Never Look Down Read online

  With her back against the wall, Kelly rested for a couple of moments, breathing in the cool, night air. The city was silent, as if someone had hit the mute button, and the stars, which she noticed for the first time that night, seemed particularly close and bright. Staying low, she moved over to where the two buildings joined. Gaining the next two stories to the roof of the higher building would be the toughest part of the climb and where she was most likely to be seen by a passerby. But the bars were closed, and NW Third showed no signs of car or foot traffic.

  Her ascent would follow a single line of decorative brick on the side of the higher building. The line started where she stood and slanted up the side of the building to the roof, where it joined another from the other side to form a peak. A narrow ledge of maybe four inches, the route demanded she stay absolutely flat against the building without the counterweight of her backpack. She took her pack off and tied one end of her climbing rope to it and the other to her harness. After checking the street below one more time, she worked herself out on the ledge, facing the wall, seventy-five feet above an empty parking lot.

  She could hear her dad’s familiar chant in her head, “Stay focused, Kelly. You can do this.” Of course, she was always belayed when climbing with her dad. He would’ve never let her free climb like this. But, hey, if a little French dude named Alain Robert could scale the Sears Tower without a belay, surely she could manage this brick face.

  With the rope trailing behind her, she used the gaps between the century-old bricks for fingerholds as she worked her way across and up the face of the building, one sideways step after another. Finally, her left hand grasped the ledge of the roof, then her right, and she was up. Wasting no time, she used the rope to retrieve her backpack, then looped the rope around the stout vent pipe she’d spotted from the street the day she settled on this project. She threaded the rope through the figure-eight attached to her belay hook, and after checking the street again, rappelled effortlessly down the face of the building.

  Piece of cake.

  Twenty-five feet down, she tied off using a mule knot, her dad’s voice going off again in her head. “Tie off properly, Kelly. Screw it up, and you’ll splat like a bug.”

  Extended out from the wall with her back to Third Street, she hung above the dimly lit parking lot for a few moments battling the fear of exposure she always felt at the beginning. You’re just a shadow against a dark wall, she told herself. Calm down. She closed her eyes, picturing the image and the steps required to execute it. Don’t rush. Feel it. Let it flow. She exhaled a deep breath, removed the first half of the stencil and the duct tape from her backpack, and set to work.

  She finished the image and was stenciling in the letters below it when a car entered the parking lot. She froze in place. People don’t look up, she reminded herself. When she heard the second car, she turned her head to watch over her right shoulder. She caught a glimpse of long hair as the figure got out of the first car. A woman. She wasn’t much more than a shadow in a dark coat and slacks. Someone got out of the second car and walked toward the woman—a man, judging from his size and manner of walking.

  Kelly exhaled and snickered a little—john meets hooker. She had just turned her head back to the wall when she heard a female voice say something like, “Where’s man—” but the voice was cut off by two dull reports—chuck, chuck—like a hammer striking lead. Kelly looked back over her shoulder as the woman collapsed in a motionless heap. The man put a pistol with a long barrel in his coat and stood over the body.

  Stunned and not believing what she’d just seen, Kelly turned back toward the wall as if the act would make her invisible. But the motion knocked the spray cap from her hand. You asshat! she screamed to herself. She was climbing hand-over-hand back up the wall before the cap even hit the pavement.

  She’d nearly reached the top when she heard more muffled shots—chuck chuck, chuck chuck chuck. Like angry hornets, the bullets tore into the bricks around her, scattering a hail of fragments. She felt a searing pain in her right calf but managed to clear the ledge, tear the bandana from her face, and step out of her harness.

  The thought of being trapped on the roof, either by the killer or the cops, shot a bolt of panic through her. Forget the harness. Forget the rope. Forget the pain. Just get off this friggin’ roof.

