James Grippando - Last to die

“We should go,” said Jack.

“No. I want to see the bedroom.”

They retreated from the bathroom and continued down the hall. The door was open about a foot, just enough for a cat to come and go. Rene pushed it all the way open, and flipped the light switch. The fixture on the ceiling had four bulbs, but only one was burning, which left the room dim and full of shadows-cat shadows, dozens of them. Cats on the bed, on the dresser, on the floor, in clothes baskets scattered about the room. Cats everywhere, and Jack felt his eyes starting to water.

“Looks like his eleven cats have had a few kittens,” he said.

“I want to check the closet.”

From what he’d read about the crime, Jack knew that the attacker had been hiding in the closet. Rene stepped around a sleeping ball of orange fur, and Jack followed her across the room. She stopped before the closet door.

“You want me to open it?” asked Jack.

She stared a moment longer, then simply nodded.

He’d offered to open it without a moment’s hesitation, but as he reached for the handle, he felt something pulling inside him. It had been five years since the crime, dozens of different people had lived in this house since then, and he knew in his mind that there was nothing to fear on the other side of that door. But in his gut, where it mattered, he felt a slight reservation.

“Please,” said Rene. “Open it.”

The metal door handle felt cold in his hand, cold as the ice water that must have run through that killer’s veins. He turned it. The latch clicked. He pulled the door open and saw a sudden black flash, which sent his heart into his throat.

A cat raced across his shoe tops.

He and Rene exchanged glances, as if to calm each other’s nerves. Jack opened the door all the way and looked inside.

“You say he got in through the bathroom door, huh?”

“That’s what Sally told me. The police report said there were signs of break-in at the bathroom door.”

“So, he comes in the bathroom, walks down the hall to Katherine’s bedroom, and hides inside the closet.”

“That’s the theory.”

Jack pointed to the access door in the ceiling inside the closet and said, “Where do you suppose that leads to?”

Rene looked up and said, “The attic?”

A wall of built-in shelves inside the closet led upward like a ladder. Jack climbed up to the third shelf, pushed on the plywood, and opened the ceiling door. “It’s an attic, all right. Wonder if he could have come in this way?”

“I suppose it’s possible. I don’t even think Sally knew every theory the police considered or rejected. The prosecutor was extremely tight-lipped about his investigation.”

“Tell me about it. I had a little run-in myself a few weeks ago. So long as they consider the investigation active, they aren’t going to tell you much.”

“You mind taking a look?”

“In the attic?”

“The police have had five years to solve this crime. Why not have a look for ourselves?”

Jack shrugged and said, “Okay, sure. Why not?”

Jack climbed up the shelves, pushed the ceiling door aside, and poked his head into the attic. The air was stuffy, and he was sweating almost instantly, as the temperature in the attic was at least ten degrees hotter than the main house. Jack let his eyes adjust and found a naked bulb hanging from a wire. He pulled the cord, and the attic brightened.

“Got light,” he said.

“Good,” she replied, her muted voice wafting upward through the ceiling.

Jack climbed the rest of the way and pulled himself up. The attic had no floor, just exposed joists and insulation, so he distributed his weight across three joists-feet, seat, hands. The lighting wasn’t great, but it was good enough to see that the attic ran the length of the house, from one end of the gabled roof to the other. He was at the highest point, dead center, and even there the head clearance was only about three feet. He saw no windows.

“Don’t see how he could have gotten in here from the outside,” he said. “Don’t see any outside access at all.”

“How about access from another room?”

He was afraid she was going to say that. “I’ll check.”

He crab-walked across the joists, careful not to slip and stick a foot or hand through the ceiling. The farther he traveled from the opening, the hotter it got. He could feel his shirt starting to stick to his back with sweat. His foot dragged across the exposed insulation, and a cloud of musty fibers was suddenly airborne. Jack coughed the thirty-year-old particles out of his lungs. He didn’t see another ceiling access door anywhere.

“I think the closet’s the only way up,” he shouted.

“Why don’t I just check the closet in the other bedroom,” she shouted back.

Jack considered his position, his head banging against the roof, his body spread out across the joists as if he were training for the county fair wheelbarrow race. Now she thinks of it. “Good idea,” he said.

He could hear her footfalls below him as she traversed the hallway that connected the bedrooms. He heard a door open, presumably the master bedroom, then another one, presumably the closet.

“Nothing,” he heard her shout.

The lightbulb flickered, and the attic went dark.

“Oh, shit,” Jack muttered. He stayed in his crab-walk position, hoping the light would flick back on. Some light was shining through the opening to the attic from the closet below, so it wasn’t completely black. He knew the joists were the standard sixteen inches apart, so he could find his way back even with the bad lighting. He waited for his eyes to adjust, and then he noticed something.

Down at the other end of the attic, over the master bedroom, a ray of light was shooting up into the attic. What the hell?

“Rene, where are you?”

“In the master.”

“Do you see a hole in the ceiling?”

He waited for her reply, which was simply, “No.”

The beam of light was still shining up like a laser from the master bedroom. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but that was because the attic light had been burning. In the dark attic, and with the light glowing in the bedroom below, it was plainly visible. Jack crawled toward the beacon until it was within an arm’s length.

He stared at the light for a moment, noticing that insulation had been cut away next to the joist. The hole itself was smaller than a dime, but there was definitely a hole, and with the insulation trimmed back it appeared as though someone had deliberately put it there. He squatted down and peered through the opening.

“Rene? You sure you don’t see a hole?”

There was a brief pause, as if she were searching. “No,” she said.

“Just the ceiling fan.”

Ceiling fan. Jack pulled away a little more insulation. He found an electrical box and a mounting bracket for a ceiling fan. Beside the fan bracket was another bracket. It was attached to the joist but not to the fan, and it didn’t seem to be serving any purpose at all. He took a closer look, and there was just enough light emanating upward through the hole to let him read the manufacturer’s name printed on the side of the bracket: Velbon.

It probably wouldn’t have meant anything to him, had his ex-wife not been a photographer. Velbon was one of the best-known manufacturers of tripods and mounting brackets for video cameras. At that moment, Jack realized exactly what he’d found.

He took one more look down through the hole-a hole that from the bedroom probably looked like nothing more than a vent in the ceiling fan-and he had a perfect view of the bed.

Five years earlier, it would have been Sally’s bed. He could have watched Sally climbing into bed. Sally sleeping in her bed. Sally doing whatever it was she liked to do in bed.