The Silent Second by Adam Walker Phillips

Author:Adam Walker Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781945551055
Publisher: Prospect Park Books
Published: 2017-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

B&E

The house was located in Beachwood Canyon, a veined scramble of roads pumping out of old Hollywood and reaching far up into the hills below the iconic sign. Most of the streets twisted into the canyon’s many crevices, narrowing as the elevation grew until they were just thin slits barely wide enough for one car to pass. There were no three-point turns in Beachwood Canyon.

The houses clung to whatever land they could grab without falling into the ravine below, and when there was no suitable land they’d built elaborate stilts that cantilevered the entire place fifty feet off the ground. My house was a modest ranch that we had redone over the years. It was worth far more than it warranted. If a tornado somehow picked it up and dumped it in a beautiful community in Illinois or Oregon or upstate New York, it would immediately lose at least a million dollars in value.

Our house was dug into the hillside on a lot that sloped down from the road and as such offered an inauspicious first impression of a shingled roof and a satellite dish. Once you walked down a short flight of stairs and into the house, however, you were treated to a beautiful view of the lights of East Hollywood and, way off in the distance, the skyscrapers of downtown.

The house was dark except for the hall light, which was always on. Wednesday nights were GNO (Girls Night Out) for Claire and her friends. They were most likely splitting a bottle of pinot at some trendy restaurant, but I wanted to make sure, so I drove slowly by the house in case I saw any movement inside. Our street wasn’t one you drove through, so I made only one pass. Any kind of cruising around would immediately draw suspicion. I looped back and parked down the street in case Claire or any busybody neighbors recognized my car.

It was very quiet as I made my way down the front steps. I rang the doorbell just to be sure no one was there. Hearing nothing, I slid my key into the lock. It only got halfway.

“She changed the locks?” I breathed to myself. Unless Claire had paid for twenty-four-hour locksmith services, this divorce had been in the works for some time. I tried to figure out another way into the house. Mike was right—resentment is a great motivator.

The house was alarmed, and if Claire had changed the locks on the doors she had certainly changed the code to the alarm. The last thing I wanted was to trip that system and have Claire, and the police, get a notice that someone was breaking into the house. Then I remembered one of the arguments we’d had earlier in the year.

Claire was a stickler about natural light. “Why live in LA if you are going to sit in the dark?” she would say. Although our house had an expansive southern exposure out the back, the front of the house was fairly dark,

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