Nanoprep 2023 Day 5: Apartment 51B
By Robin de Voh on 2023-10-06
"Alright, see you Friday," she said with a smile, and after giving him a kiss, she went out the door. Jake closed the door, smiled to himself, and walked to the kitchen to grab a beer. He was already looking forward to Friday. They'd only been dating for a few months, but it was going really well. It had been quite a while since he had been in any kind of romantic relationship, but even he had to admit that things were looking up.
Layla didn't play games, just like he didn't. And that was so very refreshing. As he opened his can of medium-quality beer, he smiled again. Yeah, this was nice.
They had met just outside his building. He was waiting for a cab to show up, and she had walked past. She had commented on his hat -- it had his old university's logo on it -- and they had gotten to talk. It was, honestly, one of the best conversations he'd had in years.
Then she had just asked him out, and he'd figured why not. Ever since, it had gone quite quick, actually, and within a month they were dating, which, again, Layla initiated.
A knock on the door. "Layla?" he said, thinking she'd come back. He quickly scanned the room while he moved to the door to see if she'd left anything behind, but he didn't notice anything. No response either, so he opened the door.
An old woman stood before him, and he didn't recognize her. White hair, thinning on top, and a floral dress that showed its age due to the colors being far more pastel than they probably should be. He also noticed she was holding an old plastic bag with nothing in it, the bottom of it frayed in places.
"Oh, uh, hello. Can I.. help you?" he stuttered.
"You shouldn't trust her," the old woman said with a voice so soft and creaky it almost made him shiver.
He stood still, not really knowing how to respond. Shouldn't trust her? Layla? How'd she know her? No, she must be talking about someone else.
"I shouldn't trust who? What are you talking about?"
"You shouldn't trust anyone, but especially not her. She's terrible news."
"Whoa, hey, don't talk about her like that. Who are you anyway?"
"51B. Believe what you want, but don't say you weren't warned."
"Lady, I don't know who you think you are, but you don't talk about my girlfriend like that."
"Girlfriend? Be careful."
He was about to argue with her more, as some adrenaline had started flowing due to his shock and anger, but the old woman turned around, and walked towards the stairs, and then up them.
Jake stood looking at where she had been for a bit, before slowly closing the door.
"What the fuck was that?" he muttered to himself as he walked to the couch and sat down. He took a sip from his beer and went through the interaction. 51B, that does sound like an apartment in the building, but he certainly had never seen her before. Did she move in recently? Jake had a good relationship with the building supervisor, so he grabbed his phone and shot him a message.
Jake put the phone down and looked at the clock. He still had some time before he needed to get to bed. He finished his beer quick and put the can down, then got up and grabbed his keys.
"Guess I'm doing this," he said to himself as he opened the door and locked it behind him. He went up the stairs to the top level and looked. There was 49A, B, 50A, B, a door with a sign that said 'Maintenance' on it, and there it was. 51B.
He knocked on the door and waited. He could hear shuffling inside, but it didn't seem to be coming towards him. He knocked again, and again nothing seemed to happen.
Dammit, he thought to himself, as he turned around and went back towards the staircase. Then he heard a click and a wooden creak. He looked back, and the door to 51B was suddenly open.
"Okay, I'm not okay with any of this," he said as he took his phone from his pocket. He started typing a message to Layla as he went down one flight of stairs.
It took Layla a few minutes to get back to him, during which he was pacing along the hallway between his apartment's level and 51B's.
Odd response, he thought, and very sudden.
Jake sent 2 more messages but they didn't arrive. She'd probably turned off her phone.
Those were very odd responses, he thought to himself. As soon as he mentioned sunbleached clothes, she went crabby and distant. He shook his head and told himself that text messages are harder to get emotions across in, she was probably just tired.
He looked up the staircase and sighed. Might as well go up and check.
He creeped up the stairs and saw the door was still open. He could make out the shuffling inside from the staircase. It wasn't loud, but it was constant. He took the last few steps towards the door and took a deep breath.
"Hello?" he said through the opened door, hoping there'd be a response.
The shuffling stopped.
"Come in," a soft and creaky voice spoke, which he recognized as hers.
Jake slowly pushed the door inwards, and saw a dark apartment, some moonlight shining through the net curtains, but he didn't see her. He pushed the door fully open and took some careful steps inside.
"Here," the voice said, to his left. He turned and saw her, standing in the kitchen. She was pointing towards the floor.
He looked down and found it difficult to make out what he was supposed to look at. The moonlight was not very bright and the kitchen island was blocking it. He looked around and found a light switch. When he flipped it and looked back down, he gasped.
The kitchen floor was covered in dried blood. Someone had obviously tried to clean it up, but you could see it in the cracks between the tiles, and evidently it had been there long enough to also stain the previously white tiles permanently.
"See?" the soft voice said.
"See what? Blood? Yes, but what does it mean?"
"Follow," she said, as she slowly shuffled her way to a table in the living room.
Again she pointed at something he couldn't see, but this time all he needed to do was walk over.
Layla.
On the table was a photo of Layla. And next to it a letter, which was signed 'Layla' as well, and if he wasn't completely wrong, that was her handwriting.
"Read it."
He nodded. By now he'd accepted that whatever was happening probably wasn't dangerous, and he just went with the flow. He was intrigued, at the very least.
The letter was addressed to Ms. Rafferty, presumably the old lady, and started with thanks for spending time with her, and then Layla going into detail about how fortuitous their meeting had been, her just walking past just as she was waiting for a... A...
He looked at Ms. Rafferty and swallowed the lump in his throat.
