Never Look Down (7 page)

Chapter Twelve

Kelly

Although a cloud of dread shadowed Kelly that Saturday afternoon, she was trying hard not to show it. If Kiyana sensed something was wrong, Kelly worried that she might crack under the grilling her perceptive friend would give her. Kiyana had run away from her abusive, drug-addicted parents in Eugene and had spent three years on the streets of Portland before getting her own apartment, subsidized by the alternative school, and a part-time job. She wasn't just a friend, she was a rock—proud, strong, and fearless. Everything Kelly wanted to be.

When Zook joined them later that afternoon, Kelly felt relieved. She'd pulled off the deception so far. They hung out at the Ankeny Fountain, and then Zook announced he was taking them to dinner. “Well,” he went on to explain with his big, crooked grin, “it's actually at the Sisters of the Road Cafe. The assistant coach at PSU gave me a handful of meal vouchers.”

“Oh, man, I'm not up for a meal with a bunch of homeless people,” Kiyana shot back.

Kelly burst out laughing, and Zook said, “Hey,
I'm
homeless, girl, and so were you three months ago.”

Kiyana went along with it, and they ate what turned out to be a fine meal at one of the few spots in Portland that turns no one away. At nine thirty, Kelly said her good-byes and headed for the bus stop, but when Kiyana and Zook were out of sight, she doubled back down the stairs on the Burnside Bridge and headed downriver on Naito Parkway.

A half moon had worked its way above the trees lining the parkway, and a light breeze carried a faint hint of the river. Pedestrian and car traffic thinned out along the corridor into the riverfront industrial area. Kelly passed under the Steel and Broadway bridges and was nearly to the Fremont when a huge, abandoned building seemed to materialize out of the shadows. Lit by low-wattage security lights and covering a full block, the complex was a mishmash of brick and corrugated iron. A rusted water tower balanced on one of its multiple roofs and four massive silos scalloped into a section of wall. “Albertson's Milling
”
was painted in faded blue on white at the top of the silos.

Rupert called this place his penthouse, although he'd settled in on the fifth floor of the eight-story complex. He'd filed a key to fit one of the ground-level doors and arranged a comfortable spot in one of the abandoned offices. Kelly made her way through the deserted parking lot on the south side of the building to a metal door adjacent to a long loading dock. A single bulb on a spindly arm cast a dim pool of light in front of the door. She looked around to make sure nobody was coming by out on the road, then knelt down and worked a loose brick out of the corner of the loading dock and put her hand in the cavity.

“Crap. Where's the key?” she said out loud.

She stood up feeling disappointed. She was sure she'd find Rupert there. He always came to the penthouse when he wanted to get away from people. Maybe she was early. But where was the key? Rupert always put it back, and as far as she knew, she was one of just a few kids who knew about it. The deal was, use it only in an emergency, and don't disturb Rupert on the fifth floor unless you have a damn good reason.

She stepped back and looked up at the roofline. A corner window on the seventh floor was broken out. An intact drainpipe ran down from the roof along the corner of the building to the ground. The drainpipe was stout copper and the grout between the bricks worn and grooved, affording manageable finger and toeholds.
Why not?
Kelly asked herself. It was too late to be heading home, and she really wanted to talk to Rupert. Surely he would show up.

Left hand on the drainpipe, right hand fingers jammed in the grout cracks. She wasn't wearing her climbing shoes, but her sneakers, which she retied as tightly as possible, gave her ample purchase. Push with the legs, slide the hands up. Find new holds and do it again. Flat against the wall. Breathe evenly. Focus.

Halfway up, she rested. The breeze cooled the sweat on her brow and carried off most of the anxiety she'd felt that day. She thought of her dad. Not one to show his emotions, he beamed that first time she reached the top of the Zebra Seam at Smith Rock. “You've become quite the little climber, young lady,” she remembered him telling her. “Another year, you'll be ready for Beacon Rock.” Kelly allowed a moment of emotion before reminding herself that she was forty feet off the ground without a belay.

Once inside the building on the seventh floor, Kelly could scarcely see her hand in front of her face. As she waited for her eyes to adjust she heard the exterior metal door below her open, the sound drifting up in the still night.

She turned back to the broken window and looked down on the parking lot. A figure was standing next to the loading dock, just outside the ring of light cast by the overhead security light. It was a man, but she knew it wasn't Rupert. A second man emerged from the doorway and stood in the pale light. The man in the shadows shifted nervously and said, “Oh, Christ,” in a guttural hiss.

The second man, the one in the light, said, “We did what we had to do, man. Deal with it,” and disappeared into the darkness along the building.

“At least take that fucking jacket off before you walk out of here, you idiot,” the first man called after him.

The second man walked under the next security light and stopped to remove his jacket. His profile from the back looked familiar, but the way his body rocked from side to side as he walked, a kind of exaggerated swagger, was unmistakable. Kelly gasped so loud she ducked down for fear they'd heard her. She would know that walk anywhere. It was the killer, Macho Dude. She was sure of it.