  She ran across the roof to an old iron fire escape that clung to the back of the building. It led down to the alleyway where she had waited earlier that night. One end of the alley was blocked with a high wrought-iron fence, the other was open to Everett, the cross street. Fighting back tears and wincing in pain, she took the ladder two rungs at a time while watching for the killer from the entrance to the alley.

  The fire escape landing was a good fifteen feet above the alley. The swing-down ladder had been removed when the fire escape was decommissioned long ago. Without hesitating, Kelly ripped off her backpack and, hoping to create a diversion, smashed open a window adjacent to the landing with her pack, then tossed it, spray cans and all, through the jagged opening. She hung off the platform and dropped, barely managing to muffle a scream of pain as she landed hard, twisting an ankle and banging an elbow. She hobbled toward the iron fence but stopped abruptly. A tough climb healthy. Not a chance now.

  Her throat constricted in terror. You idiot. You should’ve stayed on the roof! But it was too late. She was trapped.

  Or was she? Prying open the heavy lid to the dumpster across the alley, she squeezed in and began to burrow into the debris and rotting garbage like a mole, or more accurately, she had to admit, like a maggot. She was still working her way toward the bottom when she caught the sound of a car rolling up next to the dumpster.

  She held her breath, suspended there in a cocoon of muck. A car door clicked open. The scuffing of footsteps, then silence. More footsteps. Finally, a door slammed, followed by the sound of a car in reverse, but not before a man said, “You little bastard,” in a voice ringing with rage and frustration.

  Chapter Three

  Kelly

  Kelly lost track of time. Her leg and her elbow were throbbing in a bass drum duet, and dumpster juices were soaking through her clothes. She had heard the killer’s car pull out from the alley onto Everett before the sound quickly faded into the night. Did he really leave? Or, was he out there somewhere waiting for her? It didn’t matter. She had to get out of the dumpster.

  But it was easier said than done. Dumpster diving, it turned out, was a lot easier than dumpster surfacing. When she finally made it to the top of the debris and pushed on the heavy lid, it hardly budged. That’s when she realized how weak she was, how utterly spent, and she couldn’t muffle her cry of pain this time, when the lid scraped her wounded leg as she wriggled free and dropped, arms extended, to the alleyway.

  There was only one way out of the alley, and it was half lit by a street light. More than anything in the world Kelly wanted to run for it. But what about the woman lying on the other side of the building? What if she were still alive? She couldn’t just leave her there.

  She moved along the alley, staying in the shadows, and when she turned the corner of the building, crawled on her hands and knees to the base of an ornamental tree. From there, in deep shadow, she could see maybe a half block in either direction. The street looked deserted. She watched for a long time. Nothing stirred. She wondered if the killer would dare hang around and decided he probably wouldn’t chance it.

  Kelly hobbled around the building. Maybe the woman’s not there, she told herself. But she was. You have to know how to check your pulse, her dad had told her, so you can pace yourself when you’re climbing. The woman lay on her back, her right arm thrust out like she was waving to someone, her left curled across her chest. Kelly kept her eyes averted from the dark patch surrounding the woman’s head as she grasped the underside of her limp wrist between a thumb and two fingers. No pulse. Holding her breath as her heart battered her ribs, she moved in an
d checked for a pulse in the woman’s neck. Nothing.

  She stood up too fast and fought off a wave of vertigo. Where to go? She couldn’t go home. Too far. Rupert. She had to find her friend, Rupert. He’d know what to do.

  She started down Everett toward the river. Everything about Rupert was shrouded in mystery and whacky rumors, but one thing was certain—the kids on the street knew they could trust him. That was saying a lot because trusted adults were in short supply with the kids Kelly hung out with. One rumor had it that Rupert was a wanted fugitive who was using homelessness as cover. In another story, he’d been banished from the Umatilla Reservation for some terrible crime. Kelly figured it was the latter, since Rupert, with his fierce eyes, leathery skin, and shoulder-length silver hair, reminded her of the picture of a chief—Geronimo, maybe—she’d seen in a history book. But when Kelly had asked him about this, he’d just smiled and shook his head.

