Since You've Been Gone (10 page)

Bill poured a bit of milk in a Styrofoam cup then filled it with coffee he'd just made. He placed an apricot Danish on a paper plate and handed both to Skeeter. The man smiled, showing dingy, crooked teeth. “Napkin, please.” Bill gave him a paper napkin. Skeeter never forgot his manners, even when he was dead drunk.

Bill sat down behind his desk and fiddled with a potted plant. Skeeter took a few bites of his Danish.

“He was actin' funny last night.”

Bill's attention snapped back to Skeeter. “Who was acting funny?”

“Grandfather.”

“So you were outside Klein's Furniture last night?”

Skeeter looked annoyed. “I was across from the Dobbs Hotel. It's been in my family for a century.”

“Okay. The Dobbs Hotel. Exactly where were you?”

“I was sittin' in the doorway of Vinson's. Takin' the air, you know. Pretty night.”

It had stormed. Skeeter had ridden out the rain and lightning in a doorway bolstered with only a bottle of cheap wine. The realization made Bill feel bleak.

“Go ahead, Skeeter.”

“May I have another piece of that foreign food?”

“Sure. Try the apple-filled. They're my favorite.”

Skeeter's dirty hand shook as he reached for the plate Bill offered. The chief didn't want Skeeter plunging that hand into the pastry box. “It was before ten,” Skeeter said abruptly. “Rain had stopped. I noticed the time on the courthouse clock. I'm real precise about time. My grandfather jumped from the window at seven-oh-one. P.M.”

“That's interesting, Skeeter. Do you usually see your grandfather at the hotel in the evenings?”

Skeeter looked at him reprovingly. “I've
told
you I do. Pacin' back and forth in front of that big window in the Presidential Suite. He did that for quite a while that evening,
you know. Then he sat on the window ledge a few minutes. Then he jumped. I was standin' right there. I had his blood and brains all over me. I screamed and screamed.” He shook his head. “What a terrible thing.”

Skeeter narrated without emotion. He'd told the story countless times and Bill knew he was convinced that it was he who had been standing on the sidewalk when Carson jumped, not his father.

“You said this time your grandfather was acting funny,” Bill prodded.

“At first he was normal. Pacin' back and forth in the Presidential Suite. Maybe tryin' to figure out a way to pay his margins. That's what caused the stock crash. Margins.” Bill knew Skeeter had no idea what “margins” meant. He was merely repeating what his father had told him about the margin calls that had broken the financial backs of so many stock market investors in 1929. “Or maybe he was tryin' to get up the nerve to kill himself. Killin' yourself. That would be real scary. Anyway, he paced and paced through the Presidential Suite.”

Klein Furniture used the first three stories of the old Dobbs Hotel. The next three stories had been converted into apartments. For the last 30 years a couple named Moreland had occupied the apartment that had been the Presidential Suite.

Skeeter took another bite of Danish and chewed with the slow deliberateness of a cow before he swallowed. “The storm was bad. Leaves went flyin' off trees. Twigs. Trash blowin' down the street. That girl who reads minds had a wreck. I don't like her bein' back here.”

“She's no concern of yours.”

“I know she's a relation of yours, but she's not natural, that one. She's the devil's handmaiden, I say.”

“That's enough of that crap,” Bill said sternly. “There's nothing evil about her. Now get on with your story.”

“The storm let up. I thought about takin' a walk, but somethin' told me to keep watch on my hotel.” Skeeter was under the impression that as the last Dobbs, he still owned
the building. “Well, I was right because I saw Grandfather again. Only he wasn't in the Presidential Suite. He was on top of it.”

“What do you mean ‘on top of it'? On the roof?”

“
No
. Grandfather wouldn't stand on the roof in the rain. He had more sense than me. My dad told me. He said I woulda been a big disappointment to Grandfather.”

Nothing like building confidence in your child, Bill thought. Skeeter might be a delusional drunk, but his father had been self-pitying and malicious, largely responsible for turning Skeeter into the mess now sitting in Bill's office.

“Grandfather was on the floor right
under
the roof. The attic.”

“Are you sure?”

“He had a flashlight only it must've been a big flashlight ‘cause it made more light than the little ones. He moved back and forth maybe five times in front of the window.”

