Thicker Than Water

The Borough of Dolan Heights is comprised of two vastly different sections, conveniently separated by a large, park and the North-South train tracks of the New Jersey Railroad.

The northern section is newer, with big homes, nice restaurants, bars, the police station and city hall. The southern section, where I grew up, is known as Old Town.

In the south the houses are pushed close together in rows. The sidewalks are cracked and only every other streetlight is replaced when they burn out because no politician cares about fixing roads or changing light bulbs for people who’ve lost right to vote.

My brother Robbie lived in a section of Old Town called The Shops, the poorest section in all of Dolan Heights. A hundred years earlier the area was supposed to be a booming industrial hub filled with commercial businesses fueling the railroad industry. However, the boom never came and all that remained were empty buildings that an enterprising entrepreneur with low morals turned into very low-income housing.

I wondered how my older brother Donny and my father could let Robbie live down here?

How could they let him fall this low?

I waited for evening, found Robbie’s apartment, and parked on the street a few houses down from his place. The fading sunlight and lack of streetlights kept me relatively hidden.

Robbie’s apartment sat over top of an outbuilding behind a larger building that looked abandoned. A gravel driveway led from the street to the building. A creaky-looking wooden staircase clung to the side of the building like a spider’s web clinging to a tree branch in a summer storm and leading up to Robbie’s front door.

The gravel crunched under my feet as I walked toward the staircase.

A light rain had begun to fall. I flipped up the collar on my suit jacket and climbed the stairs. Each step was more unsteady than the last. The entire structure swayed with my every movement.

At the top, I peered through the only window in the apartment. The place was small and empty.

I pulled a pair of latex gloves out of my inside jacket pocket and tried the handle.

Locked.

I applied pressure on the door with my right shoulder and could feel plenty of give, enough to realize the deadbolt wasn’t engaged.

The door was flimsy. I was certain once solid kick just below the knob would force it open. I took a step back realizing the neighborhood seemed like the kind of place accustomed to the occasion break-in. I stepped back, looked around again and jammed my right shoulder hard into the door just above the handle. I was through Robbie’s cheap front door two minutes after arriving.

Back in New Jersey for a day and already back to committing felonies, always great to be back home.

It was smaller inside than it looked from the window. The apartment was a tiny space with a short hallway that passed a galley kitchen on the left and the bathroom on the right and the small bedroom/living room at the end.

The air stank of mildew and stale cigarette smoke.

There was no police tape on the door or fingerprint dust inside, which told me Pratt’s promise of following up on leads didn’t include checking the victim’s apartment.

I didn’t know what I was looking for at Robbie’s place but it was the only place I could think to start. After being gone for eight years it was my best option for a lead into his murder. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself, so instead of turning on the lights I pulled my mini Mag-lite from my pocket, clicked on it’s strong beam and made my way into the kitchen. I combed through the Robbie’s drawers, searching for any information that would prove useful.

A cellphone.

A list of contacts.

An address book.

Anything.

But all I found was an endless pile of takeout menus and junk mail scattered across the counter top.

Nothing of value.

Trying to work fast, I left the kitchen and headed into the bedroom at the end of the short hallway. Next to the bed was a small nightstand. Sitting on top was an ashtray full of stubbed out cigarette butts, a half-dozen empty cans of beer, a lighter, a set of keys and a half pack of Marlboros.

Odd.

Robbie was clearly a smoker and had a car but left the house on the night he was killed with a half a pack of cigarettes sitting on his nightstand. Even stranger was the set of keys.

Where was Robbie’s car? It wasn’t parked out front and Pratt didn’t mention anything about having to take possession of a vehicle.

Who had it?

I pocketed the keys then opened the top drawer of the nightstand.

Nothing. Completely empty.

I opened the second drawer but before I could search, I heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway. I clicked off the flashlight and crept to the front door.

Outside, a dark sedan pulled up. When the driver stepped out, the car rocked on its shocked.

I retreated to the darkness of the bathroom and crouched behind the door, a vantage point that allowed me to see into the hallway without being seen by whomever was showing up at Robbie’s apartment. Instinctively, I reached under my suit jacket to my hip where my gun would be, but it wasn’t there.

