A Darkness More Than Night

fifteen minutes.”
    “That’s lucky.”
    “Very. What are you doing?”
    “Just thinking. I think he sat here and watched but then couldn’t take it. He struck the victim on the head, to maybe hurry it up. Then he got the bucket and put it on so he wouldn’t have to watch.”
    Winston nodded.
    “Where’d the bucket come from? There was nothing in the -”
    “We think it came from under the sink in the kitchen. There’s a ring, a water ring on the shelf that fits the base of the bucket. It’s on a supplemental Kurt typed up. He must’ve forgotten to put it in the book.”
    McCaleb nodded and stood up.
    “You’re going to wait for the print crew, right?”
    “Yes, it shouldn’t be long.”
    “I’m going to take a walk.”
    He headed for the open door.
    “I will go with you,” Rohrshak said.
    McCaleb turned.
    “No, Mr. Rohrshak, you need to stay here with Detective Winston. We need an independent witness to monitor what we do in the apartment.”
    He glanced over Rohrshak’s shoulder at Winston. She winked, telling him she understood the phony story and what he was doing.
    “Yes, Mr. Rohrshak. Please stay here, if you don’t mind.”
    Rohrshak shrugged his shoulders again and raised his hands.
    McCaleb went down the stairs to the enclosed courtyard in the center of the apartment building. He turned in a complete circle and his eyes traveled up to the line of the flat roof. He didn’t see the owl anywhere and turned and walked out through the entrance hall to the street.
    Across Sweetzer was the Braxton Arms, a three-story, L -shaped apartment building with exterior walkways and stairwells. McCaleb crossed and found a six-foot security gate and fence at the entrance. It was more for show than as a deterrent. He took off his windbreaker, folded it and pushed it between two of the gate’s bars. He then brought his foot up onto the gate’s handle, tested it with his weight, then hoisted himself up to the top of the gate. He dropped down on the other side and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He was clear. He grabbed his windbreaker and headed for the stairwell.
    He walked up to the third level and followed the walkway to the front of the building. His breathing was loud and labored from climbing the gate and then the stairs. When he got to the front he put his hands on the safety railing and leaned forward until he had caught his breath. He then looked across Sweetzer to the flat roof of the apartment building where Edward Gunn had lived. Again, the plastic owl wasn’t there.
    McCaleb leaned his forearms down on the railing and continued to labor for breath. He listened to the cadence of his heart as it finally settled. He could feel sweat popping on his scalp. He knew it wasn’t his heart that was weak. It was his body, weakened by all the drugs he took to keep his heart strong. It frustrated him. He knew that he would never be strong, that he would spend the rest of his life listening to his heart the way a night burglar listens to creaks in the floor.
    He looked down when he heard a vehicle and saw a white van with the sheriff’s seal on the driver’s door pull to a stop in front of the apartment building across the street. The print crew had arrived.
    McCaleb glanced at the roof across the street once more and then turned to head back down, defeated. He suddenly stopped. There was the owl. It was perched atop a compressor for a central air-conditioning system on the roof of the L -extension of the building he was in.
    He quickly went to the stairs and climbed up to the roof landing. He had to work his way around some furniture that was stacked and stored on the landing but found the door unlocked and hurried across the flat, gravel-strewn roof to the air conditioner.
    McCaleb first studied the owl before touching it. It matched his memory of the owl on the crime scene tape. Its base was an octagonal stump. He knew it was the missing owl. He removed the wire that had been wrapped around the base and attached to the intake grill of the air conditioner. He noticed that the grill and metal covering of the unit were covered with old bird droppings. He surmised that the droppings were a maintenance problem and Rohrshak, who apparently managed this building as well as the one across the street, had taken the owl from Gunn’s apartment to use to keep the birds away.
    McCaleb took the wire and looped it around the owl’s neck so that he could carry it without touching it, though