and pressed the tips of his fingers over the slats in the shutters and pulled them closed. Had the window most of the way down before it jammed. Another quarter inch and he would’ve had it.
The men ducked their heads when they heard Wentzel say “Ki moun ki Ia?”
They raced down the stairs doing their level best not to make any more noise than they already were. Once they touched the ground, they were off and running around the corner of the building. Didn’t slow down until they made it to the next block over.
“We forgot to close his frickin’ office door, Gary.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Any idea what he said?”
“He asked who is there,” said Gary. “Damn. How close was that? I don’t think he had enough time to get out the window, since it was stuck, then walk over to the guardrail, look down and see us before we ran around the corner. Do you? We entered his place illegally. Cap’n Fortier will have a shit fit when he finds out.”
“If he finds out. And I don’t think Wentzel will be the one to tell him. He has too much of his own shit to account for. One cop to another, I do hope he finds out the window’s unlocked. I’d hate to hear the guy had been robbed and murdered in his sleep on account of us.”
Gary raised his eyebrows. “You’re a better man than me.”
They waited on the corner of the intersection for a break in the traffic.
“No, I have another reason for keeping the asshole alive.” Lucas showed Gary the box. Inside were a gold cross and chain, a wedding band, and a cop’s badge. The fourth item sent a chill down their spines. A red claw hair clip with a few red hairs trapped in the hinge.