The Night Visitor (23 page)

Visiting the second through fifth floors, Mr. Han showed Rory the busy cutting and sewing operations and pointed out other murals of Junior’s. Junior had considered any blank surface a potential canvas.

“Miss Langtry, I would be honored if you selected items from our sample rack to take home.” On the fifth floor, he pushed the button to send the elevator back to the lobby. “We do top quality work. Maybe you tell the fashion designers you know to give Kwik Kwality a try.”

“Of course, Mr. Han.” Rory looked at the button panel. The black buttons for all the floors except the sixth were shiny from use. “But we haven’t seen the sixth floor.”

“Our operations are on the first five floors only. It’s already more space than we need.”

“I would like to see the sixth floor.”

Mr. Han looked troubled. “Miss Langtry, we do not use the sixth floor.”

“Is it accessible?”

“Yes, but we go there only to control pests. My employees say they hear noises there. Like maybe your sister is still there, you know? I want to clean it out, but my wife is superstitious. She say I must leave it alone.”

“Junior’s things are still there?”

“After the crime, the family only take the art.”

“I would like to see it, please.”

Mr. Han considered his response. “Sure, sure. Okay.” The elevator had stopped at the lobby. He pressed the button for the sixth floor.

When the car landed, they could see through the scissor gate that the opening to the sixth floor was a half-foot above the floor of the car.

“Elevator need adjustment.” Mr. Han opened the scissor door. “Sorry, Miss Langtry.”

“No problem,” Rory said absently. She was looking through the glass panes in the pocket door, where she glimpsed the light that Junior loved.

An adhesive crime-scene label was still affixed to the pocket door where it had once sealed it closed. It had been slit open. Mr. Han had to pull hard on the door’s brass hand grip, tarnished here while the ones on the other floors were shiny, to open the rarely used door. He stepped out of the car and offered Rory his hand to help her step up to the floor.

She muttered a thank you, distracted as she slowly walked inside the loft. Its tall windows were closed and caked with dirt, but Rory saw them clean and open, like Junior had always had them. A pyramid-shaped skylight pierced the roof.

It was late afternoon, one of Junior’s favorite times to paint. Afternoon light had a blue and green cast, he’d told her, and morning light was infused with pink. He loved the dawn. Sometimes they’d gone onto the roof to watch the sunrise, getting up early or staying up all night. The only light Junior had seen for years was through the window beside his hospital bed. Rory closed her eyes, absorbing the warmth of the sun.

The loft was nearly as Junior had left it. He’d furnished it with cast-offs from friends, yard-sale gems, and found objects. There was the antique settee with the scrolled woodwork on which Junior had posed her—and Anya—for portraits. There was the big camelback couch that Junior had reupholstered with orange crushed velvet he’d found somewhere. The two easels were still beside the couch. One had held the slashed nude of Anya.

The furniture was positioned cockeyed, left where it had been moved by the EMTs and investigators. Patches of silvery black fingerprint dust were everywhere. The threadbare Asian rug that had been in the center of the loft was gone, probably removed to be searched for evidence.

Along the rear wall were the kitchen and bathroom that Junior had installed. Still there was his prized carnation-pink refrigerator, which had been left in a parkway with a handwritten “free” sign on it.

In front of the kitchen was the library table and a menagerie of chairs. There Junior had stretched canvases, framed paintings, and seated a dozen friends for dinner. On Sundays, she and Junior had spread out newspapers and mugs of coffee. They’d made love on that table, more than once.

She crossed to the narrow concrete staircase that led to the roof. She mounted the stairs, using the handrail to help herself up. Junior had painted the door at the top red. At the landing, she unlocked a nearly frozen bolt lock, pulled the door open, and stepped onto the tarpaper-and-gravel roof. She walked to Junior’s bird coop, which was still standing. Keeping doves and pigeons had been a boyhood hobby of his. The empty coop was littered with decaying feathers, feed, and debris. Rory wondered what had happened to the doves after the shootings. It was the first time she’d thought about it. She marveled at how easy it had been for her to sever her life from Junior.

