Watch Them Die by Kevin O'Brien Page A

careful,” Pam said. “We have extra people for this trip. And I’ll keep close tabs on Guy. Don’t you worry about him.”
    “Thanks, Pam.”
    Hannah spent her break time that afternoon at the Broadmoore Apartments, six blocks from the store.
    She gazed up at the row of windows along the top floor of the five-story slate-colored structure. She wondered which window Cindy Finkelston had fallen from. Did her body land in the shrubs on the east side of the building, or in the parking area along the front and west sides?
    Hannah took a pad and pen from her bag as she approached the lobby doors. She studied the list of residents’ names on the keypad of buzzer codes. There were close to fifty names. Hannah recognized some of them as customers at Emerald City Video. She started scribbling down the names of Cindy Finkelston’s neighbors.
    She was down to the last few when someone snuck up behind her and cleared his throat. Hannah swiveled around. Staring back at her was a tall, gaunt man in his fifties. He had a dirty-gray mustache and very thin, long hair that he’d pulled back in a ponytail. He was nearly bald on top. He wore a denim shirt and jeans, and leaned on his broom. “Can I help you with something?” he asked.
    “Oh, hi,” Hannah replied, caught off guard.
    “Are you one of those insurance people again?”
    She nodded. “Yes, um, I’m—Rosemary Farrow with Northwest Fidelity Life. The—ah, late Cindy Finkelston had an account with us. I’m a claims adjuster, here doing a little preliminary poking around. It’s very sad what happened. Are you the building manager?”
    For a moment, he gave her a cool, sidelong stare. Hannah had to wonder if he’d bought any of it. Finally, the tall man puffed out his skinny chest a bit and nodded. “I’m Glenn, the caretaker here,” he said. “You’ll probably want to talk to me.”
    “Oh, yes. I imagine not much gets past you, huh?” Hannah said.
    “Not much at all. I knew the deceased as well as anyone else around here, which isn’t much. I don’t think too many people liked her. But I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead, so that’s all I’m saying about that.”
    “Do you know how it happened?” Hannah asked.
    He glanced up at the west corner of the building’s roof. “You know, I’m the one who heard her scream. I was working around back. I heard this shriek, and then something went thump. That was her body hitting the car. There’s a gate back there, so I had to go all the way around the other side of the building. Otherwise, I would have been the first one to get to her. But a couple of neighbors beat me to it.”
    Hannah gazed over at the parking area on the west side of the building. “She landed on a car?” Hannah asked; then she remembered her cover story. “Um, they didn’t mention that in the report,” she added.
    Glenn nodded and reached back to scratch under his gray ponytail. “A brand-new silver Mazda. She hit the edge, then rolled off. Smashed the roof and windshield. You should have seen all the blood and glass.” He shook his head. “A goddamn mess. They finally took down the police tape and towed away the car yesterday morning.”
    “What about the people next door to her?” Hannah asked. “Did they hear anything? Maybe someone was in the apartment with her.”
    Glenn shook his head again. “Neighbors didn’t hear diddly. And from what I caught the police saying, it looked like she was alone in the apartment when she went out the window.”
    “So they don’t think she was pushed out?” Hannah asked.
    He let out a little chuckle, then pointed to the roof. “Take a look up there,” he said. “Top floor, second window from the end. See it?”
    Hannah squinted up at the long, narrow window along the fifth floor. “Yes, I see it.”
    “That’s where she fell from. Now, go over one window, and you see her balcony. Check out the sliding glass door, the low railing. If I was gonna give somebody the heave-ho