As her heart pummeled her rib cage, Kelly eased back up and watched as the two figures disappeared into the night. She waited there, watching and listening until she heard a single car start up and head south on Naito Parkway toward Old Town.

Kelly let herself out of the office and groped her way to the stairwell, which she knew was located at the left end of the narrow hall. The air seemed viscous and laden with the smell of mildew, motor oil, and an almost overpowering smell of something akin to stale bread.

Rupert's “penthouse” was the center office on the fifth floor. She worked her way down two flights of stairs and into the hallway. The center office door was closed. She opened it and called softly. “Rupert? Are you in there?” She waited, hearing nothing but the blood pounding in her ears. Weak light from a window cast the room in deep shadow. As she entered she nearly fell over Rupert's backpack. She fumbled through the pockets and found his flashlight, the only object left in it. She snapped the light on and gasped audibly, the sound quickly dying in the dead air. The place had been trashed. His battered suitcase—the one with rollers—was lying open and empty, his few toiletries and tattered clothes scattered across the floor.

She swung the beam to the corner of the room and saw him. He sat on the floor, slumped against the wall, his head lolled to one side, chin on chest, wet blood glistening in the light beam. “Rupert!” she called as she went to him.

It was no use. The blank-eyed stare told her that. Beaten to death, his arms crisscrossed with purple welts, his head gashed and misshapen by repeated blows. The heavy, bloodied pipe used to torture and kill him lay next to his body. Kelly's heart stopped as fear, anger, and sorrow crushed down on her. She knelt next to her friend and gently closed his eyes, then turned her head and in a single, violent heave, emptied the contents of her stomach. She forced herself up and wobbled as the room took a half-turn.

Oh, Rupert. No, no, no.

No tears came, only an overwhelming desire to get out of that god-awful place. But first she pushed a wooden box—the only furniture in the room—over to a corner. She stood on it, moved an acoustic ceiling tile to one side, and removed a flat, gray box and the TracFone, the one she bought the day before.

She knew about this hiding place because Rupert had gone to it the one time she ventured up to the penthouse. She needed a loan of forty bucks for a pair of climbing shoes they were practically giving away at U.S. Outdoor. Rupert gave her the money, no questions asked. “Now get out of here, I need my privacy,” he'd said with a gruffness she knew he didn't mean. She left that day, basking in the knowledge that he trusted her and vowing to pay him back if it was the last thing she ever did.

She put the box in her backpack and made her way down the stairs and out of the complex, leaving the ground floor door ajar. When she nearly reached Burnside, she called 911 and told the operator she'd heard a man screaming inside Albertson's Mill as she was cutting through the parking lot. She didn't dare mention the connection to Claudia Borrego's murder because that would tip the cops that K209 was a girl. Then she tossed the TracFone in the river, all the while moving as if in a dream. But she knew this was no dream.

And she knew something else, too, something deep in her heart. No matter how much they tortured him, her friend Rupert had not given her up.

Chapter Thirteen

Kelly

Kelly sat very still admiring the moon, a perfect hemisphere with a vertical edge so sharp and clean it looked like someone had sliced it with a razor blade. The moon seemed to levitate above the sparsely lit outline of the U.S. Bank Tower. Called the Big Pink by Portlanders on account of its rose-tinted marble facade, it dominated the buildings on the west side of the river like Mount Hood dominated the horizon to the east. From her vantage point, she could also see the twinkling contours of the Burnside Bridge and a thin strip of river on either side that reflected the city lights like a polished mirror.

She was thinking about the people out there, thousands of them with not a care in the world, going about their business, most getting ready for bed by now. She almost laughed at the thought of bed and sleep. These weren't options for her. Every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was Rupert's battered face staring back at her. So instead of going home after riding the bus back to the east side, she climbed to the top of her four-story refuge to try to collect herself.

Okay, she cried some, too. A lot, actually. With Rupert gone, she felt alone, abandoned. The cops were out. She was violating the key term of her probation—no tagging of any kind—and that would bring the cops down on both her and Veronica.

Worst of all was the guilt. After all, Rupert had probably been tortured and killed because of her.

What about Ki and Zook? Are they in danger, too, just because they hang out with me?

She cried some more until the tears simply wouldn't flow anymore. She thought about her dad that last day. His diary was recovered after the fall, and she'd committed to memory most of what he'd written that day. He talked about finding the strength for a final push to the summit, despite being sick and frostbitten. He'd mentioned her, too. His exact words were, “Thinking of Kel this morning. Want to get back to my darling girl.” The words brought her strength. They always did.

Kelly forced herself to revisit the scene back at the mill. The first man she saw from that broken window was deep in shadow. The only thing she could say about him was how his voice sounded. It was commanding, like he was in charge. She focused in on the other man, the man she knew had shot Claudia Borrego. She only saw his back, but the cocky way he moved was burned into her memory. There was something else, too. He wore a jacket with something on the back. She saw the image before he took it off under the second light. She closed her eyes and tried to pull up the image. Most of his back was in shadow, but she'd seen what looked like flames on the fraction that was illuminated. That's what caught her eye initially. But there was something else—letters. They arched above the flames, part of an insignia or logo. She closed her eyes again, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She could see him walking away with that swagger that made her want to puke. The letters, the ones she could see, came back to her. They spelled out B-R-I-D-G-E-T-O. Yes, that was it!