"You were waiting for a taxi when you met her?"
"Yes," she said, emotionless.
"So did I," Jake said, looking down at the letter again.
"I know. Same taxi driver."
The letter itself didn't give him much more to work with, other than that he gathered that they had gotten close rather quickly.
"So what happened? You two met, then got close?"
"She was very... Confident. Wanted to become friends. I was lonely."
"And then what happened?"
"A few months in, I trusted her. Confided in her. I was stupid. Didn't see it coming."
"What did you confide?"
This was the first time he could see some hurt in her eyes.
"I had some savings. They were for my grandchild."
"And she took them?"
"Eventually. But not before what happened in here and the kitchen."
Jake took a step back. He knew what she was saying. Layla had hurt her.
"Layla did that?" he said as he motioned over to the kitchen.
"Her and her taxi boyfriend."
Another step back, now with a new lump in his throat. Hold up, he thought. So Layla had befriended this old lady, and then hurt her? To steal her savings? And she was working together with that taxi driver? Who was her boyfriend? This was all too much. He scrambled for a chair and managed to find one before his knees fully buckled. After a while of thinking, he spoke again.
"Did you go to the police?" he said, looking up at her.
"Couldn't. Not anymore."
"What? What do you mean, not anymore?"
She took a step forward and stuck her hand out. A beam of moonlight passed right through it. Jake stared at it for a while, raising his own hand as if to touch her, but knowing it was inappropriate if he was wrong. And of course he was wrong, none of this made sense. Layla was sweet, and this woman was crazy, and moonlight doesn't... It doesn't... He took a deep breath and grabbed her hand.
And went straight through it.
"Fuck, you're dead. You're actually dead."
"For 2 years now," she said, again with that slight hurt.
He sat back. A ghost. A fricking ghost was warning him about his new girlfriend, who he had met in exactly the same way as the ghost, who couldn't know that's how they met, and got killed by her. And had her savings stolen by her. And who had a letter from Layla, and a photo of her, in her apartment.
Then he thought of something.
"I know this might sound callous, but it seems almost too easy for a photo of Layla and a letter from her to be so obviously placed here."
"That was the last thing I did. I didn't have much time left, but wanted the police to know. Then I crawled to the kitchen. Look."
She pointed to the table again, and Jake noticed there were bloody fingerprints on the table cloth, as well as one or two on the letter. Then his eyes traced from there to the kitchen and there was a trail of dark. Blood.
"But the police didn't come? Or they missed the evidence?"
"They came, saw I was old, decided I had slipped. No investigation."
He shook his head. That was far too typical for the police here.
"So, what do you want from me? Or, rather, need?"
"You can't trust her."
"No, no, I get that now, but what do you want? Do you want revenge?"
"Yes. But more than that, I want it to stop."
Jake got up, his knees still shaking. He looked around for something to grab the photo with without getting his prints over it -- he was shocked, not dumb -- and found a towel he could wrap it and the letter in.
"I'm going to go, but thank you. And I'm really sorry this happened to you."
"Don't trust her," she said, again. "Did you tell her about money?"
"I..."
Two weeks previously, they had talked about possibly moving in together, and she had asked him about his finances. He'd told her not to worry, as he had worked for a successful startup a few years prior and had cashed out his stock options. He had more than enough money in the bank. He just didn't look it, since he was more of a frugal type. He sighed.
"I did, actually. Recently."
"Then you know not to trust her."
Jake nodded sadly, got up, and walked out of the apartment as quickly as he could.
He made his way back to the apartment. Mike responded asking if it had to be now or could be done in the morning, and Jake said the morning was fine. He grabbed two cans of beer from the fridge, once he got back home, and sat down on the couch again. His hands were shaking. He was still holding on to the towel, and when he realized, he threw it on his coffee table and sat back again, trying to catch his breath.
"What the actual hell is going on," he said, shaking his head.
He needed to make some choices. Layla's weird responses, her photo, the letter, the details the old lady simply couldn't have known. He had evidence against her, but he did not want to get caught up in this directly. He didn't want to become more of a target than he already was.
He took his phone again and looked up the anonymous tip line for the city police. They were crap, but if they had evidence, maybe they would prove him wrong and actually do something good for a change. He wrote a message, then rewrote it 5 times, attached photos of the material, and sent it. The message also said he would mail the material to a specific police station the day after, which he made a mental note of doing. He knew he had some plastic ziplock bags he could double-bag it all in, to make sure it stayed safe.
Then he decided on what to do about Layla. Bail on Friday, pretend he was sick or something. Then, stop responding as often, and eventually not at all anymore.
Don't want to tip her off I know, he thought to himself. That might give her and her taxi boy more reason to come over sooner rather than later. Hold that off -- keep it natural. Just... Let it bleed out.
But he didn't have to wait that long. He had sent the material to the police station as he had promised, and not long after he got a response to the anonymous message he'd sent that they had received it.
It was the day after he got that message the police showed up and taped off 51B. Mike was around a lot more during that time, and they talked about how odd this all way. Mike hadn't ever met Ms. Rafferty, as he'd taken over for the previous super just a year before. Jake, on the other hand, pretended to be just as confused and lost as Mike.
He didn't see Ms. Rafferty anymore after that evening. He hoped she had found peace somehow.
He then bailed on meeting up with Layla on Friday on the day itself, but the message never arrived.
He checked his previous few messages, the ones he'd sent on the evening where it all went down, and they hadn't arrived either.
Oh thank god, he thought.
"I think I'm off the hook."