“Did you see his face?”

“No sir, I didn't, but then I never do.”

“How many times have you seen your grandfather in the attic?”

“Never. That's my big point, why I had to tell you. And I never seen him past midnight. I think ghosts have to go back to wherever they stay at midnight. It's some kind of rule.”

“I see.” Bill fought to hide his rising excitement. “Did your grandfather do anything else unusual?”

“Well, I saw his outline at the window because of the streetlight right below. He looked up and down the street. Maybe three times each way. Sometimes there's people out even after midnight comin' out of the movie theaters and the bars like Landy's and that other one, The Gold …”

“The Gold Key. But last night, after the storm, the street was empty.”

“Right. I hunkered down in the doorway. I don't think he coulda seen me. But Grandfather
never
looks out, all sneaky-like, like he don't wanna be seen, so I usually don't have to hunker. All that lookin' out—that was odd. I knew
I had to tell you because my daddy always said Grandfather would get his revenge on this town for not treatin' Daddy like he deserved for bein' a Dobbs, and with Grandfather actin' so peculiar, I thought maybe he decided the time had come. And that girl with the second sight comin' back is a bad omen, too. I want her to go away.”

Bill wished Skeeter would stop focusing on Rebecca. He thought the guy was harmless, but he couldn't be certain. He was certain, though, that Skeeter had seen unusual activity in the Klein building last night. In the attic. And Rebecca had “seen” Todd bound and gagged in a dusty, hot space with a wooden floor and mice. Just like an old attic.

An hour later Bill Garrett, Deputy G. C. Curry, and Herbert Klein entered a glass door on the right side of Klein Furniture. Inside a narrow, well-lit hall was a set of nine mailboxes. Each of the three floors above the furniture store contained three spacious apartments. Stairs led upward, but the three men opted for the old elevator.

Herbert Klein—sixtyish, portly, high-strung—was a wreck. He'd gone into near-hysterics when Bill called to ask permission to search the building for Todd Ryan based on the sighting of lights and movement in the attic. Klein had been too flustered to ask what concerned citizen had spotted the activity and Bill volunteered no information. He didn't want Klein turning him down when he heard the citizen was Skeeter, therefore making it necessary for Bill to get a search warrant. Instead Klein offered full cooperation. Now he alternately talked and wiped his bald, sweating head with a handkerchief.

“In all these years I've never had any trouble here,” Herbert Klein assured Bill for the fifth time. “I have older, stable tenants, none of this drinking and arguing you get with young folks.” Apparently he believed people over
forty didn't drink or argue. “I think it's impossible the child is in this building.”

“Why? Have you been in the attic?” Bill asked.

“No. Our storage is on the second and third floors. I don't have any reason to be clear up in the attic.”

“Then you wouldn't have heard anything if the child was up there today even if the store were open.”

Klein looked stricken. “Oh, you're right. Oh dear. Oh no. This is awful.” Klein vigorously wiped his head as the elevator stopped on the sixth floor. “Only one of the apartments up here is rented. Helen and Edgar Moreland. They've been here for thirty years. They're late seventies. No, Edgar's eighty. Oh dear. They're fragile. And here it is after midnight. Please don't ask them any questions.”

“They live below the attic,” Bill said. “I'll have to question them.”

“Oh God. Edgar will have a heart attack.”

“Maybe not. I'll be gentle,” Bill promised solemnly, aware of Curry's mouth twitching. Bill wondered how Mrs. Klein could bear living with this fretting, overwrought specimen.

As they walked down the hall toward the attic entrance, a door opened and an elderly man stepped out. His thick, silver hair waved back from a high forehead and the clear, azure eyes of a boy looked at them alertly through wire-rimmed spectacles. “Found me at last, eh? Thought I got away with that bank robbery back in thirty-nine.”

“Edgar, stop carrying on,” a woman said sharply. “They'll think you're serious.”

“I am serious about them taking so long to get here.”

“Since nineteen thirty-nine?” Curry asked good-naturedly.

“Since almost nine hours ago when the wife heard noises in the attic.”

Klein let out something like a squeak and Bill stiffened. “You heard something?”