It was all she could come up with, but it was a start—the first clues to finding the two men, Macho Dude and the Voice.

Kelly eased herself down from her eighty-foot perch. The granite was cool and comforting to the touch, and the seams between the cornerstones were like the rungs of a ladder. When she let herself into the apartment Veronica was waiting for her. A cigarette smoldered in an ashtray next to the recliner, where she sat with the mutt on her lap. The mutt growled and Veronica said, “Where have you been, Kelly? I've been worried about you.”

I was over in Old Town. Lost track of time. Sorry.”

“How's your leg?”

“It's okay.”

“I've been thinking, Kelly, when you fell getting off the bus, was it their fault? Maybe you need to see a doctor?”

Kelly blew a breath out. “No, Veronica. Sorry, but no grounds for a lawsuit.”

Veronica shifted in her seat, and the mutt jumped to the floor with a sharp bark. “I didn't mean it that way, Kel. It's just that, you know, without any insurance—”

Without looking back, Kelly went down the hall to her bedroom and slammed the door.

Kelly called her old Compaq laptop “The Glacier” for obvious reasons. While she waited for it to boot up, she extracted Rupert's gray metal box from her backpack. She'd almost forgotten about it and when she opened it, gasped out loud. It was filled with cash. It took her a couple of minutes to count it all, two thousand eight hundred fifty-nine dollars to be exact. Mostly in twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.

Buried under the bills was a birth certificate for Rupert Louis Youngblood, born at the Los Angeles General Hospital on January 8, 1960, at 1:52 a.m. Kelly's eyes filled when she realized the ink impression at the bottom of the certificate was Rupert's tiny footprint. Beneath the birth certificate was a single photograph of a handsome young woman with her arm around a young girl. The caption read, “Molly and Tanya, September 23, 1992.” The last thing she found was a faded article cut from a newspaper. The headline read “Mother and daughter killed in freeway crash.” The short article described the accident. A drunk driver crossed the median strip and struck the car containing the Youngblood family head-on. Molly and Tanya Youngblood were killed instantly and Rupert Youngblood was left in critical condition.

Stunned, Kelly sat on the bed as memories of her friend flashed in her head. Now she knew why Rupert had chosen his path, and the sadness of it bit into her like sharp teeth. But she knew instinctively not to let the sadness cripple her. What mattered was doing something about it. She put everything back in the box, hid it in the back of her closet, and turned her attention back to her laptop.

When Google finally came up, she tapped in “BRIDGETO,” and then to narrow the field, added “Portland.” Two choices came up. The first was “Bridge to Brews,” an annual ten-kilometer walk/run that began and ended at the Widmer Brothers Brewing Company in Portland. Kelly quickly ruled it out. She was pretty sure she saw BRIDGETO as part of
one
word, and their logo had no flames on it, and was sold on tee-shirts, not jackets.

The second choice to come up was “Bridgetown,” a popular nickname for Portland. When she clicked on it over a dozen businesses incorporating the word in their name popped up, from Bridgetown Archery to Bridgetown Zumba. “Bummer,” Kelly uttered as she fell back on her bed. She felt like crying again but forced herself back up. In a few minutes she narrowed the list down to four businesses she guessed might have jackets with logos on them: Bridgetown Archery, Bridgetown Street Bikes, Bridgetown Comedy Club, and Bridgetown Arsenal.

The archery shop sold everything, it seemed, related to the sport of archery except clothing. The bike shop and the comedy club had cool logos but not with flames in them.

Kelly knew an arsenal was a place where weapons were stored, and when the Bridgetown Arsenal site came up, she decided it was a bit of a stretch to apply the term to a retail gun store and indoor shooting range. But, she had to admit, they were totally into weapons there. You could take shooting classes, buy ammo reloading equipment, get your gun blued—whatever that meant—buy shooting attire, and for a bit of “nostalgia” you could even rent and fire an authentic Thompson submachine gun.

When she ran across a page of pistol silencers for sale—properly called suppressors, she noted—she almost got sick to her stomach. But when she came to the clothing section and looked at the windbreakers, the blood drained from her head and her heart nearly stopped.

One of the jackets—referred to as “Our Most Popular Range Jacket”—featured a logo on the back consisting of a fierce looking eagle with wings spread and the words BRIDGETOWN ARSENAL arched over the top.

She studied the picture, then closed her eyes and brought back the scene at the mill.
Holy shit,
she said to herself.
Those weren't flames I saw, they were freakin' eagle feathers. That's the jacket the dude was wearing.

She fell back on her bed again, thrust her arms up, and let out a scream, more like a screech, of triumph, excitement, and fear, all wrapped into one.

“Are you okay in there?” Veronica called out.

“Oh, yeah,” she answered. “I'm okay.”

Then under her breath she added, “Now what?”