Don't I Know You? by Karen Shepard Page B

lighting scented candles. He could tell how much she’d been drinking by how many cigarette butts he found the next day.
    â€œShe was good at cleaning the stuff you could see,” he said. She was a single mom, she said. People expected her to let things slide.
    The top of her dresser was always out of a magazine. The bathroom sink was always wiped. She cleaned the kitty litter twice a day. Inside, her drawers were like small explosions. There was a utility drawer in the kitchen that they could open only three inches. Enough to see the jumble of tools and twine and take-out menus. Enough to see the piece of the garlic press that was keeping the thing jammed.
    He’d told Juan they were looking for anything about this other guy Phil had been talking about. Letters maybe, or a photo even. But what he’d really come back for were her journals. She’d kept them for years. She’d tried to get him to keep his own. When he was too young to write, she’d take dictation. “What did you do today?” she’d ask, and she’d write his answers in her tiny, clear handwriting.
    Every year she bought him a new journal, but he’d never been good at it, and he’d quit before filling up one book.
    She talked about hers, and made clear how important they were by never letting him find out where she kept them.
    Even if what was in them didn’t help the detectives at all, he wanted them. He wanted to know what else he’d missed.
    In one of the photos on her dresser he was eating cake on his first birthday. In one she was wearing that silly hat, swinging from a NO PARKING sign like Gene Kelly. They didn’t have many of the two of them together. He was already having trouble remembering her voice. He thought the journals might help.
    T he blood in the hallway and the front hall had dried. They stood over the spot. The heat in the living room was like the air under a blanket.
    â€œMan,” Juan said.
    He looked over. “What’s it like?” he said. “What’s it feel like?”
    Steven was glad he’d asked. “I don’t know,” Steven said. “I really don’t know.”
    But after Juan went in the kitchen, Steven stood there thinking that in a couple of years, maybe even less, people who lived here wouldn’t even know what had happened.
    T hey found a small stack of letters rubber-banded together in a duffel bag in the hall closet, but no journals. They were checking the bedroom one last time when they heard the front door open. He recognized the jangle of Manuel’s keys. They heard him say, “I shouldn’t be doing this,” and they heard another guy say something like, “I owe you.”
    They slid out the window as quietly as they could, leaving it open. They took the fire escape stairs two at a time, slid down the ladder like firemen, and were running before they hit the ground.
    E ven when it was clear no one was following, even when they’d been walking, not running, for blocks, Juan was practically bouncing off the ground. He was walking on his toes. “ That was the guy ,” he said again. He’d been saying that or something like it since they’d slowed down.
    â€œWe don’t know that,” Steven said.
    He was trying to hear the guy’s voice again. Had he recognized it? He couldn’t tell.
    Juan looked at him. “You know it was him. Did you recognize the voice?”
    â€œNo,” Steven said.
    â€œThink,” Juan said.
    â€œI am ,” Steven said.
    â€œWhy you think he’s coming back?” he asked. He was more talking to himself.
    Steven had asked himself the same question. Was there something in the apartment he wanted? Needed? Evidence he needed to get rid of? He could just be sick. Steven thought about the panty hose.
    â€œWe should call the police,” Juan said.
    â€œI know ,” Steven said.
    â€œHe could still be there,” Juan said.
    â€œI