Chapter Twenty-Five
WHILE BOSWELL HUFFED and puffed down the last flight of stairs calling after his cat, I craned my neck to see what Murray Haskel was trying to cover up.
You never know what kinds of weird shit folks are into—anything from S&M to worthless beanie baby collections that take up half the house.
But from what I could tell, Haskel’s kitchen looked pretty normal.
And while I scoped out the world inside, he was scanning the alley. “He’s not out there. Is he?”
“Who—Boswell?”
Haskel craned his neck to check the stairwell, then lowered his voice and said, “Zachary Sledge.”
Well…now I wanted to talk to this guy for sure. “Your former upstairs neighbor. I thought he moved away.”
“He did.”
And yet, Haskel was still worried about him. “You can wait around for Sledge to come back, or you can take this opportunity to tell me what you know.”
Haskel scanned the balcony furtively, as if the dying plants might be listening. “I won’t say another word unless you can guarantee protection.”
“And why would you need protection from him?”
“Don’t you know? He’s a mailman. He knows my name. I can’t go anywhere that he wouldn’t be able to track me down.” Was there paranoid juice in the water around here? “And he keeps asking about my bird.”
“O…kay.”
Haskel gave a huff of frustration. “You don’t get it. He doesn’t care about Agatha.”
“Agatha…being your bird.”
“Exactly.”
“Implying, what—he’s gonna report it?”
“Worse. He wants me to know that he knows that it would kill me if anything were to happen to her.”
On the surface, this all sounded just a few steps away from carting around your own pee. But Sledge would have access to the postal database, and a quick search would be all it took to locate someone. And I could totally see him threatening an old man’s bird.
“Look,” I said, “I’d love to put Sledge away.
Something’s fishy in the apartment upstairs.
But unless I can find more evidence, there’s nothing to charge him with.
” I shouldered past the guy into the kitchen.
He didn’t exactly invite me in, but he didn’t block the doorway either.
Same layout as the one upstairs, but it looked totally different neatly filled with someone’s actual belongings.
A dish rack with one plate, one bowl, one coffee mug.
Magnets on the fridge holding up various coupons and menus.
The kind of place where everything had a spot and stayed there—salt and pepper shakers centered on the table, a single dishtowel folded over the oven handle.
From the kitchen I could see into the living room, where a bird condominium took up half a wall—tiered perches, swings, ladders, the whole works. The door hung open, but the dull brown bird was busy pecking at a plastic ring hanging from the perch above.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“Seven years.” He said it with great weariness. “Since my wife passed. Couldn’t stay in our house after that. Too many rooms, too many memories.”
Seven years. Three rounds of tenants coming and going upstairs. Plenty of noise through the ceiling. Plenty of reasons to keep your head down and mind your own business.
“Agatha is all I have left of her.”
“Then help me keep Sledge away from your bird and tell me what you know.”
Haskel gathered his courage while I held my breath so as not to send his confession darting across the alley like a scared cat.
I missed this part of the job, I realized.
The part I’d never figured I was any good at, because I was nothing more than a ghost Geiger counter, and it was my Stiff doing all the real police work.
But maybe I’d been selling myself short.
Because my cop-sense was telling me that Haskel knew something. Something big.
He steeled himself and said, “The couple upstairs—the ones who moved in after Sergei—they fought. Bad.”
“How bad, exactly?”
“Really bad.” He paused, then repeated, “Really bad.”
So there was abuse. And Haskel was afraid of Sledge, scared enough to demand protection.
We were on the same wavelength, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to add it together.
Asshole Sledge had a temper. It spun out of control.
One thing led to another, and before you know it, there was blood splatter on the walls and a repeater in the bedroom.
“Got it. Now, was this before or after Sarah Dombrowski moved in with Sledge?”
Haskel blinked. “During.” We both stared at each other in confusion, and he said, “Sarah was the only girl up there.”
“Maybe there was a break in the relationship…or maybe he was seeing someone on the side.”
“No, never. It was only ever Sarah.”
“He seemed to move on quickly enough once she broke up with him.”
