Andrew Klavan - True Crime

Breathing hard, I glanced back over my shoulder again. Then I put the tire iron through the top window. The idea was to punch out a neat little wedge of glass but the whole pane shattered, disconcertingly loud, like an orchestra of xylophones tuning up before the big show. My heart booming, I reached in and turned the inside knob. I was in. The glass crunched under my feet as I hurried through the small entryway to the stairs.

I went up them two at a time. Three flights. And now, despite my thrice weekly workouts at the gym, my breath was sawing in and out of me and the tar of ten-year-old cigarettes was bubbling harshly in my lungs. When I reached Michelle’s door, I collapsed against the wall beside it, gasping. Gripping the tire iron in my sweat-greased palm, I glowered balefully at the column of stalwart locks. The police bar was on the bottom and I knew there wasn’t much chance of breaking through that. But I was ready to pry the whole door off its hinges if I had to. Anyway, there was nothing for it and no time to waste.

My chest still heaving, I pushed myself off the wall. With a grunt, I fit the wedge of the iron into the jamb. The door swung slowly open.

I stumbled a step across the threshold and stood amazed. Michelle would never have left the place unlocked like that. She was too sure that violence was lurking everywhere: she read the newspapers too much. Standing on the brink of the room, the tire iron still in my fist, I could only stare wondering into the shadowy expanse.

It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. On the big windows all along the walls, the venetian blinds were closed against the light. The smell of dust came to me through the gray shadows, through the stultifying heat. Then came the shapes of boxes and stacks of paper on the floor all around, everywhere. Then the rickety table with her laptop against one wall. An open kitchen with a sculpture of dirty dishes and pan-handles rising out of the sink. A miniature TV in a far corner. A bathroom door. Her bed-against the wall to my right-a huge circular mattress covered with enormous pillows.

And sitting on the edge of the bed, a man. An old man.

I could make him out plainly, framed as he was against the blinds, etched in the dying light that seeped in through the slats. I could see his drooping head and his slumped shoulders, his arms dangling between his knees, his hands clasped. His presence explained why the door was unlocked, at least, but for a moment, I could squeeze no other sense out of his being there.

Then he looked at me. Slowly. Without lifting his head, he turned it in my direction. Slumped, bent, dejected, he peered at me through the dark.

“So steal,” he said.

Oh shit! I thought, as the answer came to me. “Mr. Ziegler?”

There was no reply. The man sighed and let his chin fall to his chest again. I took another step into the room, gently pushing the door shut behind me. The loft’s stifling atmosphere surrounded me, clung to me, gummy and foul.

“I’m not a thief, Mr. Ziegler,” I said, still breathing hard, pouring sweat now, trying to get a fresh breath. “I’m a friend. A friend of Michelle’s. I work with her at the paper.”

His shoulders rose and fell once. “It was an easy mistake to make,” he said thickly. “My friends always knock.”

“Right. Sorry.” Bending, I set the tire iron down on the floor. I stood looking at him, scratching my head. Now what? I thought. “I’m sorry about Michelle,” I said. “I liked her-like her-very much. Can I, uh …?”

I went to the wall, found the light switch in the gloom. A naked bulb, hanging down on its wiring, went on above us. A circle of glare shone on the old man’s bald head. The shadows receded from around him to the borders of the room.

Mr. Ziegler turned his head again to get another look at me. Impossible to tell how old he was-seventy, eighty maybe, or maybe younger and made ancient by the last twenty-four hours or the last twenty-four years. His hair was mostly gone except for a scraggly fringe. His small, round face was shriveled behind its grizzled moustache. Sweat-or tears-pooled and ran in the deep furrows of his cheeks. His eyes were rheumy and sallow. His body was small, slender, frail like Michelle’s.

“You were …” he said roughly, “… a friend?”

“Yeah. Yeah,” I said. “We worked together. At the paper. Is she …? Is there …? I mean, has anything happened?”

Again, he sighed, his small frame rising, deflating. He shook his head. “The machines. They keep her …” His voice trailed off.

“Right,” I said. “Right. That’s very sad.”

He looked across the room now, at the pile of dishes in the kitchen. He didn’t say anything else for a long time. I resisted an urge to check my watch. I was about to say something, I’m not sure what, when the old man spoke again in a distant, ruminative tone, as if to himself.

“Now … we have to decide-her mother and I have to decide-whether to turn them off. The machines.”

Good God , I thought. “Ah. Yes,” I said. I’m never going to get out of here .

“So I’m deciding,” said Mr. Ziegler. “I’m sitting here and I’m deciding.”

He went silent again, staring off into the kitchen like that. Even as I waited, I seemed to see the daylight go dimmer in the cracks of the blinds. My gaze went to the floor, over the floor, and I saw the stacks and stacks of papers rising from the layers of dust, boxes overflowing with papers and notebooks. They were everywhere, in every corner, against every wall. Five hours, I thought. To find a single page, a single name that might not even be there. And in this goddamned heat.

With my head tilted, the sweat ran onto the lenses of my glasses. I took them off, dried them on the loose cloth of my pants pocket.

“I’m sorry,” I said again-I was speaking before I even thought of what to say. “To bother you, to disturb you, now, at a time like this.”

The old man nodded vaguely.

“Michelle was really a terrific reporter,” I said. I didn’t correct the tense this time. I put my glasses back on. The smeared lenses blurred my vision. “A top-notch reporter,” I stumbled on. “When she did a story, she … well, she got everything, every detail. See? And she kept it all here. And there’s a man-an innocent man-and they’re going to execute him. Tonight. See? And I think there may be something here, something in these papers that could save his life.”

To my surprise, that seemed to interest him. He came out of his trance. He considered me more carefully. “Something Michelle did?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yes. I came here to look for it. That’s why I …” I gestured back at the door.

He seemed to consider this, working his slack lips, bobbing his shriveled head, his eyes unfocused. I could hear the traffic going by outside. I could hear my watch ticking.

“So,” he said finally, “look.”

“Right,” I said. “Right. Thanks.”

I went to work. I could feel him still watching me as I knelt down among the dust balls. Bewildered at first by the sheer number of stacks and boxes all around me, I swiveled this way and that, searching for someplace to begin. In the end, I just grabbed the pile of newspapers closest to me. I riffled through the top few. There was no order to them that I could see. They were just old papers. I pushed them to one side. Sweat ran into my glasses again. I took them off, tucked them into my shirt pocket. I drew my sleeve across my face as more droplets of sweat pattered into the film of dust on the floor. I reached for a cardboard box and dragged it toward me. Dug through it, plucking out notebooks, flipping through them, peering at Michelle’s small, pinched but legible hand. Most of the notes dealt with an old murder trial, a woman who’d shot her husband in the back of the head while he slept. I remembered that one. Michelle insisted it was self-defense. She almost brained me when I laughed at her. I dropped the notebooks back into the box and pushed it next to the newspapers. My face was covered with water, my lungs ached, as I crawled over the floor, as the dust balls scattered before me and stuck, in a gritty film, to my palms.