  She found Rupert under the Burnside Bridge, propped against a wall, reading a paperback with a flashlight. He shined the beam on her as she approached. “Kelly? Is that you, child? Are you okay?”

  “No. I’m not, Rupert.” Then Kelly did something she hadn’t done for a very long time. She sat down and cried.

  Rupert let her go for a while before saying, “Let’s have a look at that leg.” He cut her jeans off halfway up her calf with a knife that appeared out of nowhere, washed the wound with a handkerchief wetted with bottled water, and applied a bandage he took from a pouch on his backpack. “It’s nasty, but not a bullet wound. I think I got all the brick chips out. You don’t need stitches. I haven’t got any antiseptic, so put some on it when you get home, hear?” Of course, he didn’t ask her what happened. Rupert never would. But after she got hold of herself, Kelly told him everything.

  When she finished he sat quietly for a long time before saying, “Did he get a look at you?”

  “Nah. It was dark and I had a bandana covering my face. I always cover up when I’m spraying.”

  “What about your hair? He saw your long hair didn’t he? He’ll know you’re a girl.”

  Kelly laughed. “No he won’t. Lots of dudes have long hair, Rupert.”

  He nodded. “Uh huh. So, how much you leave up there?”

  “I wasn’t finished, man.”

  “You sign it?”

  “No, not quite.”

  Rupert met her eyes. “Good. How many of your friends know you’re this crazy K209 tagger?”

  Kelly smiled. “Everyone thinks it’s some guy doing the tagging.”

  “Portland’s Banksy, huh?”

  “Something like that. But Banksy doesn’t climb.”

  Rupert held her eyes. “What about that climbing gym you work at? Has anyone put two and two together?”

  “Nah. I don’t talk about the job much, and when it comes up, I just say I sweep up around there. I only climb after hours.”

  “So, you’re sure nobody else knows?”

  Kelly shrugged. “I worry about Kiyana. We learned to stencil together at school, but she doesn’t know I can climb. I never talk about my dad, just that he got killed in an accident. The woman I live with, Veronica, should know I’m up to something, but she’s pretty clueless. When I make stencils in our back bedroom, I tell her it’s for a school project.”

  “What about that tall boy I see you with?”

  “Zook? Nah, he doesn’t spend any time thinking about me.”

  “Good. Keep your mouth shut about this, Kel. The killer’s gonna be lookin’ for you. You need to stop the spray can shit and stay away from that place.” He glared at her with his fierce eyes. “Leave it unfinished, Kelly.”

  Kelly nodded. “Don’t worry. I’m not going near that building. What about the cops? What should I do?”

  “What you saw might help them catch this guy.”

  Kelly shook her head. “No way. I’m not talking to them. I can’t get busted again. Besides, it was dark. I didn’t see anything.”

  “You should at least phone in what you saw.” He exhaled a deep breath and shook his head. “But it wouldn’t be smart to let ’em hear your voice. Get me a burner phone from Henny Duzan. I’ll make the call for you. Make sure it doesn’t have a GPS chip, and don’t pay more than twenty bucks for it.”

  Huddled on a thin mat next to Rupert, Kelly slept fitfully until dawn, which broke clear and still. Kelly felt naked without her backpack, and frighteningly conspicuous because of her slashed jeans and the bandage on her leg, which was now soaked through with blood. She caught the first TriMet bus across the Burnside Bridge to the apartment she shared with Veronica.

  Their third-floor apartment above a shop that sold used audio components was accessed by a street-level door opening to a small vestibule and a steep, narrow staircase up two flights. It really wasn’t home to Kelly but better than the street. Having run away from her foster home in Eugene, she had been on the street better than nine months when Veronica showed up in Portland sporting a new last name. Twelve years younger than her dad, Veronica had been his girlfriend when he died. She told Kelly she wanted to take her in, see if the two of them could make a go of it. It was only after Veronica had too much to drink one night that she admitted she was wanted on a drug charge down in California.

