Shallow Graves

eight-by-ten Holt had showed me from the Homicide file. The pendant was partially under the left front corner of the couch as you sit on it, the corner nearest the front door if you’re struggling with somebody who’s holding the necklace.
    So, the guy has the necklace in his hand in the bedroom. Mau Tim comes out of the bathroom toward the bedroom. They see each other, or he hears her or she hears him. She runs toward the front door of the apartment, he chases her...
    Wait. Why doesn’t he go back out the window and back down the fire escape? He’s in the bedroom, right by it. If he’s in the bedroom.
    Maybe he’s moved to the living room while she’s still in the bathroom. He’s sizing up the home entertainment center, figuring on maybe the CD player as the best candidate. Then she comes out, sees him, and heads for the door.
    In other words, heads toward him and not away from him? And he still has the necklace in his hand so it can abrade her throat and break as he strangles her? And walking past the bathroom, he didn’t feel the humidity from her shower or hear a telltale noise right next to the bathroom door itself?
    I looked over at the front door to the apartment. The chain plate had been unscrewed from the jamb, a rectangle of bare wood in the painted molding. Then I realized that Ooch was staring at me.
    Flick, sniff-sniff. “You okay?“
    “I’m okay, Ooch. Why?“
    “You looked, I don’t know, kinda queer there, talking to yourself and walking back and forth.“
    “I’m okay. Thanks.“
    I shook my head. I wasn’t okay, because I couldn’t picture what happened. It’s a small apartment, she had to be somewhere when the guy came in. Somewhere he couldn’t see her or be aware of her, because no burglar, even an addict, is crazy enough to try a rip-off from a third-floor fire escape when somebody’s in the place.
    If it was a rip-off. If it was a burglar.
    I went back into the bedroom. At the window, I looked out and down. The bottom, raised flight of the fire escape contrasted sharply against the background of the bricked yard. If our boy had used the green trash cans to reach and pull the last flight on his way up, Shinkawa should have seen them after our boy used the fire escape on the way down.
    I walked to the front of the apartment. “Ooch, can we try the second floor now?“
    “Yeah. Yeah, sure.“
    He locked the door behind me, then started down the stairs. At the next landing, he jingled the keys again. “Fuck, I can’t never... There, there it is.“
    Ooch turned the key twice through the compass, though I didn’t hear it snicking. He pushed the door open but this time went in first.
    “Kinda close in here, ain’t it?“
    I said, “It is.“
    He moved into the bedroom and to the window at the fire escape, opening it without bothering to play with the lock on top. It gave me a minute to examine the lock on the apartment door. The keyhole on the outside looked the same as the one on Mau Tim’s door, but on the inside, there was another keyhole, and the dead bolt operated vertically, not horizontally. On the inner surface of the metal were those screwheads you can’t turn without a special tool.
    From inside the apartment, I closed the door. There was no sound at the knob, and the dead bolt didn’t engage. I used the knob to open and close the door again. Same.
    I walked to the bedroom doorway. Ooch was taking some breaths at the window.
    I said, “You can’t lock that door without a key?“
    He turned to me. “Huh?“
    I pointed back toward where I’d come from. “Somebody inside this apartment would need a key to lock that door and a key to get out again?“
    “Oh, yeah. The family, they just use this place to stay when they’re in the city for whatever.“
    “And they lock themselves in?“
    “No, no. You don’t get me.“
    Ooch passed by and took out his keys again. “See, Claudette, Joey’s wife, she was all the time forgetting her key. She’s a real polite lady, she locked herself out, she don’t like to come bothering me.“ Ooch held up an odd, pimpled key. “So my Uncle Tommy, he says to me, ‘Ooch, you go see they got a lock you need a key for, let you out, too.’
    Ooch inserted the key on the interior face of the door lock and turned it twice, again without a snicking noise, then pulled the key out. “This way, she don’t forget her key because she can’t lock up without the thing.“
    I tried the door. Locked, dead bolt vertically