“Thank you, sir,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Danny.”
“I’m Harold,” he said. It looked like it took a significant act of will for him to shake my hand. “Harold Craig.”
“Are you all right, Harold?” Jen asked.
He nodded. “I have an anxiety disorder,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
“We apologize for the disturbance,” I said. “Do you know what happened?”
“Bill’s dead.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “He is.”
Harold looked unsteady. “Let’s sit down,” I said, motioning to the top step. He put his hand on the railing and eased himself down. I sat next to him. Jen stepped halfway down the stairs and turned so her face was on the same level as his.
“Tell me about Bill,” I said.
Harold told us how he’d lived there for twelve years, ever since he’d been laid off from his job as a high-school math teacher. While he spoke, he held his hand in front of his chest and shook it up and down in a small arc. He didn’t seem to be aware of it. Bill had been a good friend to him, he said, not like a landlord at all. They’d go to lunch sometimes. Second Street or the Belmont Brewing Company if Harold wasn’t having a bad day. Bill even got him a faster Internet connection when he needed it to work from home. Never once raised his rent or anything.
“Do you think they’ll let me stay?” He noticed his hand then, and held it in his lap to keep it still.
“I don’t know, Harold,” I said.
He looked at his feet.
“What can you tell me about your neighbor?” I tilted my head toward the door of the other studio apartment.
“Kobe?” he asked.
I nodded as if I recognized the name.
“He seems like a nice kid. Asian.”
“Kid?”
“Well, early twenties or so. You get old enough, everybody seems like a kid.”
“Can you tell us any more about him?”
“I don’t think he came home last night.”
“That’s unusual?”
“Yeah. He’s usually home. Playing his Xbox.”
“He bother you with that?”
“No. It’s a thin wall, though.”
“When did you see him last?”
“He went out not too long before everything started happening.”
“Did you hear the gunshot?”
“No. Someone shot Bill? That’s how it happened?” His hand was off his lap and shaking again.
I nodded. “When you say ‘before everything started happening,’ what do you mean?”
“Before you all started showing up.”
Jen and I exchanged a look. Did Kobe leave before or after the shot was fired?
We talked for a few more minutes. I gave him one of my business cards and asked him to call me when Kobe came home.
When Harold was back inside, Jen and I went downstairs and let ourselves into Denkins’s apartment. The crime-scene techs had scoured the place for any potential physical evidence, but we needed to go through it one more time for anything else that might provide useful information before we released the crime scene to the family.
“What do you make of Harold?” I asked once we were in the living room with the front door closed.
“I feel sorry for him,” she said.
“Think he knows more than he’s saying?”
“Everybody knows more than they’re saying.”
Most of what I was interested in was in the desk or file cabinet—rental agreements, financial records, legal documents. Jen searched the rest of the apartment while I dug into the paperwork. An hour later, I had a box full of files and Jen had searched the place from top to bottom.
“Find anything?” I asked, snapping the lid closed on the large plastic evidence container.
She shook her head. “Not really. Nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t think Bill was a big drinker, though. No alcohol containers in the trash and only one beer in the fridge, on the bottom shelf, pushed way in back.”
I looked at the coffee table where the Glenlivet bottle had been before it was collected as evidence. “Last night must have been an anomaly.”
“So, why did Bill get shit-faced last night?” she asked.
“And who was he with?”
Jen offered to take the autopsy so I could get some sleep before Julia’s show. I wanted to make a good impression, because I hadn’t met many of her friends yet. But when we got out to the curb, I saw my Camry, still parked halfway up the block.
“Shit,” I said. “I forgot I need to get my car to the repair shop.”
Jen took pity on me. “Give me your keys. I’ll get a tow for you.”
“Thanks,” I said, working the ignition key off of my key ring.