Page 24 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“Look,” I say, trying to refocus the conversation. “I know you didn’t know him very well, but Henry—he didn’t know this guy, right? He didn’t get involved with... I don’t know, drugs, or...”

“Oh, gosh, I don’t think so. Henry was a good guy. Great guy. I can’t imagine him getting involved with that,” she says, and I feel grateful to hear it come from someone else. He was a great guy like everyone keeps saying. But none of this adds up.

“You don’t think you should tell the police about this—about what you know?” I ask.

“I’m old. I wanna watch Gunsmoke with a gin martini and be left in peace. Not interested in getting my throat slit in my La-Z-Boy one night because I poked my nose into Eddie Bacco’s pile of shit. Stay far away from that guy is all. Tell Callum, too.” Then Babs picks up her half-empty martini and stands. She points at me, a sort of you got that? gesture, and then disappears inside her apartment door, mumbling that it’s “hot as shit out here” as she goes.

I numbly walk into my own unit and stand staring at the wall, my mind reeling with the words cartel, murder, meth. I have to be living in a parallel universe right now. I’m baffled. Absolutely mystified. Did Henry get wrapped up in this? I mean, what other explanation is there?

I do tell Callum. I text him and tell him everything Babs just told me, so he knows it all immediately. I can’t really bear to repeat it all in person, although it probably deserves an in-person conversation. I need to figure what the hell is really happening here. I need to dig into this storage unit and see if Henry is hiding something.

First, though, I start to hunt through every junk drawer and keepsake box and backpack—any crack or crevice where he might be hiding drugs. God, I can’t believe I’m even saying that, but what if that’s why his demeanor started to change over the last months? It would make sense.

His toxicology report was clean, but just because he wasn’t on something that day doesn’t mean anything. He hid it from me, though... I mean, if he was doing these drugs, he was an expert at deceit. But I guess addicts can be. Shit. What if he was selling it, not using? God, what if he wanted to make extra money or something? I thought we were doing pretty well. Not great, but comfortable enough. I take a breath and stop my rambling thoughts and focus.

After I dump all of the kitchen drawers and search under the mattress and in the pillowcases, I start to pull out linens from under the bathroom cabinet, and nothing. It’s a small place. There are boxes I haven’t gotten to yet, but nothing on the surface. Then I open the medicine cabinet, and it’s empty.

I mean there’s a face lotion, a comb, and some razor cartridges, but I know he keeps painkillers close. The Oxy for his knee surgery and some pain meds for when his rheumatoid arthritis flares. He can’t work without them when he gets a flare-up, so the fact that there are no drugs at all in the place seems even more strange than finding additional illicit ones. I could maybe see a scenario where he bought some seemingly benign drug from this guy, not knowing who this maniac, Eddie Bacco, really was because he wanted something stronger for pain. That actually seems possible. But what the hell does it mean that all his meds are gone? Was he going somewhere? Did he take them with him on purpose?

I truly cannot wrap my head around what could have possibly happened to him, and all of it is more unsettling the more I learn. I grab an umbrella from its hook next to the front door. A pang of longing for Henry washes over me when I see it’s his favorite—the one with the blue sky and cloud pattern on the underside of it—a sunny surprise when you open it up.

The thunderstorm has moved everyone inside, so it’s a perfect time to go down to the storage units without anyone’s questions. The smell of wet earth and summer rain feels like a slight comfort until I open the door to the small detached building where the storage is, and the rain thunders deafeningly hard on the tin roof, sending shivers up my arms and stealing my breath for a moment. I continue anyway and look around to see a makeshift storage area—five-by-ten-foot rooms with cement walls and chicken wire doors, which seems prisonlike and out of place.

I can see through the wire into each unit, so I don’t have to try my key in each one. I can quickly rule out the units packed with tricycles and a Barbie Dreamhouse or the ones with potting soil and terra-cotta pots stacked up in piles. I try numbers six, ten, and fourteen, which only have sealed cardboard boxes, but nothing. Then, when I see numbers one through five behind me against the wall, I can immediately see which is Henry’s.

It’s piled with canvases, some portraits, many blank still. I recognize his bike that I hadn’t even noticed was missing from our garage in all the numb shock of clearing out the house. I try the key in the lock, and it clicks open. I push in the wire door and look at it all for a moment. I set my phone down on a pile of books and try to decide where to start digging in.

There are at least a dozen boxes, which I’m afraid to open if I’m honest, but before I can even peel the tape off one of them, I hear something. The scrape of a steel door. The door I came in—the one I propped open, is swinging closed, and I see a sleeve. Someone’s arm is closing it.

“Wait!” I scream, and as I run toward the main door, the wire door to the unit starts to slam shut as I let go of it. Before I can stop either door from closing, it’s black. It’s utterly black, and as the rain continues to beat on the tin roof, my screams vanish in the air. The wire unit door locked when it slammed closed, and my phone and the key are inside. I begin to panic.

I feel my way to the front door and try to open it, but it’s locked. Someone has locked me in. I beat on it and scream until my voice is raw and my fists are bruised, but no one comes.

10

CASS

By late morning, all the tuna casserole has been successfully scraped out of the microwave and the living room has been sloppily painted a ghastly off-white color, so Sinatra and I sit on a couple of five-gallon paint buckets in front of the open front door of 105, eating grape Popsicles and watching the rain sizzle off the steamy concrete sidewalk.

“And what’s that one?” I ask, continuing a game we’ve been playing all morning where he shows off his knowledge of all the tools in my bag.

“An angle grinder,” he says, with a hint of duh in his tone.

“Okay then, smarty pants. What is this called and why?”

“It’s a Phillips head. It’s named after the inventor,” he responds, which is something I didn’t know, but of course he does.

“My mom used to have me open her wine bottles with one of those,” he adds, and I give him a blank stare trying to imagine how one would do such a thing. “She didn’t have an opener sometimes, so I’d just push the cork down into the bottle.” He says this like that’s a normal thing kids do for their alcoholic jailbird mothers.

“Ah,” is all I can think to say.

I see Eddie cross the pool deck, pulling his ball cap down to shield himself from the rain and then picking up a slow jog until he reaches the tin awning his truck is parked beneath. The guy always seems to be fixing his pickup, yet it never seems to be fixed. He just pokes at it and spends a bunch of time on his phone between constant visits from a few of his sketchy-looking friends. Maybe nobody else notices how odd it is, but he parks in view of the front office, so I see it—I see the friends with their backpacks and sunglasses, who never stay too long and shake hands with each other a freakish amount. I wonder if he’s selling pot or something? Handing off dime bags to these guys. Man, if he is up to no good, maybe he’ll be even more scared when I show him the video I have. Maybe he has more to lose than I thought. I need to make my move today. For Rosa.

“Hey, Sinatra. How about if you finish up sweeping and mopping and take this garbage to the dumpster, I buy you McDonalds for dinner?” I say, and his eyes light up as he gets to his feet.

“Really?” he says, and I am starting to get the feeling that crappy McNuggets are the best thing to happen to this kid in a long time, and it sort of breaks my heart.

“I’ll do a good job,” he says, collecting the Popsicle wrappers and dragging the trash bag outside the front door.

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