Chapter 8 #3
He’d had rather a lot to drink last night, at least according to Zachary.
Then again, he hadn’t had any qualms, or indeed any problems, driving home, so maybe he and Sal had sat at…
what was it, the Tin Roof?—long enough for most of the alcohol to evaporate.
The food they’d eaten would have soaked some of it up, too, surely.
But if he was in bed with a hangover, maybe that would explain why he wasn’t answering the door.
I gave the old lady a nod before I walked around the side of the duplex, past the truck and the trash can and the recycling bins stacked there.
The back door was more of a side door: wooden, painted white, and set about halfway down the side of the duplex, on top of a tiny stoop made of rough-hewn lumber.
I eyed it for a moment, before I bypassed it. If Nick’s bedroom was in the back, I’d check there first. Breaking and entering is rarely a good idea, at least not when you have other options.
As it turned out, though, those other options didn’t materialize.
There was window in the back wall—in fact, there were two, but one of them was high up and small.
If I squinted, I could see a square of white ceiling with the corner of a vent through it, and on the roof, the tip of a pipe sticking up.
The sewer vent, or as my contractor at the house in Hillwood had called it, the stink pipe.
That was definitely the bathroom, then. The room beside it must be the bedroom.
It had a double window, one I could almost reach by standing on my tiptoes. The curtains were drawn tight across the opening, however, so there was nothing to see even if I could get up there.
I huffed and sank back down, my heels digging into the soft soil under the window. After a moment, I reached up and rapped sharply on the glass.
Nothing happened, so after doing it again, I backtracked to the kitchen door and climbed the two wooden steps to the stoop. There, I knocked again. It was mostly for show, since I didn’t think it was likely that Nick would answer now when he hadn’t before.
When there was no answer—of course not—I wrapped my scarf around my hand and grabbed the doorknob.
To my… not surprise, not at all; perhaps relief, or perhaps consternation—whatever, the door opened. I let go of the knob and let it swing in until it fetched up against the wall in the kitchen, and then I stood there and looked in and thought about what I should do now.
Or maybe more what I shouldn’t.
Breaking and entering—or at least entering without permission—isn’t exactly legal.
But there were mitigating circumstances.
Plus, I was getting a bad feeling about this.
Yes, it was possible that Megan could have picked him up, and that he’d forgotten to lock the kitchen door when he left. It wasn’t impossible.
But on the other hand, he wasn’t answering the door. Zachary had seen him walk inside last night. His truck was still here. And the unlocked door wasn’t exactly reassuring.
The way I saw it, I had three options.
I could walk away now, without going in, and pretend I didn’t know anything. The neighbor had seen me, yes, but I hadn’t broken any laws. There’s nothing illegal about looking for people. Peering through their windows is maybe a step too far, but under the circumstances, I could justify it.
I could call Mendoza right now, or call 911, and ask for a wellness check. But if I did, and Nick truly was just out somewhere, with Megan or with Jacquie or with someone else—hell, with Sal!—I would have contacted them for nothing.
Or I could go inside and see for myself whether there was anything to worry about, and if there wasn’t, then I’d just fade away quietly and hope that Nick never found out that I’d broken into his home.
In the end, there was no question. I leaned across the threshold so my upper body was inside the kitchen while my feet were outside, and raised my voice.
“Nick? It’s Gina Kelly. Your kitchen door is open. Are you here?”
There was no answer, and by now, I knew better than to expect one. Nonetheless, I called out one final time. “Last chance, Nick. I’m coming in.”
When there was no response, I stepped over the threshold.
The smell hit me first—not overpowering, but present.
Cats, probably drifting through the thin walls from next door.
Under that was the stale odor of bachelor living: old takeout containers, empty beer bottles, yesterday’s socks.
The sink was full of dirty dishes, and the trash can next to the refrigerator was overflowing with takeout containers and beer bottles.
The kitchen floor might have been white at some point, but time and use had yellowed it to the color of old teeth.
“Nick?”
I moved through the kitchen to the two doorways branching off in either direction.
To my left was the living room—a worn couch facing a large TV, a coffee table covered in remotes and empty bottles, a card table with two chairs in lieu of a dining room set.
The table was home to a pile of unopened mail.
There was no sign of female habitation; the only nod to a woman’s touch was a framed picture of a younger Jacquie hanging on the wall.
The background looked like it was taken in a park or field, somewhere with grass and trees, while a crown of daisies sat crookedly on her head.
She was beaming at the camera, or at whoever was behind it. Nick, I assumed.
I made a face and moved on.
The place was a dump, but it was an ordinary dump. The kind of mess a mid-to-late-twenties, unmarried guy makes when he lives alone and doesn’t care about Martha Stewart. And it was empty. No sign of Nick.
I turned in the other direction, where the kitchen gave way to a small hallway—more of a landing, really; just a postage stamp three-by-three feet—with two doors coming off of it.
The bathroom one stood open, and I could see the bare trees and gray sky through the small window, with a vent in the ceiling, as expected.
The shower curtain was blue and white and sported an array of mildew along the bottom, while a single toothbrush sat in a plastic cup on the sink, bristles splayed.
The bedroom door was open about a foot or so, and I gave it a nudge with my foot.
“Nick?”
The room beyond was dark, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. When they did, I could make out the squared-off shape of a chest of drawers, and the rounded mass of an overfilled laundry basket whose load might or might not be clean. It didn’t smell great in here either, and I wrinkled my nose.
The bed sat against the far wall. I had to push the door farther open to see all of it.
“Nick?”
There was a lump under the covers, but it didn’t move.
I snaked my hand around the door jamb and felt along the wall for a light switch. When I found it and knocked it upwards with the edge of my hand, the overhead light blazed to life. The fan kicked on with a low whirring sound that turned into a high-pitched whine as the blades beat faster.
Something touched my ankle, and I jumped a foot in the air.
When I looked down I saw a cat—orange, white, and black, patchy—winding past my feet and into the room.
One of the creatures from next door noticing the open door, I guessed.
I hadn’t seen any signs of Nick being a pet-owner on my through his space.
“You can’t be here,” I whispered to it. I don’t know why I kept my voice low, because Nick wasn’t in any position to hear me.
Not only had he not responded to any of my knocking or calling of his name, but he was lying on his back in bed, covers pulled up to his chest, arms crossed.
His eyes were wide open, slightly filmed, and between his eyebrows was a neat hole.