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pacifier-placated child went quiet, the turmoil of a scorned lover faded, and a man turned away from the window and went back to
what he was doing before glancing at that long drop. Of course, sometimes a person’s low life broke through the surface, like a breaching whale with an unstoppable momentum. But most of the
time killing seemed impossible; most of the time the thought was downright nauseating. There’d been moments in his everyday life when he had wondered what it would be like to kill a man
– but until tonight it hadn’t happened.
    Blood dripped from the flashlight in his hand.
    He swallowed back the urge to vomit.
    He let go of his grip on the flashlight and it dropped to the floor and rolled in a lazy half circle before coming to a stop. He got to his feet. He took off his glasses and cleaned the blood
from them with his T-shirt – the front of which was littered with tiny holes which had been put there by the caps of beer bottles, as he used the shirt to twist the things off – and
then put them back onto the bridge of his nose. He walked to the wall and flipped the switch. An empty click. A strange laugh croaked from his throat, and then he felt his way to the kitchen. Then
through the kitchen to the fuse box embedded in the back wall, its gray metal door hanging open. He flipped all the switches and various lights throughout the apartment came on, including the lamp
on the end table in the living room. The fridge began humming. Someone on the TV chattered about a political controversy.
    Simon walked to the living room and shut it off, killing the news mid-sentence.
    He looked toward the telephone.
    It sat on the floor, a thin gray cord twisting off it, and curling behind the back of the couch. The man who broke into his apartment was stretched out on his back in the middle of the hardwood
floor, blood pooling beneath his head. He was wearing an expensive gray suit and a black overcoat. His shoes looked new, except that the toes were scuffed. They were dull-polished, hiding their
newness, but Simon saw there was little wear on the heels and only shallow creases in the leather. A green scarf was wrapped around the dead neck, and beneath that and the collar a green tie
knotted with a full Windsor. Simon took a few steps toward either the phone or the corpse. He wasn’t sure which. He could smell the sweat on the man’s skin and the anti-perspirant
he’d applied and the stench of beer and an unidentifiable but thick odor beneath that. Perhaps the stink of insanity. Less than a minute ago this man had wanted Simon dead.
    ‘Why?’
    His voice sounded strange to his own ears.
    The telephone sat on the floor. Simon could see the man’s brown wallet poking from the inside pocket of his overcoat.
    ‘Why?’
    He glanced toward the telephone once more, and then reached down and slid the wallet from the man’s pocket. It was warm from body heat and the leather was smooth in his hand. He flipped it
open and looked at the driver’s license inside. The dead man’s name had been Jeremy Shackleford. He’d lived in Pasadena. Inside the wallet were six crisp hundred-dollar bills,
several credit cards, a Ralphs club card, a Borders Rewards card, and an Arclight Cinemas membership card.
    Simon tossed the wallet onto the coffee table, and then looked back at Jeremy Shackleford.
    ‘Why did you come here?’
    The corpse didn’t answer. But then it didn’t need to. He had come here to kill Simon. That much was clear. That much was obvious. Why he had wanted Simon dead was the unknown.
    A thorough search of Shackleford’s person turned up a wad of keys but nothing more; his pockets were otherwise empty, the lint which lined their creases excepted.
    Simon put the keys beside the wallet on the coffee table.
    ‘Why?’ he said again.
    He put a plastic grocery bag over the corpse’s head, then wrapped duct tape around the neck, one two three times, taping the bag in place. He tore the tape with his teeth