Page 56 of The Tenant
“Sure.” I take a step back, scrunching the paper towel I’d been holding in my right hand. “Come on in.”
The detective strides into my house, and I close the door behind him, shutting out the cold air. I shift between my bare feet, wishing I were wearing pants at least. Why didn’t I put on pants to answer the door? What’s wrong with me?
“Nice house,” the detective comments.
“Thanks.” I attempt a smile, but it turns out lopsided. “So…what’s going on? Everything okay? Mr. Zimmerly is still dead, right?”
I wince. Wow, that joke was in horrible taste. From the detective’s face, he thinks so too. But they can’t arrest you for having a bad sense of humor.
“Still dead,” Detective Garrison confirms.
“I feel bad about it,” I say, trying to seem a little more sensitive.
“Oh?” he arches a bushy eyebrow. “Why do you feel bad?”
“Because, you know, he fell and hit his head.” I scratch at my forearm with my hand not holding the paper towel, even though it isn’t technically itchy. I have officially solved my rash problem since I replaced the detergent and keep it locked up in my room when I’m not using it. “And maybe if I had gotten in there sooner—before it was too late—we could’ve saved him.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, maybe not. But we don’t know for sure.”
The detective levels his eyes at me. “Actually, the medical examiner feels that your neighbor didn’t die from the fall.”
What?
“I don’t understand.” I shake my head. “Why did they even do an autopsy on a guy in his nineties? That doesn’t seem like a good use of medical resources.”
“It was an accidental death. And it’s a good thing they did, because the medical examiner felt that the trauma to his head was not consistent with hitting his head on the sink or bathtub. He felt that it was from blunt force trauma.”
I stare at him. “What? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying somebody hit your neighbor on the head.” The detective frowns. “He was murdered.”
34
A waveof dizziness washes over me. I have to hold on to the wall to keep from collapsing onto the floor. The four or five bottles of beer I drank are churning in my stomach.
“You been drinking, Mr. Porter?” Detective Garrison asks me.
I don’t like the way he asks me that question. It’s the middle of the evening, and I’m in my own home. It’s my right to have a few beers. Twenty-First Amendment and all that. “A little. I’m just… I’m surprised. Are you sure about this?”
“Very sure,” Garrison says. “We also found traces of his blood on an antique clock on his mantel.”
Theclock.
I saw it when I was looking at Zimmerly’s mantel. I remember thinking how much it looked like the one in our kitchen—almost identical. Then it occurs to me…
When is the last time I saw that clock in our kitchen?
“So I’ve been talking to his neighbors,” Garrison is saying, “trying to figure out if anyone saw anything.”
“I didn’t see anything,” I say quickly. “I was at work the whole day.”
“Right,” he says, “but the medical examiner said that he died the night before. So did you see anyone entering or leaving his house the night before?”
“No,” I murmur. “I… I didn’t see anything.”
The night before? That means the sandwich on the kitchen counter wasn’t his lunch but was actually a sad little dinner. He was about to eat when somebody came into his house and hit him on the head with that antique clock, killing him.
