The Arx (15 page)

My love token will vindicate me.

The phrase kept replaying in his head. It was the last thing Retigo had said to Grace in his final phone message, after several minutes of raving about Satan and his disciples. Looking back, there had been a distinctive tone to that final phrase – like Retigo had surfaced in a momentary flash of reason from the cataclysm of his unraveling mind.

Retigo had stopped mid-sentence – like he was waking from a dream. Frank had the feeling that there was a purpose to the phrase; that it really meant something.

He crossed the street and strode to the entrance like he belonged there. The building wasn’t much – unattractive seventies-era with a cheap-looking brick façade. He fiddled with Retigo’s keys and found the one for the outside door. There was threadbare carpeting in the lobby, and peeling beige paint on the walls.

He took the stairs up, thinking he’d be less likely to run into anybody. On the second floor, he opened the fire door a crack and peered in both directions down the hallway. It was empty.

He pushed the door open and cringed as it squeaked loudly. The place reeked of mold and the grease of people’s cooking. The elevator was beside him. For now it was silent. At Retigo’s door he gave one last glance in each direction. He was alone in the corridor.

Frank smiled. He’d been right about the locks. There were three massive deadbolts on Retigo’s door. His hands shook as he worked out which key was which. He unlocked the door and pushed it open carefully, remembering the fire door, but it didn’t make a sound. He slipped inside and gently closed it behind him. The apartment was old and tired, like the rest of the building, with aging shag carpeting and dated fixtures. A steel security bar leaned against the wall beside the door.

The living room, dining room, and kitchen were open concept – there were no walls. Interior design wasn’t Retigo’s strong suit; a single couch that looked like it had been hauled out of a dumpster was the sole piece of furniture in the living room. A tiny CRT TV sat on a cardboard box next to it. Bedsheets were draped over the curtain rods to cover the windows. The bottoms of the sheets had been thumb-tacked to the wall. Retigo had been on the edge.

A dull light still filtered into the room. A few curl-edged posters dotted the walls, most depicting big news stories: 9/11, the Berlin wall coming down, the first moon landing. Stories that Retigo probably wished he had covered.

A fifties-era chrome table stood in the dining room, with a single chair; Retigo didn’t get much company. On the table was one of the things Frank was most interested in examining – Retigo’s aging laptop. He would come back to that after he’d had a look around.

Down a short hallway was the single bathroom and single bedroom. The bedroom floor was covered with clothes. In the middle of the pile was an overturned Coke bottle. Frank kicked at one of the socks lying beside the bottle and it was as solid as cardboard – the spilled Coke had soaked into everything and hardened. He checked under the bed and in the closet but found nothing of interest.

Back in the living area he had a quick look in the kitchen. The fridge was almost empty, and what little was there was junk – Coke, rotting cheap salami, cakes that probably didn’t need to be in the fridge, since they contained no real food value and would never go bad. All in all, the place bore a disturbing similarity to Frank’s own.

He came back to the laptop. A paper plate with a moldy half-eaten slice of pizza lay beside it. He sat down and turned on the laptop. The inane ‘Windows’ musical intro blasted forth as it started up.

“Shit,” he whispered as he tried to cover the speakers with his hands. As soon as it was booted he muted the sound system.

He spent half an hour scouring the files. There were notes from bland stories about flower shows and Miss Whatever pageants, but nothing about the story Retigo had thought was so important.

Disappointed, Frank did one last sweep of the apartment. Nothing. The absence of material itself was disturbing. Retigo had been working on a story ‘that would make us both rich’. How could it be that there wasn’t a shred of evidence the story ever existed. Either Retigo was so paranoid he didn’t dare keep any information here, or someone had beaten Frank to it and cleaned it out. After all, Catherine Lesko was just across the street.

He finally gave up and got ready to leave. He considered taking the computer, but in the end decided against it. He’d found everything he was likely to find. He’d already committed a B and E; no point in adding theft to the mix.

He tip-toed to the door and peered through the peep-hole. The hallway in front of him was clear. He was about to turn the handle when he heard the elevator door open in the distance. Soon the distorted fish-eye image of someone approaching appeared in the peep-hole. As he continued to watch his spine stiffened. It was Catherine Lesko.

On reaching his position she stopped, stood in front of the door, and sniffed at the air.

Shit, shit, shit!
He thought.

She stepped toward the door and his heart was in his throat as she placed her hands against it and bent her head to look through the peep-hole from the other side. He didn't dare move away – she would see the shadow of his movement.

His heart thumping, he leaned sideways and angled his head away. He held his breath and froze, listening as she shifted positions inches away on the other side of the door, watching the faint shadow of her movement in the glass bulb of the peep-hole.

After a minute of tense silence, he heard her fishing through her purse, and heard the jingling of a set of keys. He panicked, trying to decide whether to run and hide or stay and be caught.

He was about to turn and hunt for a hiding place when a chime issued from Lesko’s purse – her cell phone. Frank took a chance, straightened up, and peered through the peep-hole. Lesko was standing with her back to the door whispering, with the phone against her ear.

She stood for a few seconds and he heard a muffled jingle as she slid the keys back in her purse. He waited with his heart hammering in his chest. She turned and strolled toward the elevator, still talking on the phone. Frank exhaled deeply as her voice was extinguished by the faint thunk of the elevator door.

He waited for ten minutes to be sure Lesko wouldn’t return. Finally, still shaking, he snuck down the stairs and back outside.

As he walked out the front door, he snuck another glance at Catherine Lesko’s window. A jolt ran up his spine as once again the curtains fluttered.