  Since Kelly had vowed never to go back to foster care, no matter what, and life on the street had gone from an adventure to a grind, the decision to throw in with Veronica was an easy one. It was working okay, Kelly conceded, at least when Veronica was sober and not fawning over some new boyfriend.

  Veronica was asleep in the recliner, head back, mouth agape. She’d apparently fallen asleep waiting for Kelly to come home. In sleep she looked softer somehow, even with her mouth open. Her thick, blond hair—her best asset, she always said—was splayed out on the recliner, her eyes seemingly glued shut with a thick layer of mascara. The apartment smelled of cigarettes, rancid cooking oil, and something that had been fried the night before, probably hamburger. Veronica’s dog was curled up on her lap, a sharp-nosed little mutt named Spencer. The dog growled when he saw Kelly. Veronica stirred, closed her mouth, but didn’t awaken.

  Kelly tiptoed through the living room and down the short hallway to her bedroom. She went straight to her battered chest of drawers and fished out the pair of wool socks she never wore. Sitting down on her unmade bed, she separated them and shook the bills and change out of the toe of the inner sock and counted sixty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents. Her stash—what her Dad used to call mad money. Maybe enough to buy a new backpack and a burner cell phone.

  She fell back on the bed as the horror of what had happened crushed in on her again—the bullets snapping into the bricks, the limp feel of that dead woman’s arm, the dark halo of blood around her head. Kelly prided herself on being tough. She knew about street violence. She even saw a dead guy once, an overdose under the Morrison Bridge. But the viciousness of the act she’d witnessed had shattered her tough-girl confidence. She felt cut off now, adrift in a dangerous sea, and very much alone.

  She kept asking herself over and over again, What kind of monster could do something like that? She curled into a fetal ball and rocked on the bed. One sob, two, three. Then she pulled herself back up and dried her cheeks with her fists. This is no time to lose it, girl, she told herself.

  In the bathroom Kelly managed to find a nearly empty tube of antiseptic cream and a tin holding six small bandages. The tube yielded a couple of drops, and the bandages just barely covered her wound, which had begun throbbing again. She pointed her elbow at the mirror for a look. It was swollen and discolored like the twisted ankle below her wounded calf.

  She slipped off her climbing shoes and put on a clean pair of jeans, a black hooded sweatshirt, and a pair of beat-up sneakers. After gathering up and pocketing the money, she slipped out of the apartment as the mutt’s beady little eyes followed her.

  It was a clear, bri
ght Portland morning, and she had important things to do. Trouble was, aside from buying a throw away phone for Rupert, she wasn’t too sure what they were.

  Chapter Four

  Cal

  It’s never easy to schedule my pro bono clients at Caffeine Central, so I work on a first-come, first-served basis. Three clients were already queued up when I came downstairs from the little apartment above my office. The graffiti on the outside of the building was still intact, although three weeks had elapsed since I first noticed it. When I asked Nando about it, he said, “I have heard nothing from the city, and the cost of removal is robbery, simple and pure.”

  “Well, it’s not bothering me,” I told him, “but if the city contacts you, you better get it scrubbed.”

  First up in my office that morning was a feisty, elderly woman with hair that looked like a pewter helmet. Her name was Thelma McCharles, and she had just received a notice of foreclosure on her house. She was angry and confused since she was also in the middle of negotiations to modify her mortgage with the same bank. “It’s a pretty common occurrence,” I told her, “the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.” I collected Thelma’s information and told her I’d contact the bank on her behalf.

  A thirty-something man with a bad case of meth-induced jitters was up next. His face was scabbed and blotchy, his teeth so crusted I couldn’t look at them. The cops had planted a quantity of crystal meth in his backpack, he told me. I explained that I didn’t do criminal defense, that he should contact the Public Defender’s office. He groaned. “The Public Pretender? No thanks. I’ve been there, done that.”