Page 24 of Her Last Doubt

They took the elevator down and told Hale they'd be back, which he received with a look that suggested he'd given up hoping otherwise. Outside, the evening had gone fully dark and the temperature had dropped another few degrees since Rachel had been sitting on the bench. It seemed that it was going to be one of the chillier nights of the season. They walked the half block to where Novak had parked and got in.

The drive across town took twenty minutes in the early evening traffic. Richmond's downtown grid moved well enough once they cleared the blocks immediately around Monument Avenue, and Novak navigated it without consulting the GPS, which Rachel had long since stopped finding surprising. He'd been working cases in this city for three years and had quietly learned it quickly.

She used the drive to go back through her notes on Shelf. Six years in the building, mid-fifties, a handyman who had done work on the side—and, if she had to guess, probably off the books as far as the Hargrove's management was concerned. Pruitt had referred work to him when he was backed up, which meant Hale almost certainly knew about it even if he'd never formally acknowledged it. She made a mental note to circle back to Hale on that point. Had he been keeping these little off-the-books repairs and assistance quiet on purpose?

She let those thoughts temporarily fall away as they neared the building. It was a narrow three-story commercial structure wedged between a dry cleaner and a Vietnamese restaurant. It was the kind of building that had been a dozen different things over the decades and wore all of them faintly on its face. The ground floor windows had been papered over from the inside, and a dumpster on the sidewalk was loaded with old drywall and splintered trim. Light leaked through the gaps in the paper, and from the street they could hear the intermittent whine of a power tool from somewhere inside.

Novak tried the door and it pushed open without any resistance. He held it open for Rachel and they stepped inside.

The interior was further along than the exterior suggested. The ground floor had been gutted to the studs and reframed into a series of connected rooms, their doorways cut at irregular angles. Bare bulbs on extension cords ran along the ceiling joists, throwing everything in a mix of harsh light and deep shadow. The floors were raw plywood over concrete, and the walls that had been drywalled were already getting their first coat of a dark paint. It smelled of sawdust and joint compound and the faint chemical bite of fresh paint. Rachel thought she could already see a few hints here and there as to what the place would eventually look like when it became an escape room.

Two men were working at the far end of the space. One was on a ladder doing something to the ceiling joists with a drill, and the other was crouched near a section of newly framed wall, checking something with a level. The one on the ladder looked over when he heard them come in but didn't stop what he was doing. If anything, he looked a little annoyed.

The man with the level stood up. He appeared to be in his fifties though it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume he was sixty. He was broad across the chest and shoulders, with a close-cropped beard going gray at the jaw. He looked at Rachel, then Novak, and his expression shifted into something careful.

“This is a private building,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Plus, as you can see, this is an active construction site. You could get hurt. Who are you and why are you here?”

Novak pulled his ID and showed it casually. “FBI, agents Novak and Gift. Sir, are you by any chance Warren Shelf?”

"Yes, that’s me." He set the level against the wall and wiped his hand on his jeans before extending it. He looked a bit concerned but apparently, that wasn’t enough to stop his manners as he shook their hands one by one. "What can I do for you?"

“Do you have a moment to speak?”

Shelf glanced over his shoulder at the man on the ladder, who had the drill going again and wasn't paying them any mind, and then he gestured toward the front of the building, away from the noise. They moved to a cleared area near the papered windows. A makeshift workbench that was nothing mor than a door laid across two sawhorses held a row of tools and a thermos.

“So what can I help you with?” he asked.

"We're investigating the recent deaths at the Hargrove," Rachel said. "We've been speaking with residents and staff throughout the day. Your name came up as someone who would potentially have access to keys to some of the apartments due to your handyman work."

"Sure," he said. "I heard about it. About the investigations, I mean. Between all the cops and that lead detective, I feel like pretty much everyone in the building has spoken to someone about them."

"Did you know any of the three victims personally?"

He thought about it without rushing, crossing his arms and leaning confidently against an exposed beam. "Sylvia Marsh, yes. I knew her somewhat well. The other two, not really. I knew who they were by sight…you know how it is in a building like that. But I didn't have any kind of relationship with them."

"What was your relationship with Marsh?"

"I did some work for her not too long ago. Four or five months ago, maybe? She had a bedroom door that had dropped on its hinges; the building's old and the frames settle, it happens a lot up there. It was dragging on the carpet every time she opened it and she couldn't lift it herself to get the clearance she needed." He shrugged, indicating it was really no big deal. "I fixed it for her. Shimmed the hinges, planed the bottom edge a little. Took me about forty minutes."

"Did she talk about anything odd or unusual while you were there?” She was asking the questions but also trying to gauge him closely enough to see if he understood that at the core of it all, they were eyeing him as a potential suspect.

"No, not that I can remember. She went on and on about one of her grandkids. But I barely listened to it. She made me coffee while I worked. I mean…as far as I can remember, she seemed fine.”

"Did you go into any other rooms in her apartment?"

"No. Just the bedroom doorway and the hallway outside it."

Rachel looked at him steadily. "As we’ve already said, we understand you may have keys to some units in the building. Keys that residents gave you directly for jobs you did for them."

The color that came into Shelf's face was immediate and genuine. It moved up from his collar and settled in his jaw and he looked briefly at the floor before looking back at her. "Yeah," he said. "That's — yeah. I should have gotten those back and I didn't always follow up on it the way I should have."

"How many keys are we talking about?"

"I'm not entirely sure." He said it in a way that suggested he knew just how bad it sounded. "Some residents gave me a spare so I could come back and finish something if they weren't home, or to do a follow-up. I always meant to return them when the job was done and sometimes I did and sometimes it just — didn't happen."

"Do you still have them?"

"Probably a few, yes. In a drawer at home." He met her eyes and she could see that if he hadn’t understood why they were really there at first, he did now. "I don't use them,” he said plainly. “I want to be clear about that. I'm not going into anybody's apartment."