Painting With Fire (3 page)

“I know, I know.” Tom held her shoulders in a light hug as he walked her out the door into the hallway.

“It will be OK,” he lied softly. He closed the door and came back to find Claudia on the couch, with her hands clasped tightly together.

“Are you thinking of Steve Jackson,” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“You’re holding your hands like that again,” he said, gently prying apart her fingers. “You do funny things with your hands when you are thinking of him.”

“I just can’t seem to get that sensation of his cold fingers out of my head,” she said. “It was so cold. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“Of course it does,” he said. “But I try not to think about it. What can I do about it anyway?”

“Stan said we should keep our eyes and ears open,” Claudia said.

“The cops will figure it out soon,” Tom said softly, lying for the second time that night. “We don’t have to worry about it anymore.”

Chapter 4: Murder on the Ears

Spring came and the radiators turned off. The rickety windows opened, held up by frayed, ragged ropes in the frames. The smell of fresh, wet soil wafted in with the breeze.

The warm s
pring air brought a talentless street performer to the same corner where Tom and Claudia had spotted the body. Claudia had become compulsive about looking down from the window ever since the body had been found. The fat man clutched his saxophone and spewed out a torrent of senseless notes up and down, unaware of the significance of the brown grass where he stood.

The fluttering “music” continued for hours, days on end, up and down, up and down the scale. From the window, Claudia watched people toss quarters into the saxophone case and growled.

“Don’t encourage him,” Claudia shouted too quietly for them to actually hear. “I’d like to kill that bastard if he doesn’t shut the hell up.”

“The man’s onl
y trying to make a living,” Tom said.

“I g
uess I can sympathize with that,” she said.

S
he stepped away from the window and sat down. She crossed her legs and it felt like her foot was on fire. It kept bouncing up and down in no particular rhythm, enflamed by the cascade of notes.

T
he noise seemed to bother the neighbors next door, as well. Claudia wondered what the latest squabble was about. Sara and Dan Johnson just sounded like two mutts in an alley, crashing into pieces of metal, toppling and shattering glass bottles.

She had Stan’s cell phone number programmed into her cell. She called him.

“What is it, dear?” he said.

“The Johnsons
are fighting again,” she said. “One of these days that bastard’s gonna kill her.”

“I wish she’d press charges,” he said.
“We’ll break it up again. You know, you can always call dispatch.”

“But then I wouldn’t get to talk to you,” she said.

Claudia heard a loud crash.

“Fuck,” she said. “I gotta go.”

It sounded like the furniture was moving and scraping the wall. She leaned an ear against the wall then backed away.

“What’s going on in there?” she said. Tom shrugged.

Five squad cars pulled up silently, with their lights flashing. The saxophonist grabbed his instrument and ran.

A female police officer pulled Dan Johnson out of the front door roughly by the arm.
Her ponytail swung back and forth as she jostled him across the sidewalk in handcuffs.

“She’s the one who started it,” he yelled. “She assaulted me.”

“Sure, buddy,” she said. “Like I haven’t heard that before.”

After the cop loaded him into her squad and drove off, Claudia stopped Stan. He had the door to his Ford Crown Victoria open and one foot in.

“Hey, did you ever find the guy that killed Steve Jackson?”

“I help out
but I’m not in charge of the investigation,” he said. “It’s a joint investigation at this point. Even the FBI and DEA have been involved. And no, we haven’t caught the killer, yet. Sorry, darling.”

“If you guys don’t catch him soon, I’m going to start asking my neighbors nosy questions.
I think about it all the time.”

Stan looked side to side nervously. “Get in the car,” he said.

They climbed in and slammed the doors shut.

“You know, I like you, s
weetheart. I mean as one friend to another.”

Claudia rolled her eyes. She knew she should be annoyed by his terms of en
dearments. But she couldn’t help but like him anyway. Judging by the lines around his eyes, she always got the impression that he cared about what he was doing a little too much.

He started the engine and turned and looked at her.

“You didn’t hear it from me, but we think someone in your building killed him,” Stan said, hitting the button to roll up his windows “Keep your doors locked, dear. Call us if you hear anything, but don’t go getting involved in things that don’t concern you. Be careful. This is organized crime we’re talking about.”

“I’m not scared of gangs,” she said to Stan as
he drove her back to her corner. The words came out like a lie.