“Damn it.” I had left my H&K P30L locked in the strong box in my trunk.

The stranger pounded up the creaky wooden steps, following the same path I had taken minutes earlier. I crouched in my dead brother’s bathroom, listening with my eyes, not knowing the mystery man’s intentions.

A set of keys rattled. The door I had smashed opened minutes earlier was unlocked and swung open. The man sauntered slowly into the apartment, closing the door behind him. Like me, he used a flashlight to navigate the small space.

Still in the bathroom, I crouched in the shadows, no more than six feet from the visitor as he walked down the hallway. I couldn’t make out his details, but from his silhouette it was clear he was a big man, well over 6-feet tall, wide and thick in his body but with a grace in the way he moved around the apartment. He inched around as if he were walking on broken glass, as if everything in Robbie’s apartment was fragile and would fall apart if his large frame came into contact with it.

The big man examined the same kitchen drawers I had earlier, and, like me, found nothing.

He wasn’t wearing gloves, so he wasn’t worried about fingerprints.

Who was he?

What was he looking for?

Why had he come here in the dark of night?

Farther down the kitchen counter, he looked through the pile of menus. After he finished with the small pile of junk mail, he would be right in front of the bathroom door and on top of me.

Decision time.

As soon as the big man cleared the bathroom door and turned toward the bedroom, I decided that I had to jump him.

I could hardly see.

The only light in the apartment was the thin beam coming from the man’s flashlight in the kitchen. I calmed my breathing, scanned the dark room with my tired eyes, still aching and weary from crying, and listened for every creak in the floor as the large stranger moved through the apartment. The steps were closer now. One or two more and he would be directly across from me.

Step.

Step.

Step.

Slowly and quietly, I swung out from behind the bathroom door and got my first direct look at the silhouette of the man’s back. He was a hulk of a human, wider than me in the shoulders and at least four inches taller.

Size didn’t matter now though, I had the advantage of surprise.

In one swift movement, I lunged out of the bathroom and bear-hugged the man from behind, pinning the stranger’s arms against his body. The force of the lunge pushed us both from the small hallway into the kitchen and sent us crashing into the kitchen countertop. The stranger dropped his flashlight and let out a moan.

Even with his arms pinned to his sides, the big man swung me around until my back was pressed against the counter. The hulking man rocked back and forth several times, smashing my back into the edge of the countertop with increasing pressure each time, loosening my grip on his arms with each blow until he broke loose.

I took a quick step forward and lowered my broad shoulder into this gut, spilling us both onto the gritty floor.

We clawed and scraped on the floor for several minutes, both trying to get the upper hand, but his size and strength were too much. His giant, clammy hand found my face and inch-by-painful-inch, he pushed me off of him. Slowly, the stranger worked me onto my back and was soon on his knees, hovering menacingly over me.

The only sounds in the dark apartment were his labored breathing.

The first punch hit me square on the bridge of my nose like a jackhammer in the dark. My nose exploded in a pulse of blood. Warm liquid dripped down the sides of my face and onto the shoulder of my suit jacket, and further down onto Robbie’s cheap, linoleum floor. I fought again to push the stranger off me, but was over-matched by his strength.

The second punch caught me just above my left eye. I wasn’t sure, but it felt like the skin on the edge of my eye was torn open. My nose was bleeding and broken, my eye was cut and swelling, leaving me unable to see. Every time I got my hands on the enemy hovering above me, the stranger simply pushed me aside like a child and hit me with another perfectly located strike.

I frantically grabbed and grasped at the stranger’s face, his clothes, anything to get a reprieve from the beating.

He unloaded another right hand to my jaw.

My body went limp.

“Have you had enough?” the stranger asked between heavy breaths.

I lay on the floor, bleeding and breathing hard from my mouth, too exhausted to move or speak, barely conscious.

“What? You got nothing to say?” He stood up, straddled me, patting my hips and lower back, searching for weapons. “Fine, at least tell me what the hell you’re doing in my brother’s apartment?”