“I don’t believe it. If he did, it was probably just for show. He was obsessed with Sarah. And then one day…she was gone.”
Because she’d finally had enough of that jerk and left—with no forwarding address. “Sarah is fine. I talked to her just yesterday.”
Haskel’s brow screwed up. “She is?” He grabbed three times for a kitchen chair before he found it, pulled it out, and collapsed onto the vinyl seat. “Wow. That’s a relief.” He fanned himself with his hand. “All this time, I’d been thinking the worst. Guess I watch too many cop shows on TV.”
Given what was lingering in the bedroom directly above his…probably not.
Here I’d been so sure Haskel would have answers. Too bad all I got was more questions.
I reassured Haskel that what he’d told me was off the record. Easy enough to claim. For his testimony to matter, we’d need an actual case. And other than a couple of psychic impressions—mine, and Boswell’s—I was coming up empty-handed.
And if lawyers got judges to throw out my testimonies, I could only imagine what a field day they’d have with Boswell’s. Speaking of whom….
“Simon! I brought treats!”
Even from inside, I could still hear him trying to cajole that poor cat into his van.
I stood to go and Haskel stopped me with a tentative hand on my arm. “That girl, Sarah…she’s okay, then?”
Sure, if you enjoyed being on the lam. But I could hardly blame her for wanting to give her nasty boyfriend the slip. “She’s okay,” I said, to Haskel’s great relief. I thanked him for his time and headed outside to do some damage control.
Predictably, I found Boswell doing something that only made sense in his Rube Goldberg contraption of a mind.
The cat had slipped down the basement stairs of the building across the alley, which were barred with a locked accordion gate to keep out squatters (and, presumably, whack jobs like the one presently trying to circumvent it.)
Boswell had wedged his massive body in a half-cartwheel between the dumpster and the brick wall, one knee on a cinderblock, one arm stretched through the bars at an angle that looked like it was dislocating his shoulder.
In his outstretched hand, a crumbled cat treat.
“C’mon, buddy, don’t leave me hanging. It’s Feisty Fiesta—your favorite! ”
He’d agreed to screening. Was it too much to ask that he come down to HQ without a fight? “Listen, forget about the cat. It’s doing just fine.”
“For now. But a cold front is coming in. What then?”
A van would hardly be much better than wherever that cat was holing up…
so I saw where this was going. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d hosted a random cat, and it wouldn’t be the last. Our house already stunk from its latest sage clearing, so why not?
Borrowing a play from Jacob’s act-first, seek-permission-later book, I said, “If you can coax the cat out within the next five minutes, I’ll take it home with me. Otherwise—”
Something head-butted me in the back of the calf and started purring like a diesel engine.
I sighed.
“Simon?” Boswell unpretzeled himself from behind the dumpster. “If you’re over there, then what am I—?” He peered harder through the grate and said, “Oh, never mind.”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Rat.”
Boswell shook crumbled treat from his hand with great indignation. “The shadows were playing tricks on me.”
I checked the stairwell for signs of a haunting, but thankfully, other than an absurdly flat rat carcass half-buried by leaves, it was empty.
The cat head-butted me hard enough to make me stagger and ramped up the purring.
“I’ll grab the cat,” I said, “and you follow me to the office.”
“Simon will never fall for that. He’s very particular and discerning, and he doesn’t even know you.”
I scooped up the cat. He rubbed his face on my suit jacket hard enough to leave a trail of spit behind. I harbored no illusions that I was suddenly popular—I was just covered in catnip. Hopefully I’d be able to withstand all the rubbing, purring and salivating without needing an epi pen.
“I believe you know the way,” I told Boswell, and turned to go….
Only to find a woman standing behind us, hands on hips, eyes narrowed. Her clothes were plain gray sweats, her hair was tucked under a baseball cap, and her face was hidden by huge sunglasses, so it took me a second to register that I knew her.
Not only that, but I was looking for her.
Sarah Dombrowski. And I wasn’t the only one that recognition struck.
Boswell did a double-take and said, “Hold on, that’s the woman in the bedroom!”