A Penny for Your Thoughts Read Online Free PDF Page B

stepping into the stairwell just as I heard sirens drawing closer in the distance.
    Wearily, I started back up the stairs. There was always the chance that what I’d heard was not the person getting out of the stairwell at the first floor, but at the second. When I reached that door, I stepped through and let the door fall shut behind me.
    It was a quiet hallway, lined on each side with small offices. I walked slowly down the hall, peering into each office door. Therewere a variety of businesses, all of them calm and quiet and seemingly normal. Nothing out of the ordinary on this floor.
    Finally, I gave up and returned to the stairwell, slowly walking up the remaining five flights to where I had begun.
    When I reached Wendell Smythe’s office, my shoes were right where I had left them, though now the room was filled with people and commotion. I pulled the shoes on as I observed the paramedics working over Wendell’s body, cops milling about the room, curious onlookers crowding in the doorway. There was a buzz of nervous energy—almost panic—and things seemed on the verge of getting out of control when one of the cops took charge and herded the crowd away, finally closing the door in their faces.
    Gwen hovered in the corner, sobbing.
    “Oh no! Oh no!” she kept saying, two dark black streaks of mascara running down her wrinkled cheeks. I went to her and kept a comforting arm about her shoulders as we watched.
    Wendell was dead, that was for certain. The paramedics had already checked for vital signs—feeling his pulse, pulling back his eyelids, flexing his stiffening fingers. Now, taped to his chest were wires that led to a small machine. As they studied the machine, one of the cops pulled out a notebook and began jotting down some notes.
    “Estimated time of death?” the note taker asked.
    “Not too long ago,” one of the paramedics answered, reading from a piece of paper that had printed out from the machine. “Body’s still warm. I’d say he’s been dead ’bout 30 minutes. An hour at the most.”
    I could’ve told them the same thing: Wendell Smythe had met his end during the brief period of time I had sat in another man’s office, talking on the phone, typing on my computer, tinkering with a stupid loan contract.
    “Anybody call the coroner yet?” the cop asked, scribbling into his notebook.
    “He’s on his way.”
    I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, turning my gaze from the man’s body to the lovely view out of his window.
    The man was dead . Incredible.
    I felt a lump lodge in my throat, a lump I couldn’t seem to swallow away no matter how hard I tried.

Four

    I felt guilty, but there it was: All I really wanted to do was go home. The whole time the police questioned me, I had to work hard not to picture my dog, my house, my little hand-hewn canoe sitting forlornly in my shed, just waiting for me to slide it out into the water and climb aboard. How I longed to be out on the water, paddling away the knots in my shoulders, breathing in the scents of peace and quiet and wilderness, falling into the rhythm that comes over me like a trance—wiping away all other pain, all other feelings except a oneness with myself and my Creator.
    Instead, I sat in a spare office of Feed the Need in my itchy wool suit, describing for the fourth time exactly what had transpired from the moment I entered Wendell Smythe’s office until the moment the paramedics arrived. Even as I spoke, I felt overwhelmed with a pervasive sense of sadness and loss. I had spent no more than five or ten minutes with Wendell Smythe in total, but even in that short time I had found him to be a charming and vibrant man. The fact that his life had ended at some point during the one hour we were apart boggled my mind.
    “So not only were you one of the last two people to see Mr. Smythe alive,” Detective Keegan said, “you’re also the one that came back and discovered his body an hour later?”
    Detective Keegan was a short