Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

Penny tiptoed through the living room and into the kitchen. Dirty dishes were piled high in the sink. Festering paper towels were scattered everywhere. If the busybody came in, perhaps Penny could creep out the door behind her, while she was in the bathroom.

But then it wouldn’t be a locked-room mystery. The neighbour would see the broken bathroom door and would immediately suspect murder. Don’t come in, Penny thought, trying to transmit her thoughts through the wall. Go away.

No more knocking. Could the neighbour already be inside? The TV was so loud that Penny wouldn’t necessarily have heard the front door open. Or perhaps she had given up and gone away.

Penny eased closer to the kitchen door, preparing to take a peek. She could still hear the shower gushing water onto Swaize’s corpse.

The radio in Penny’s pack crackled. Her heart leaped into her mouth.

‘Officer Randich, this is dispatch, do you copy? Over.’

Penny risked a glance around the corner into the living room. No sign of the neighbour. Just the TV blaring.

‘Officer Randich? Over.’

Penny went back into the kitchen, away from the TV, and held up the radio. ‘I hear you, dispatch. What’s up?’

‘Possible domestic disturbance at one twenty-eight Chalmers Street. Apartment thirty-one. You told me you were going somewhere near there, right?’

‘I said I was going to the gym on Chalmers. Needed to burn off some energy.’ She was talking too much, too fast.

‘Oh. If your shift is already over, I can—’

‘No. It’s fine. I got it. What’s the disturbance?’

‘A neighbour heard shouting, and the shower has been going for a suspiciously long time. She knocked on the door and no one answered.’

‘Is the neighbour still at the scene?’

‘She went back to her apartment, number thirty. That’s where she made the call. Can you check it out?’

Penny took a deep breath. ‘On my way.’

She snuck back out of the apartment. There was no sign of the neighbour in the corridor, but she had to move fast. Someone else might get curious, and the plan would only work if she was first on scene.

Penny hurried downstairs and ran across the street to the gym. She gave the front entrance a wide berth, not wanting to appear on the security tapes. Once she was out of sight around the back, she pulled off the wig and scratched her itchy neck. She pulled open the fire exit and removed the playing card she had taped over the tab to prevent the door from locking.

She had found her rhythm now. No more panicking, like in the bathroom. She was operating as smoothly as an art thief in a movie.

As she walked back towards the door, she took note of everyone in the room, in case she was asked later. A middle-aged woman in yoga pants on the Stairmaster. A purple-faced middle-aged man on the weight bench, with a clean-cut Latino guy spotting him, maybe his trainer. A younger white man on the rowing machine.

Suddenly inspired, she went over to the younger guy. He had long hair, stubble and a nice build. Muscular thighs.

‘I’ve been watching you,’ she said.

He looked up. ‘You have?’

‘Yeah. From over there.’ Penny pointed to a spot that wouldn’t have been visible to him while he was using the rowing machine.

The man released the handles and wiped his sweaty hands on his tank top.

‘You got good technique,’ Penny said.

The guy smiled uncertainly. ‘Really? Thanks.’

‘I’m Penny.’

‘Albert.’

He reached up to shake her hand, and Penny pressed her card into it. ‘Buy me a coffee sometime, Albert,’ she said, and winked. Then she walked away without a backwards glance.

Whether he called her or not, he would remember that she had been here. Penny felt sure that he would tell the police she had been watching him the whole time he was working out. The male ego wouldn’t even let him consider the idea that she had noticed him only five seconds before interrupting him. Penny had seen suspects walk away with far shakier alibis.

She walked out the front door, turning her face just enough that the security camera could identify her, but not so much that it would look like she was conscious of it. She had been clumsy at first, but already she was good at this.

A few pedestrians were around as she jogged over to her patrol car. A fat old man with Woody Allen glasses watched her unlock the trunk and pull out her police jacket. He looked away as soon as she pulled it on. Didn’t mean he had done anything wrong. Being a police officer was like that. Most people avoided eye contact, as though the law couldn’t see them if they couldn’t see it.

Penny went back up to the apartment. She was about to knock on the neighbour’s door, since the neighbour had made the call, but stopped herself just in time. Even if it wasn’t protocol, she had to enter the victim’s apartment first.

‘Police. Open up.’ She banged on Swaize’s door, like she didn’t know what was inside. For a second, she had the strange feeling that he would open the door, looking puzzled and worried. Like she had imagined the whole thing.

He didn’t, of course. The neighbour stuck her head out the door just as Penny was getting out the snap gun again.

Penny looked her right in the eye, confident that she wouldn’t be recognised. Maybe overconfident.

‘Stay inside, ma’am,’ Penny told her.

The woman didn’t need any further encouragement. She vanished like a cat down a storm drain.

Penny pushed Swaize’s door open. The noise of the TV hit her immediately. ‘Hello?’ she called out, in case the woman from next door could hear.

After a couple of seconds, she turned off the TV. This put her fingerprints on the remote,