She walked to a low wall that surrounded the roof and looked out at the smoggy skyline. She and Junior had always been amazed that no one had fallen off the roof during one of his raucous parties. She’d suggested that he not let people go up there, but he’d replied that the real party was always on the rooftop. Standing there now, she recalled the laughter and gaiety. She ruefully smiled as she headed back toward the steps.

Inside the loft, she went to the wall beside the bathroom where there was a door that opened onto a wobbly fire escape. She unlocked the door, but it was stuck, as the frame had shifted.

Han called out, “Miss Langtry, all okay?” He hadn’t moved a foot from the elevator.

The door finally opened with a scrape. “I’m fine, Mr. Han. Just looking at the fire escape.” She set a foot onto it and it creaked.

“Be careful, Miss Langtry. It need repair.”

* * *

Parked at the curb near the Killingsworth Building, Evelyn was watching from inside Rosario’s older SUV, which she’d borrowed to follow Rory. She’d pulled a scarf over her red hair and added a baseball cap and sunglasses. After waiting over an hour for Rory to leave, she was horrified to see her step out onto the fire escape on the sixth floor.

“Oh my gosh. She’s in Junior’s apartment?”

She grabbed her cell phone and made a call.

49

Rory came back into the loft. Avoiding the area behind the orange couch, she went to a corner that Junior had set up as the bedroom and slipped behind the wood screens Junior had painted with jungle scenes of tigers, monkeys, and toucans. The windows there were still hung with blackout curtains. The mattress on the platform bed that Junior had built was stripped.

An armoire still held Junior’s clothing. On hooks were several pairs of the multi-pocketed painter’s pants he’d worn when he worked. Also on a hook was an L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. Junior was an avid Dodgers fan.

Rory took down the cap and picked off a wavy, dark-brown hair. She pressed it against her cheek. She pulled on the cap and looked at herself in the mirror on the door of the armoire. In a battered chest of drawers, she found a few pieces of her clothing. They seemed to belong to another girl.

She felt Junior’s bond growing stronger, like a riptide pulling her under. She resisted, afraid that his command of her would be complete and irreversible. Junior was tempting her, luring her with promises of keys to hidden doors if only Rory relinquished the last bit of her psyche to him. There was no middle ground. It was all or nothing.

Mr. Han was on his cell phone when Rory came out. He held it away from his ear and looked at her curiously. “We’ll go downstairs now, Miss Langtry?”

She didn’t answer. She was still wearing Junior’s baseball cap and had put on a pair of his work pants, held around her waist by a belt with the ends tied together. She was wearing her tennis shoes, but she didn’t hear her footsteps padding across the concrete floor. Instead, she heard the solid and familiar clomping of Junior’s work boots
.

“Miss Langtry, please.” Mr. Han spoke warily. “We must go back down. I have an appointment.”

She stuck her hand into the pants pockets and felt brushes, broken lengths of charcoal, and soft erasers. Clutching Junior’s tools in her hand, she took that final leap. She was Junior.

* * *

It’s nighttime but the lights are blazing. The doves are loose. A gust of hot wind blows, in through one wall of windows and out the other, rustling loose papers and magazines, nearly toppling the bedroom screens, making the blackout curtains bow in black waves. The Santa Ana winds smell of dust and dried grass, but now they also carry the odor of something burnt and sweet.

Anya is there. Her purse is on the library table. Beside it are two of her phones—one with a pink cover and the other with a tacky rhinestone cover in a gold-and-black tiger stripe with a charm of a tiger’s head dangling from it.

Junior had finished the nude portrait Anya had hired him to paint. He was happy it was done. While he’d been working on it, she’d gushed about how much she loved it. Then one day, she’d told him she had second thoughts. It wasn’t what she wanted after all. Tonight she was bringing a different portrait for him to copy, again with her as the subject. But this portrait would have to be a secret, even from Rory. Just for a couple of weeks. She’d pay him as much as she’d paid him for the nude.

He’d tried to beg off, saying he didn’t have time, but she’d insisted. He didn’t need her drama. He didn’t like the idea of lying to Rory. Plus Anya was a pain to deal with. Her and her catlike gaze, always watching, as if waiting for a careless moment on his part to lunge. And she could never hold still while posing. Always taking calls and texting, her cell phones on the floor by the settee ringing or beeping with different tones for her manager, publicist, and friends. He could barely focus on his work.