When Tom got home she told him about the conversation
.

“I saw Stan,” she said
. “The cops think it was someone in our building,”

“Christ
,” Tom said.

“How do we know the
police have it right?” he said. “They could be wrong, you know. I hope they’re wrong.”

She bit her fingernails
.

“Who all could it be?” he said. “Let’s go down the list of neighbors.”

On the first floor, there was Alice and across the hall, there was Janice and her teenage son, Kevin.

On the second floor, Doris, an elderly woman, could be seen clutching the banister on occasion on her way
down to get the mail. They occasionally spotted her wearing a robe and slippers. Across the hall lived Mr. Washington, a middle-aged man and his younger wife, Sofia. They hadn’t seen Sofia in months.

“It’s like she has just disappeared,” Tom said.

Claudia and Tom lived on the third floor across from the constant fighting of the Johnsons, Sara and Daniel. There was also the building manager, Ted, but Claudia wasn’t sure if he counted. Claudia realized just how little they knew about the neighbors.

“
I’m gonna start asking the neighbors questions.” Claudia said. “Let’s start with you.

“Tom,” she said. “I know this is a stupid question, but
is there anything you want to tell me about that night or your past?”

“No, of course not,” he said looking her square in the eyes. “Do you
have anything you want to tell me?”

“No,” she m
umbled, her face flushing red.

“You don’t suspect me
, do you?” he said.

She paused and didn’t know what to say.

“Well, goddammit, Claude,” he said. “Really? Seriously?”

She sighed. “No,
of course not. I really don’t. It’s just I’m worried.”

“Worried about someone killing you in your sleep?
I’d be the last person to do that,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Besides, if I wanted to, I could have done it a long time ago. Don’t you think Stan would have given you a head’s up if he thought you were living with a killer?”

“I just want answers,” she sa
id loudly.

“You are better off leaving this alone,” Tom said. “
Don’t get involved. If you’re worried about it, we should try to move.”

“It’s not just that I’m worried,” she said. “
I’m bored out of my fucking mind, and I can’t stop picturing that man’s face in my head and trying to figure it out. I can’t just keep sitting around surfing the Internet trying to find a job, trying not to think about it. Sometimes, I don’t even leave the apartment all day. I’m going to talk to the neighbors, even the crazy ones.”

“
Yeah, let’s ask Dan the next time he gets home from jail,” Tom said. “What if you get killed? You should just leave it alone. Try to forget about it. It’s gang related. It has nothing to do with you.”

S
he crossed her arms and sulked. “Of course, it has to do with me. I found the guy, dammit.”

“I’m just worried about you,” he said.
“I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“
I’ll be ok. I can take care of myself.”

“If you knew what was good for you, you’d leave it the hell alone,” he said. “It’s crazy to get involved.”

She knew he was right. But ever since she was a kid, she had always itched towards recklessness. For Claudia, boredom was hell.

When she was 12, she wanted to bolt after a tornado instead of taking shelter in the basement. She remembered standing stupidly by the window staring at the murky mix of green and black sky when the funnel cloud started to approach. That was before her mom came and dragged her back down to the basement.
The woman was always dragging her down, she thought. It wasn’t easy growing up as an only child in that house.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t just let it go,” she said. “At night, I can’t help but think over and over, it isn’t right what happened to that man. So
meone did this to him and they’re still out there and I can’t fucking sleep.”

Claudia wasn’t lying. She was averaging four to six hours a night with the nightmares.
She just wanted them to stop. She wanted to stop remembering those dead eyes, the frozen skin grazing her fingers.

The killer
was still out there, possibly next door. It could happen again. She wondered if she had seen his face, shaken his hand. She wondered which neighbor it was. Was it Dan Johnson? Did Tom have something to do with it? Every night, the fear was like a tornado racing and tearing through her thoughts. She wondered if she had ever seen his face.

“I j
ust want answers,” she mumbled. She was going to rule them out, all the neighbors one by one and figure out who did this, if she had to, at least rule them out so she could sleep at night without wondering, constantly wondering. She was going to rule Tom out, too.

