Joseph Finder - Guilty Minds

I found the list of posted transactions. Charges for CVS/PHARMACY. A bunch for GIANT, a supermarket. Charges for AMAZON and “VZWRLSS,” which meant Verizon Wireless, her mobile phone company. A lot of taxi and Uber charges. A lot for ITUNES.COM/BILLITUNCUPERTINO CA, which I assumed were iTunes purchases or rentals. A lot of STARBUCKS charges. GRUBHUB SEAMLESS, which was probably food delivery.

Then I noticed an entry: US AIRWAYS PHOENIX. I clicked on it, and it expanded into a separate window. FLIGHT DETAILS, it said on the right. Washington, DC, to Jackson, Mississippi. It gave a ticket number, passenger name (Pitts/Kayla), and date of departure. June 6.

The day before the first alleged rendezvous with Justice Claflin, she’d flown to Jackson, Mississippi. The return date was June 8. I jotted down the flight information on the little field notebook I always carry with me.

I had to leave. The longer I spent here, the more likely it was that I’d be caught.

And that couldn’t happen.

Theoretically, the police could be waiting in the lobby of the building for ten, fifteen minutes while dispatch tried to reach the building superintendent to let them in.

Or the super could have been waiting for them downstairs.

The elevator could arrive on the seventh floor any second.

It was a game of chance. But I had one more thing to do. Dorothy had brought from Boston a couple of mini real-time GPS trackers. I wanted to plant it somewhere where we could keep track of her movements, somewhere where she wouldn’t find it. Her car was the obvious target. Was there something in her apartment that she was likely to take with her? Her Chanel purse wasn’t here; she’d probably taken it with her. A coat or jacket? The tracker would likely end up sitting in the closet. The only place that seemed to make any sense was her laptop case, even though she obviously didn’t take it with her very often. Maybe she took her laptop out of her apartment on certain occasions, for long trips and so on.

I slipped the tracker in one of the many compartments and pressed down on the Velcro closure. Most people don’t look through all the compartments in their laptop bags. It wasn’t likely to be detected there.

Then I went back to the front door, looked out the peephole, saw nothing in the hall. The neighbor across the hall was probably hiding in her apartment, awaiting the cops. I listened, heard nothing. No elevator chime.

I’d already located the stairwell. It was off to the right of Kayla’s apartment, whereas the elevator was on the left. Taking the elevator meant far too great a risk of running right into the cops. They wouldn’t climb the stairs to the seventh floor. So the stairwell was the safer exit.

My heart was thudding. Everything had been reduced to one crystal clear choice. Stay here and continue to capture more of her browser history and risk being caught. Or call it enough and leave the apartment before the police arrived.

It was time to go. I ejected the USB drive and pocketed it, closed the laptop, returned it to the end table. Glanced around quickly to make sure I hadn’t left anything. Went back to the front door, looked out the peephole, listened for a moment.

Heard the elevator chime.

The escape route was simple: a right out of the doorway, down the hall about two hundred feet to the door that led to the stairs.

I heard voices in the hallway coming closer. The police, it had to be. I’d stalled too long.

If I left the apartment now, they’d see me emerge. They’d see me in the hall.

Now it seemed to me there were only two choices. To hide somewhere in the apartment, probably in the bedroom closet, and hope that the police didn’t do a very thorough search. Not a risk I wanted to take.

Or...

I opened the sliding glass doors and stepped out onto the balcony. I did a quick calculation. Eight-foot ceilings meant approximately ten or eleven feet per story. Seven stories up was about seventy-five feet off the ground. Directly below was a narrow strip of grass and shrubs. Theoretically I could drop from the balcony and survive.

Or not.

Assuming I dropped onto the grass, I could sustain a broken ankle, which would be extremely inconvenient.

The adjacent balcony was twelve or fourteen feet away. Too far to swing and realistically hope to make it.

The balcony railing was about four feet high, a little less. The balcony directly below was a drop of ten or eleven feet. I’m six foot four, and with an arm extended, I can span around eight feet. That meant a drop of only a couple feet to the balcony below.

As long as no one was watching the front of the building, I could—

And at that moment I heard muffled voices outside the front door.

I couldn’t risk any more time thinking; I had to move.

Clutching the top of the railing, I pulled myself up, then lifted first one leg and then, with a quick readjustment of my hands, a second leg, and I was over the side. Hanging by my arms. Doing a pull-up. I felt a cool breeze in my hair. I could smell cut grass and hot asphalt. I lowered myself, my feet dangling in midair, the railing below just out of reach.

From the apartment I could hear the metallic scrape of a key turning in the lock.

I had to move .

Drop straight down and hit the dirt, maybe the asphalt. Likely injury, even death.

No, I had to swing my feet inward. Toward the interior of the apartment below. With one big swing I let go of my hands, and I dropped to the floor of the balcony below, relaxing my stance, knees bent, hands protecting my head, the impact hard and shuddering through my knees and thighs, my back thumping hard against the glass of the sliding door.

I craned my head and looked around and saw, through the parted floor-length curtains, the light on in the sixth-floor apartment.

Someone was home.

The floor-length curtains were half open. I didn’t see anyone, which probably meant that nobody had seen me. But almost certainly someone was there.

I did a quick survey of my limbs. I hadn’t broken or sprained anything. My legs were a little wobbly from the fall.

Then I had a disturbing thought: Is it locked?

It wasn’t out of the question that the sliding doors to this apartment were locked. That would mean I was stuck out here. I’d have to make my way down to the balcony below and try there.

Another thought: Who’d lock a sliding door to a sixth-floor balcony? Who could possibly come in?

I tried the door, gripping the recessed handle, pulling with my fingers, and the glass door scraped open a few inches, moaning as it went. It was unlocked, but apparently seldom used.

I stopped pulling it. I didn’t want to alert whoever was there, presumably in the adjoining room. Maybe in bed. Maybe in the bathroom.

I inhaled deeply.

A tendon in my right calf went twoingg .

Waiting out here on the balcony for the right moment was a bad idea. What if he or she chose at some point to look out through the glass doors? I’d be spotted immediately. The balcony was shallow and not very big; there was no place on it to hide.

I had to enter while I could and hope I wasn’t seen.

So I edged the door along its track slowly and steadily and as quietly as possible until it was open just wide enough for me to slip in. I parted the curtains, slid the door closed behind me, and entered. I was in what looked like a living room.

I heard the loud mumble of a TV in the next room, booming and vibrating in the walls.

This was good.

Whoever lived here was watching TV in the adjoining bedroom.

At first glance, the layout of this apartment appeared identical to Kayla’s, one flight up. That meant that, depending on where in the bedroom the bed was positioned, the occupant either did or did not have a sightline into the living room.