She’d stand too close to him too, though she’d never touched him in a sexual way. Maybe he was sport for her. Maybe she was testing his loyalty to Rory. He’d never wavered, but Anya was exhausting.

Worse, she’d have pornographic conversations on one particular cell phone, the one with the tiger-striped cover, looking at Junior as she described what she’d do to the man on the phone. She’d take photos of her nude body with that tiger-striped phone and text them. Once, Anya had been in the bathroom when Junior saw the face of that phone light up with a text message balloon. He picked up the phone, touched the message, and saw a photo of a man’s genitals, a hand displaying his erect penis. The contact name was DOB. Junior had looked at the phone’s message log and seen that all the messages were from DOB. He was the phone’s sole contact.

When Junior steps into his loft that night, from across the room he sees that Anya has brought the new portrait she wants him to copy. It’s on an easel beside the easel with the nude.

Another gust of warm wind blows through the loft’s open windows. It caresses his skin, like a lover’s breath. The easels with the paintings rattle against the concrete floor.

Something’s wrong. Junior feels it in his bones.

He ducks to avoid a dove. More come, following the leader, driven wild by the wind or something. Their beating wings come close to his face. He smells the musk of their feathers.

He’s angry. And disappointed in himself. He thinks of Rory at home alone. His heart aches.

He shuts off the lights. Milky moonbeams spill through the tall windows. The darkness startles the doves. They circle, spots of moonlight reflected in their black eyes.

He goes to a window and turns the handle attached to the corner of the frame to close it. The birds fly crazily. His favorites seek him out, perching on his head and shoulder, nibbling his hair.

He works around the room, cranking the windows closed. The wind whistles, as if in warning, slamming the windows the rest of the way shut, rattling the panes. A gust swirls as he nears the easels. They dance on the concrete floor but don’t topple over. He can’t believe what he’s seeing. In the moonlight, ragged canvas strips flutter in the wind. His nude of Anya and the painting she brought have been slashed to ribbons.

Cursing, he walks to the first one and tries to smooth it. Then to the second, stepping behind the orange couch. He slips on something slick on the floor and almost goes down, skidding into something soft. In the pale blue light, he sees it’s Anya. She’s on her back. There’s so much blood.

He has to get out. He grabs the back of the couch to pull himself up. He senses motion behind him. It isn’t the wind. It isn’t the doves.

He’s falling. He doesn’t want to hit the floor. He has a premonition that if he does, he’ll never get up again.

* * *

Rory knew she couldn’t take that fall with Junior. She had to get out of the building. Now.

“Rory! Help her. Please don’t let her fall.”

Her mother’s voice snapped Rory back to the present, and she found herself heading down the fire escape. The fire escape shook. Rory looked up to see Mr. Han stepping onto it. They both froze as the rickety structure shuddered ominously. He darted back inside.

Her mother was leaning out one of the loft’s windows. “Rory, stay where you are.”

Rory looked down. The world was spinning. She had to run. Junior was urging her to run while she still could. At least
she
still could. She unsteadily continued down the steps.

Her mother was yelling at her. Rory kept going.

Sirens in the distance grew louder. One police car had already arrived. More police cars, a fire department paramedics van, and a ladder truck were speeding down the street.

Rory reached the third-floor landing. She took a moment to try to clear her dizziness. She again started down. She had to get away.

A policeman mounted the steps from the street, and the firemen extended a ladder near her. She kept going down, thinking she could push past the young officer who was heading up. The fire escape groaned and rattled. The officer grabbed her. Rory fought with all her might, hitting and kicking as the officer lifted her off her feet, knocking Junior’s Dodgers cap from her head. Others grabbed her arms and legs. Then she was face down on the hot concrete sidewalk.

Rory screamed, “Let me go. You’re killing us!”

She heard her mother’s voice among all the others, shouting at her.

“You’re killing us.” Rory kept flailing and kicking until her hands and feet were restrained. She saw a syringe held by a latex-gloved hand. “No, don’t!”

There was a needle prick in her arm. She felt herself going down, just like Junior had, down until darkness closed in.