Chapter 5: The Shut-in

Claudia had woken up at 4 a.m. and couldn’t fall back asleep. Flopping around in bed like a half dead fish had become a nightly ritual for her ever since the murder. Her mind and body would not sit still. I have to do something, she thought. I can’t just lie here. I need answers. I got it, she thought, I’ll make cookies, start talking with the easiest neighbors. It seemed like a good idea at the time. She got up, washed her face and stared at the blue circles under her eyes in the mirror. Then she got to work, humming a sugary Julie Andrews song, “Start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.” It was a sugary, morbid beginning to an amateur murder investigation, she thought, scolding herself as she laid a dough-covered spoon on the countertop.

Tom stretched his arms up overhead and yawned as he walked into the kitchen.
The scent of burnt cookies hung heavy in the air. The counter was littered with flour and broken eggshells. He scratched his hair. It was sticking up in all directions.

“You have no bus
iness being in my kitchen.” he laughed and waved his hand to dissipate the faint smoky haze.

“
Oh, come on. I chose an easy recipe, chocolate chip cookies,” Claudia said. “How hard can cookies really be?”

“Um, you did time them, right, Claude?”

“They didn’t look done right away,” she said defensively.

Claudia bit into a charred cookie with a crunch and tasted black ash. “Ah vel,” she said and spat it out into the sink.

“Wow, those look awesome,” Tom said sarcastically.
“You’re such a domestic goddess.”

Claudia scrunched up her face and salvaged th
e least burnt of the cookies, assembled them onto a plate, and covered them with plastic wrap.

“Where you going with those delectable culinary creations?” Tom mocked.

“Downstairs to knock on Doris’ door,” she said.

“Are you trying to kill the poor woman?” he pointed to the plate
and grinned.

“No, I’m just going to ask her some questions. I figure she’s the easiest person to start with.
She always seems so lonely.”

“
About the murder? What if she’s not home?” he opened up the laptop on the kitchen table.

“That’s
the nice thing about shut-ins. They’re always home,” Claudia said as she put on her flip-flops.

Doris peered through the peephole and looked at her. A small ball of fur yip-yapped and slammed against the bottom of the door.

“Hello,” she said over the yapping and repeated thumps. “What do you want?”

“I made too big a batch
, and I thought maybe you’d like some cookies. Maybe some company too for a minute.” Claudia said. She looked away from the hole self-consciously.

It sounded ridiculous when she said it out loud, kind of like something the wolf would say to Little Red Riding Hood’s gr
andmother to get her to open up.

The dog continued to yap. “Shut up, Fifi,” the old lady said.

Claudia could hear the clicking of a lock, then another click, and a third click and the sliding of a chain, before Doris turned the knob.

“Come in,” she said, her voice shaking slightly.

They walked into her living room. Magazines and papers were piled high next to two old, green and pink floral print sofas. The dog circled dangerously underfoot, threatening to trip its owner.

As Claudia handed Doris the plate of cookies, she noticed the faint blue veins under the wrinkled skin of her pale hands. She must at least be in her late 70s, she thought. All it would take is one trip on the books to snap a hip.

“Doris, you know if you ever need anything, groceries, help around the house, let me know,” Claudia said, as she surveyed the clutter and peeling paint on the walls. “It’s not like I have anything better to do.”

“No, that’s not really necessary. I
’m sorry. I don’t have visitors often,” she said, pushing up her glasses. “Please pardon the mess. I like everything within arm’s reach, you know. It irritates the bajeezus out of me when people come over and put my stuff away. I can never find it again. Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure,” she said. “It might help the cookies go down easier.”

“My poor girl, who taught you to bake like this?” she said. After one bite, she squinted hard at the cookie, then put it back down on the plate. “It was a sweet gesture. Thanks.”

Doris patted her on the arm, instantly reminding Claudia of her own grandmother who
obviously never taught her how to bake cookies.

“So what brings you to my humble abode?” Doris said.

“To tell you the truth, I thought it might be nice to know more about my neighbors after that murder,” Claudia said. “It would make me feel safer. Do you know what I mean?”

Her teeth
bit into one of her rock-hard cookies and she gulped down the dry crumbs with the coffee.

“Yes, I do,” Doris said, offering a lonely, eager smile and leaning forward in her chair. “When I was younger, people used to stop by all the time. Now, everyone is glued to their TVs or their computers, even their phones when they go to the restroom. It’s like people have retreated into their own little worlds.”

