Page 25 of Her Last Doubt

"Which apartments do you have keys to?"

He pressed his lips together, thinking. "I'd have to look. I know I have one for a woman on the third floor, and I think there's one for a unit on five. Maybe one more, I'm honestly not certain."

"We're going to need you to account for all of them," Novak said.

"I understand that. I'll go through the drawer tonight and write down everything I find." He said it without argument. "Whatever you need."

“We’ll need the keys. Or to see you hand them over to Hale.”

“Absolutely,” Shelf said.

“Do you recall if you ever had the keys to the apartments of any of the victims?”

“I never did. Ms. Marsh’s job was easy enough where I knocked it out with no problem while she was there. And I never did any sort of work for Osley or DeLuca.”

Rachel studied him for a second. The embarrassment was still visible in his face, but it was the embarrassment of a man caught in a sloppy habit rather than anything that ran deeper. She watched him work through it and decide that full cooperation was the only reasonable response. If they were catching him red-handed, he was doing a very good job staying cool.

"Mr. Shelf, if we were to give you the dates of each death, would you be able to tell us where you were?”

“I could do my best. But we’re talking…what? The first was almost six weeks ago, right?”

“Right,” Novak said. He pulled out his phone and listed off the dates of each suspected murder. Shelf, in turn, also pulled out his phone. He went through his calendar and did his best to give them straightforward accounts for each evening: a family dinner for the first, a poker night with three friends from within the Hargrove, for the third. But for the death of Deluca, he admitted that he’d been free. He’d been at home and couldn’t recall what he’d been doing. And yes, he admitted, that wasn’t much of an alibi.

"There's one more thing," he said, when she'd finished noting the third date. He said it with the air of a man deciding to clear the whole table and let the chips fall where they may. "I have a minor criminal record. No sense in trying to keep that a secret, I suppose.”

“What was the charge?” Novak asked.

“A drunk and disorderly from about fifteen years ago,” Shelf said, looking to the floor. “I wasn't charged with anything beyond that. There was no conviction.”

"We appreciate the honesty," Rachel said.

He nodded once, as though a formality had been completed. Behind them, the drill started up again and the man on the ladder said something to the other worker that was lost under the noise.

They wrapped up the remaining questions and Shelf walked them back to the front door. He had a mostly composed look to him when he held the door for them, again shaking their hands as they left. Rachel believed his account of the Marsh job and she believed the drunk and disorderly was the full extent of his record. After all, why even tell them about the record if there was more on it to hide?

But she was less certain about the keys — not because she thought he was lying about their use, but because a man who couldn't account for how many spare keys he was carrying around was a loose end the investigation couldn't afford to leave unturned. So far, it was indeed the most damning bit of the entire case.

Outside, the cold had sharpened and the Vietnamese restaurant next door was doing a brisk early-dinner business. The smell of it reached the sidewalk and Rachel breathed it in. She and Novak walked to the car without talking. She could feel him waiting for her read on it.

"I don’t think he’s our guy," she said, when they reached the car.

"I don’t know,” Novak said. "I’m not ready to make such a claim until he shows us those keys.”

"Speaking of keys," Rachel said. “Hale would have a key for each apartment.”

“Yeah, maybe. But that does make sense. Of course the building manager would have access that other people don’t.”

She nodded as Novak pulled away from the curb. “I think we should go ask him before we call it a night.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

He started back in the direction of the Hargrove once again and already, Rachel found that she was getting pretty damned tired of the place.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

They came back through the Hargrove's front door at 8:07, and the lobby had settled into its nighttime mode. It was quieter than before, and the amber light felt a degree warmer. The marble floor reflected the lamp near the front window in a long pale strip. The residents were in for the evening, and the place had a very calm feel, almost like a library.

Though they had returned to speak to Hale to end their day, the sight of Dale Pruitt behind the front desk caught her attention. He looked a bit out of place behind the low mahogany console near the mailboxes. He was bent over a clipboard, writing something out slowly. He looked up when he heard the door and raised a hand in a brief acknowledgment. Rachel thought she could just be imagining it, but there was the briefest flicker of an expression on his face that made her think he was getting just about as tired of seeing them as Conrad Hale was.