Page 53 of Bent Heavens

“Glad you’re finding this useful,” the librarian said.

He had no idea. Liv discovered that Carlos Carbajal, writing as Charles Grimwig, had been filing stories for the Monroeville Courier as far back as twelve years ago. His bylines, however, quit four years back; the most recent hit Liv found was from the Courier’s competitor, the Post, which ran a four-paragraph story describing local journalist Charles Grimwig’s firing from the Courier, an event shrouded in mystery.

The Post writer laid out the facts as she knew them. Longtime local reporter Grimwig had been investigating misconduct in an unspecified federal project and had been arrested outside Bloughton, Iowa, for falsifying credentials and trespassing on restricted property. The tone of the article was dry, but Liv could sense the reporter’s exasperation at Carbajal’s refusal to be quoted. Liv felt crushed inside powerful paws. A had given her the name of a journalist? Then Carbajal had to be spoken to, and right away—because her hunch that Doug was out there doing something he shouldn’t was hardening.

There were no follow-up stories, either from the Courier or Post, but Liv didn’t need them. She closed out the database and opened a browser. Anyone her age was a master at digging up personal information, especially for people too old to know how to effectively hide it. Five minutes, she figured, were all she would need to find out where Carlos Carbajal lived. She did it in two.

27.

The tallest buildings in Bloughton were churches, cheating with bell towers and spires. There wasn’t a four-story business or residence in the whole town, which gave the nine-story apartment complex in front of Liv the feel of a citadel. Monroeville was four times Bloughton’s size, habitual destroyers of Bloughton sports squads. Liv knew she was in enemy territory, but hadn’t expected this level of dislocation. Even Bloughton’s worst homes—the Monk house, for instance—had a sense of ownership lacking from this street. Half the windows were boarded up. The gutters were gluts of soggy litter. Black wires from defunct cable services dangled down apartment buildings like worms left to roast in the sun.

Liv looked again at the directory of handwritten names, each paired with an aged plastic doorbell. The button to unit 302 looked dusty and rarely pushed, and though the name beside it had faded from sunlight, it was legible enough: Carbajal. Liv took a steadying breath, too aware of the lob of her heart, and pressed the button. She flinched, expecting, for some reason, to hear one of A’s chirps. But there was no sound at all. She waited, listening for doorbell-hating dogs.

The lobby door abruptly shot open, socking Liv in the shoulder. She stumbled back as a woman in a baggy blouse with an unlit cigarette in her mouth backed out, arms wrapped around a plastic hamper of laundry. The woman glared, tightening what looked like toothless lips around the cigarette. Before Liv could count the reasons not to do it, she stuck her foot in the door.

She slipped through the gap and hurried past a bank of silver mailboxes and into a mildewed, carpeted stairwell blotched with stains. It took one stair before Liv, cross-country runner, gasped for air. She regretted not bringing Mist, which still rested in the back seat of her car. She should do something to protect herself. Send an email to Krista with the building address. Find a store that sold pepper spray. But these offered too many opportunities for her to chicken out. She was here. She would carry this through.

Liv reached the third floor. The peeling wallpaper was a green-and-silver jungle print. The iron-gray carpet was balding, and two of the three lamps had burned out. It smelled like cabbage, and, from a distant apartment, Liv heard the lonely warble of a Roy Orbison song. She took out her key ring and slotted keys through the fingers of her left hand. Of all the wild weapons she’d handled in her life, this was the best she could do.

She knocked on unit 302.

“Ohhhhhhhh!” Instantly, a man’s incensed moan.

Liv took a step back, wanting Mist, wanting it now.

“You want to kick me out? See me pick food from your trash cans next week? You want to live with that? I’m a disabled American, you son of a bitch! You kick a disabled American to the curb and your ass is going to end up in hell!”

Liv’s mind spun. This man believed her to be some vindictive landlord. She adjusted her perspiring palm around the keys.

“Mr. Carbajal, it’s not—I’m just…”

She trailed off, uncertain how to describe herself or her mission. From behind the door, she heard the clang of a utensil being dropped on a plate. The creak of a chair, the groans of floorboards, a hoarse exhale. Twenty seconds later, the man spoke again, much softer, but so close to Liv that she gasped. He was right behind the door.

“Just what?” he prompted. His voice was a mushy drawl, as if spoken behind food.

“A girl.” It sounded both massively inadequate and disparagingly true.

A bolt lock was shifted, a chain lock thrown. The door flew open six inches. The room was unlit, almost black despite it being the middle of the day, and Liv could discern only the outlines of the man’s rumpled bathrobe, crooked glasses, and unkempt hair. He stood motionless for several seconds. His breathing was louder than the Roy Orbison, a husky wheeze with fluting undertones.

“Planning to take my eyes out with those keys?”

Liv flushed, thrust the key ring into the pocket of her coat.

“I wanted to ask you about … why you got fired.” She swallowed; her throat burned with anxious acid. “I’ve … seen things.”

For a time the man stared. Then he chuckled, the distant rumble of coming thunder.

“I thought you’d never get here.”

He turned and shuffled into the dark apartment, leaving the door open behind him.

“Shit,” Liv muttered. She raised her voice. “Can we talk somewhere else? A coffee shop or something?”

He disappeared around a corner. Liv cursed again, confirmed the locations of her keys and phone, and stepped inside. She paused to let her pupils widen. The place felt like a junk shop, though she couldn’t make out specifics. Objects darker than the general dark threatened from all sides, shelves and piles teetering with jutting, irregular shapes. The spice of decaying books shot into her sinuses.

“The door,” he snapped. “Landlord son of a bitch wants my money.”

Liv closed the door against her better judgment and continued inside, navigating by fugitive slivers of sunlight. She turned a corner, undefinable granules crunching underfoot, and saw the man lower himself into a chair at a small table. Behind the table, the window shades were drawn, and, more alarming, sealed to the frames with thick black tape. Light eked from a dozen fissures, flecking dots of sun across books, clothes, and uncleared plates. There was one other chair, at the man’s right elbow. Liv touched it, felt a layer of crumbs, and brushed them off before sitting.