Steve Martini: The Jury

There was nothing as relaxing as floating listlessly in the state of nature. She struggled with the knot for a moment, then stopped, her hands up behind her back. She heard it again, something in the bushes. It wasn’t much, the faintest click, like someone winding a child’s toy. Perhaps a small animal or a bird hitting the chain-link fence around the pool. It stopped.

She gave up on the knot in her bathing suit. The complex was a hive of single males, some who stumbled home after the bars closed. A glimpse of shoulder-length hair and a tiny pile of Lycra at the edge of the pool would be like waving red underwear at a bull.

Instead she picked up her watch that lay on top of the towel at the edge of the pool. It was just after two in the morning.

She heard it again. This time there was no mistake.

The tip of the nylon cable tie was now locked in the metal teeth of the tool. The pistol grip offered control, leverage if it was needed. A narrow band of white nylon formed a loop more than a foot in diameter and was sufficiently rigid to reach out and snag something. It was designed to bundle large electrical cables and fasten them to an overhead beam or a wall. When tightened it could produce more than two hundred pounds of pressure. Once the loop was pulled closed and tightened with the long trigger grip, only a sharp knife could break it.

He looked up at her apartment window. A single dim lamp lit, probably in her bedroom, marked the unit. He knew because he’d followed her home after work on two occasions and watched from the parking lot as she entered and went up the elevator. He had waited a few seconds, and lights went on in the windows. He then counted from the end of the building, using the outside balconies to distinguish each apartment. She was five in from the end of the building.

Birds sometimes did strange things. Kalista looked out into the darkness, but couldn’t see a thing. The bushes were like a jungle around the pool, knifelike long leaves and deep shadows. It was probably a sparrow in the chain-link fence. She had seen them chase insects through the diamond-shaped openings, pecking like a machine gun. The noise had that kind of metallic rhythm, very quick, and then it was over.

She looped the band of her watch around her wrist and fastened it, grabbed her towel, stood, adjusted her bathing suit, skimpy cloth bottom and knotted top, then made her way up the steps and out of the water as she dried her face and toweled her hair.

The quick evaporation from the night air chilled her so that she wrapped the large towel around her shoulders. It only reached to just above her knees, but it cut the breeze as she walked. She headed for the gate. From the inside she didn’t need a key, though she would to get into the unit and her apartment. She exited the gate and closed it behind her. Then, before leaving the area with its muted light, she fished for her key. She had fastened it with a safety pin to the inside of the halter top of her bathing suit just under the string that looped around her neck. Looking down she flipped the material down and found the pin, started to squeeze it with her fingers; and then she heard it, a rustling in the bushes movement behind her. This was no bird. Whoever it was was moving quickly through the bushes, thrashing brush, coming around the outer fence to the pool, twenty yards away.

Her fingers fumbled with the pin. The key dropped. It bounced off one of the stone pavers under her feet and caromed into the ground cover around the steps. Kalista turned to look. There was no time. She remembered she had left the door to the inside stairs ajar. If no one had used it after her, she could get in without her key. She ran barefoot down the stairs, headed for the building and her apartment.

She sprinted across the parking lot and down the paved walkway, long legs like a gazelle. She prayed that she might see someone coming the other way. Anyone. But at this hour, the paths were deserted. She ran for the entrance to her building and reached the covered alcove. She pulled on the heavy metal door with its little slit window that led to the inside stairway. It opened. Relief was palpable in her breathing. Kalista issued a huge sigh, quickly stepped inside and slammed the door closed. It locked behind her with the thud of a bank vault.

She stood inside catching her breath, leaning against the wall for what seemed like minutes but were, in fact, seconds. Her heart pounded. Her wet bathing suit dripped on the concrete floor until water puddled around her feet. She turned her head to the left, hugging the wall and the edge of the door with her back, and inched toward the small wire-reinforced window. Outside she could see the path leading to the front door. There was no one on it for as far as she could see.

She stooped down and slipped under the window coming up on the other side. Now she could see the front door, two double plate-glass doors and inside, beyond them, the elevator doors. There was no one there, and the front doors were closed, locked. Whoever it was had given up.

She caught her breath, and slowly trudged up the stairs, holding the towel around her damp body. She scaled the two flights and came out just across from the elevator doors. When she got to the intersection in the hallway she went to the right, away from her apartment. She went almost to the end of the hall, near another set of stairs and stopped outside of a door with the numbers 312 on it. Hanging in the center of the door was a decorative flower arrangement, silk roses in a basket that hung flat against the door.

Kalista reached up under the basket and found it, an extra key to her apartment. It wasn’t stamped with a number. She’d made the arrangement with a neighbor, another young woman who lived alone. They each left spare keys hidden under ornaments on the other’s apartment door.

If a stranger found the key, his first instinct would be to try it in the door. It wouldn’t work, and to find the right door he might have to try every one in the complex. There were more than a hundred units in this building alone.

She walked slowly down the carpeted floor, passed the EXIT sign leading to the elevator and the stairs. The rush of adrenaline had exhausted her. Ten doors down on the left she stopped, inserted the key in the lock of the door, opened it and stepped inside.

She turned and locked the door behind her, flipping the double bolt, then allowed the beach towel to slip from her shoulders. She reached for the light switch next to the door. Her fingers never got there. Like a whisper something moved passed her eyes in the darkness, and suddenly like a vise it closed around her throat. Her eyes bulging, she reached up, grasped at her throat. Whatever it was cut into her skin. She tried to scream but couldn’t get a breath. Her fingers scratched at the wall. They found the light switch, and suddenly the entry glowed with light. Both hands were back to her throat, she thrashed about, tearing at her own flesh, struggling to get her fingers under whatever it was. She tried to whip her body around, but whoever it was stayed with her. With the sweep of a foot from behind, her legs went out from under her and she landed on the hard wood floor, first on her side, then facedown. She turned her head to one side, and something cut into her throat. She felt it slice the flesh. A warm trickle ran down her neck. Her vision blurred. She lost control of her hands. No longer able to command them. She watched as the long nails of her own fingers lay listless in the widening red pool that seemed to spread from under her head across the wooden floor, the side of her face warmed by the flow.

Vague sensations moved through her body, as if it belonged to someone else. The last sharp note, metal banging on the hardwood floor, as a shiny piece of brass bounced coming from somewhere high over her. It came to rest a few inches from her nose. Each of her pupils opened like the aperture of a camera moving toward full dilation; the last image of focused memory was of her own key lying on the floor.