Ironic words for a shut-in, Claudia couldn’t help but smile.

“We used to play card games and hav
e dinner at each other’s houses,” Doris continued. “We’d even spank each other’s children. No one locked their doors. Even here. You didn’t need to.”

“When did that all change?” Claudia asked. The fluff ball growled and chewed on the edge of her pant leg. She couldn’t see its eyes.

“I’m not sure.” Doris sank back into the flowers of her floral print couch cushions. “It seemed like it happened overnight. I admit I miss the old days, sometimes. My family has all moved away to New York. My daughter works for a bank down there…”

She scooped up the dog and stroked the long, black and white fur on its back. Wispy fur balls collected at the edges of her strokes and fell onto the couch.

“They never visit.” She patted the dog on its small head. “I’ve threatened to leave all my money to Fifi here, but they still never visit.”

She put Fifi back on the floor and he started to growl at Claudia again like it was somehow her fault.

“You’re retired now?” she said, shaking out her leg, with the tiny dog once again holding onto the edge of her jeans with its miniature fangs. It leaned backward and tugged. Its small nails clack, clacked on the wooden floor.

“Yes. I used to work in retail downtown selling perfume. What do you do?”

“I’m in the process of deciding my next step on the career path,” Claudia said with a sigh and an uneasy nod. “I’m kinda lost.”

“Laid off?”

“Yep.”

“Well, good luck to you.” Doris pulled her lips into a sympathetic frown lined by the remnants of bright pink lipstick. “Happens to a lot of people these days.”

“Let me know if you hear of any good jobs,” Claudia said. “Maybe I’ll go back to school if I can decide what I want to do.”

Doris gave a sympathetic nod.

Claudia eyed her and quickly crossed her off her list. She was too small and frail. She tried to imagine her wielding a large metal object and attacking a man and envisioned her toppling over and breaking her hip.

“That murder was nasty business, wasn’t it?” she said.

Doris nodded. “They never caught the guy, did they? I keep telling the police it was Kevin, but they don’t listen.”

“Kevin?”

Claudia thought of the tall, lumbering teenage boy with the gut and the dark skin. He was always carrying around bags of fast food, McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King. Sometimes, he couldn’t wait to get into his mom’s apartment, before the bulging cheeks would appear. He was always chewing something and rarely spoke and when he did it was a mumble through mouthfuls.

“Why Kevin?” Claudia asked.

“I know it in my gut that boy is up to something,” Doris said, her gray eyebrows furrowing together. “These youngsters today, all rotten. Playing violent videogames, watching nasty videos. You can’t trust ‘em. Plus, when their kind started moving into the neighborhood, things started to get crazy around here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Claudia leaned back and the hairs on the back of her neck started to bristle. She took a breath and tried to remember that calling out Doris for being a racist old bat wasn’t going to get her any clues.
She inhaled uneasily with a loud breath.

“Nothing,” Doris said flatly.

“Did you actually hear or see anything that night to make you think it was him?” Claudia said, leaning away in her seat.

“I didn’t hear nothing, but that’s not saying much. I usually take out my hearing aid at night. It’s pretty inconspicuous isn’t it,” she said, proudly tapping a bulging piece of nude-colored plastic lodged inside her ear.

“Yeah, it is,” Claudia said, swallowing. “Well, Doris, I’d better be going.”

“Come back anytime,” she said eagerly with a big, lonely smile. “Bring your husband, too.”

Claudia cringed as she walked out the door with her shoulders up to her ears.

“He’s not my husband.”

Doris opened her mouth and let out a judgmental “oh.”

It reminded Claudia of the argument she kept having on the phone with her mother. “You’re living with a man? Why don’t you two just get married?”

“Mom, we’re not even dating,” she would say. “He has a girlfriend.”

Well, at least he had a girlfriend before they moved in and he had had a few short-term girls since then, off and on, so it was usually the truth and not a lie.

“I swear there’s nothing between us,” Claudia told her over and over again. “We are just good friends, roommates, that’s all. He’s like a brother to me.”

If you say something a thousand times, it start
s to sink in eventually, right?

Unfortunately, her mother believed the same thing.

“You two should really just get married,” she would repeat.

That’s when Claudia’s voice would start to hit the high notes and Tom would start laughing in the background.