“
I
didn't. Had my hearing aid out. But Helen did. Helen, get out here and tell the cops what you heard.”

“Stop calling them cops. It's disrespectful.” A small, pert woman with short, curly gray hair appeared at the door with a shy smile. “How do you do? Helen Moreland.”

Bill nodded. “Hello, ma'am. It's a pleasure. I'm Bill Garrett and this is Deputy Curry. Now what's this about noises?”

Mrs. Moreland's color heightened. “We were gone over the weekend, visiting our daughter in Ohio. It should only have taken us two hours to get home, but Edgar insisted on driving and he kept getting lost—”

“I was taking shortcuts!” Edgar said defensively.

“Anyway,” Helen Moreland continued, ignoring her husband, “it took us four hours to get home, around nine o'clock. I couldn't sleep all night. I was nervous and tired and my hip was bothering me. Before dawn I thought I heard something in the attic. Now that's nothing new. Sometimes we get rats up there.”

“No rats in this building!” Klein burst out. “I run a clean house!”

“Settle down, Herb. You sound like you manage a brothel.” Edgar Moreland laughed. “Rats aren't a disgrace in an old building as long as you do something about them, which you do.” He addressed Bill. “Puts out poison. Sometimes the smell from dead rats gets fierce in the summer, but what are you going to do? Can't catch the little devils and haul them out to the country to romp? Now you go on, Helen.”

Bill didn't even nod at him.
Rats
. Rebecca had said Todd was in a hot, dusty place with rats.

Mrs. Moreland took a deep breath. “Well, rats make a skittering sound. And sometimes you can hear them gnawing on things. I'm used to it and I knew all I had to do was tell Herbert and he'd take care of the problem. But the skittering stopped. Then there were footsteps. I swear. Slow and… well,
stealthy
. I hate to sound melodramatic, but someone was trying to be quiet. Sneaky. I got out of bed, went into the far end of the living room, and stood right
under where I heard the footsteps. Then there was a shuffling sound. Then more footsteps, only heavier. I ran in and tried to wake up Edgar, which was near hopeless.”

“Did you follow the sound of the footsteps?” Curry asked.

“When I went into the bedroom, they seemed to be heading that way.” She motioned toward the door to the attic. “Edgar finally roused himself a little. He told me to call the police. Or rather he shouted it.”

“I didn't have my hearing aid in!”

“I know. It's all right,” Mrs. Moreland soothed. “Anyway, when I came back to the living room, I didn't hear another thing.”

“And no one at the police department responded to your call?” Bill asked.

“Actually, I didn't call.” Edgar looked at her in surprise. “How seriously would they have taken an old woman calling up to say she heard mysterious noises in a locked attic at night?”

“Mrs. Moreland, did you see anyone leave the attic?”

“No. And I am so mad at myself! I think whoever was up there came down when I was trying to wake Edgar. They might have even hurried when they heard him yell for me to call the police. Then that person could have gone out the back, down the fire escape. If I'd just opened my door, my front door, I would have seen who it was!”

“I'm very glad you didn't open your door,” Bill said.

Edgar's attention quickened. “Why? You think maybe it wasn't some harmless prowler up there? And hey, what are you doing here if Helen never called the police? What's going on?”

Bill did not want to get into specifics. “We're not sure what's going on, Mr. Moreland. Deputy Curry and I just need to check the attic. Mr. Klein, you wait here with the Morelands.”

“This is
my
building,” Klein blustered purely from reflex,
then mopped his head again. “But you go ahead. Here's the key.”

Bill and Curry walked to the end of the hall. Bill stooped and looked at the old-fashioned lock on the attic door. “Scratch marks. It's been picked. Wonder low long it's been like this?”

Curry didn't answer. Bill pulled on latex gloves and opened the door. Hot, stinking air washed over them. “I hope that smell is just from dead rats,” Curry muttered. “Footprints in the dust.”

“Step around them,” Bill said unnecessarily.

As they climbed the stairs, a pulse beat in Bill's stomach. The sweet, rotting smell grew stronger and hot water seeped into his mouth. Molly's round face with her hopeful eyes flashed in front of him. Please, he silently begged a universe he usually found implacable.
Please
.