same. Kit told herself to accept his version of events and to thank her lucky stars.
As O’Callaghan rose, ready to leave, her super, Andre, poked his head through the doorway of the apartment. Kit motioned for him to enter. His mouth dropped open in shock as he absorbed the scene in front of him.
The detectives introduced themselves to him and explained how the door had been jimmied. Then they indicated they needed to move on, reminding Kit that they would require fingerprints from her two co-workers. She thanked them profusely for their help.
“My son is on his way, and we will take care of this,” Andre said as soon as the police departed. “But do you have any other place to stay tonight?”
“Yes, with a friend,” she said. “But Andre, I need a better door this time or I’ll never feel safe here.”
“Yes, I promise,” he said. “I will order a customized door, with a steel plate so it can’t be jimmied.”
“How long will it take?”
He pressed his chubby lips together momentarily, as if afraid to say.
“About a week.”
“A week? What do I do until then?”
He said that he and his son would barricade the apartment with wood tonight and first thing tomorrow morning they would install a temporary door with metal pins that would insert into the floor at the bottom and into the doorframe at the top. It would be up by noon and she could return at that point.
“All right,” Kit said, knowing a better door would soothe her nerves only so much. She was sure an alarm system was probably out of her price range—she’d investigated one when she first moved in—but she was determined to make calls tomorrow and at least find out. “I’m going to leave as soon as I pack a few things.”
As Andre waded around the apartment, scooping up a few objects here and there in an attempt to at least rescue them from the floor, Kit tossed a change of clothes into a duffle bag, along with a handful of toiletries. Then she returned to her office. As much as she wanted to just flee the scene, she needed to grab her insurance file. There were calls that would have to be made first thing tomorrow.
It was hauntingly quiet in there. Quieter it seemed, than on so many other nights when she’d snuck into her office after dinner to take care of business. Staring at the three empty desks and the small pine worktable topped with a lovely bowl of dried pomegranates, she found it hard to believe that so much mayhem lay just a few feet behind her in the apartment.
She collected the necessary documents from the filing cabinet, grateful to have been so persnickety over the years about keeping hard copies. Then she pulled out the top drawer of her desk, searching for a binder clip in order to secure all the papers together. As her hand hovered above the open drawer, she caught herself.
Something was off. The contents in the organizing tray—paperclips, pushpins, stamps, Post-its, etc.—were neatly organized, just as they always were, but they looked different somehow. Different from how they’d been arranged when she’d last opened the drawer that afternoon. The staple remover was now on the left side rather than the right. The pad of neon pink Post-its was turned lengthwise rather than vertically.
The thief had been in the drawer, she realized. The thought of his hands in there, pawing through her things repulsed her. She wondered what he’d been hoping to find tucked inside. Perhaps an envelope of petty cash. Or an iPod?
And yet something confused her. Why would the burglar be such a neatnik all of a sudden? Back in her apartment, the table and dresser drawers were hanging by a thread or yanked out entirely, with their contents cast about, but in the office it appeared as if nothing had been touched, save a laptop whisked from a desk. The drawer had clearly been searched but then carefully reorganized.
Maybe, she thought, there’d been two burglars tonight with two different M.O.s—one who got his kicks out of trashing places and another who didn’t.
Or, there was a whole other explanation. She straightened her body and held it still, as if listening for a sound from afar. In her living space, where the thief had absconded with most of the items of value, he’d announced his presence brashly, as if to say, “See what I’m doing, bitch.” But in her office he’d barely left a