He licked his parched lips. Suddenly he had the overpowering urge for a drink. He clenched his fists and steeled himself against the onslaught. After several minutes he won the battle, at least for now. He willed himself to relax and headed for his car.

His image of Retigo was coming into focus. A loner, a paranoid loser, drawn into something way over his head, crippled with terror, whether of something real or from his disturbed imagination. Suicidal? For some reason Frank didn’t think so.

Analyzing his new understanding of how Retigo ticked, Frank decided it wasn’t all that surprising he’d found no evidence in the reporter’s apartment.

It was possible, even likely, that Catherine Lesko, or one or more of her cohorts, had swept the apartment, and the computer, clean of anything that could link them to Retigo. But Frank guessed that they wouldn’t have found much. Anyone with Retigo’s depth of paranoia wouldn’t leave evidence lying around; he would devise a hiding place as convoluted as the escape patterns he followed to elude his invisible pursuers.

And only one connection remained, however thin, between Lawrence Retigo and objective reality.

“Did Larry give you many presents?” Frank asked Grace Hatcher the next day. He’d convinced her to meet him once more, using the excuse of giving back Retigo’s keys, and claiming that there were some loose ends that needed tying up.

They sat on the patio of a sidewalk café on Denman Street. The sun was out. Traffic was light, and strollers already crowded the beach to the west.

“Presents?” she laughed, “like as in ‘things for free’? Larry’s idea of generous was springing for a large fries at McDonald’s.”

She fidgeted with her cell phone, and declined his offer to buy her another coffee and muffin.

“I gotta get to work,” she said.

“Look, just bear with me this one last time and I won’t bug you again.”

She rolled her eyes and stuffed the phone in her purse. He bought her a coffee. At first she sat on the edge of her chair, ready to bolt. Resigned, she sat back and reached for her cup.

“He did give me a little wooden jewelry box the last time I saw him,” she answered him. “I thought it was weird because it was so out of character.”

“Anything else?”

“I don’t know – a picture of us together…”

“He talks about a love token.”

Grace gave him a puzzled look.

“At the end of his phone message,” Frank said. “He says: ‘My love token will vindicate me’. Is there anything he gave you that you might call a love token?”

“Love token?” she repeated, scrunching up her nose. “I don’t know… I figured he was just out of it.”

She hauled her purse up on the table and started to rummage though it – for a smoke, Frank assumed. Her ungainly charm bracelet jingled as she plunged her right hand in and sorted through the numerous pouches.

Frank watched the rhythmic motion of the charms as her hand moved in and out of the purse – a jeweled heart, a golden star, a miniature house; then, a key – a tiny silver key. He focused in on the charm. It seemed out of place somehow. Examining the key, he realized it wasn’t plated as finely as the other charms. In fact, it looked for all the world like a real key, with a simple tooth-structure, but…

The hand with the bracelet finally located a pack of Export Menthols, and removed one.

“You mind?” she said, nodding at the cigarette.

“Sure,” Frank said. “I’ll join you.”

They walked an acceptable distance away from the tables.

“Did Larry give you that bracelet?” Frank said as he lit her cigarette.

“What?”

She paused, blowing out a puff of smoke.

“The bracelet?” she took another drag on the cigarette. “Well…yeah, I guess he did. I forgot about that. I guess it slipped my mind because he gave it to me the same time as the jewelry box.” She laughed. “Two presents at once – talk about out of character.”

She slid the strap of her gigantic purse off her shoulder and set the bag on the ground. As she bent down, her head tilted and her hair fell back, exposing the bare skin of her neck where it met her shoulder. Frank stared, stiffening and clenching his fists at his sides. He couldn’t breathe. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

She straightened and stared at him. “What’s with you?”

“What?”

“You’re shaking.”

“It’s nothing. It’ll pass.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Well, just give me the keys – I gotta get going.”

Frank fought to calm himself. “I need to see that jewelry box.”

Her eyes widened. “No fuckin’ way. What’s your problem? I don’t think you’re a real cop…”

He reached out, grabbed her hand and squeezed. “You know why we’re suddenly so interested in Larry?”

She winced in pain and tried to pull away, but he squeezed harder and held her in place. “New evidence has come along suggesting that your boyfriend was murdered.”

Her eyes went wide. She scanned the street for an escape route.

“Larry was worried your life might be in danger,” He twisted her arm and she turned back to face him. “Maybe he was right. Let us investigate and maybe it’ll all go away.”

“What do you want with it?” she said weakly.

“I just want to look at it, that’s all.”

Frank sat on the threadbare Ikea sofa in Grace Hatcher’s living room as she disappeared into the bedroom. She’d made him leave the front door open, and he promised to go as soon as he’d seen the box.

She returned in a few minutes and handed it to Frank.

“I took the jewelry out,” she said.

“No problem,” he said.

He stood up and turned the box over in his hands. It was rectangular, about ten by fifteen centimeters, inlaid with angular patterns of light and dark wood. It was nothing special, but definitely not junk. Frank traced his finger around the herringbone pattern that decorated the bottom. About halfway along one side he found a hole, difficult to see because it blended so well with the surrounding pattern.

“Ever notice this?” he said, pointing at the hole.

Grace bent down to inspect the box.

“No,” she said. “I guess I never looked at it that close. What is it?”

“Larry never said anything about the box having a compartment?”

“Not that I remember,” she stared at the tiny hole in the base. “He was pretty out of it. I remember him saying something about always keeping it with me – ‘Never let it go’, I think he said. I thought he was just being poetic. He never said it had a hiding place or anything.”

“Have a look at your bracelet.”

She held the bracelet up and sorted through the charms.