“Hmm. Okay, then, why don't you start at the beginning, for me.” My legs were still feeling a little unsteady, and I sat down at her vanity.
It turned out that she'd been in front of the mirror examining a new tattoo she'd gotten the day before. She didn't say of what, or exactly where. We didn't ask. She'd been topless, at first, and then with various tops that she'd be wearing. Just trying to get some idea what parts of the tattoo certain items of clothing would reveal. She thought she detected a movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked up, and there he was. Looking in the window, and just grinning or smiling. Revealing fangs.
It would have startled the hell out of anybody. Alicia just froze. No scream or anything. She said he disappeared after a few seconds, and it took her a few more seconds to get up the courage to turn away from the window and call 911 from her bedside phone. She apparently answered the first few questions posed by Sally, and then thought he might come back through the window, so put the phone on the cradle and ran to the bathroom and locked the door. A short time later, she thought she heard him at the front door of her apartment, so she fled to her kitchen door and tried to hear what he was doing. She then thought she heard him enter the living room door, so she fled into the hall. Afraid to go down the hall and past her living room door, she went out the back. She was just starting down the rear stair when she thought she heard something in the shadows at the bottom. Up she went, climbing the ladder so fast she didn't realize her feet were bruising until after she'd reached the top. She hadn't seen him again. She hadn't really looked too hard, either.
As we put the sequence together, it became pretty obvious that it had been Byng at her living room door.
He'd announced himself and knocked, but since she was in the bathroom, she only heard sounds. He hesitated, then tried the door, and it was unlocked. He'd just entered when she got into the hallway. Or so we figured. I think both Alicia and Byng were a little embarrassed.
“He say anything?” asked Byng. “When you saw him at the window?”
“Yeah. He did. He kind of mouthed something, but I'm not sure what. Not for sure.” She shuddered. “Jesus, this just creeps me, you know?”
“So you sort of read his lips?” Byng raised his eyebrows. “Kind of?”
“Yeah, sort of. Look, I can't say for sure, and this sounds so dumb. But, well, I thought he said something like 'Can I come in?' or something like that.” Alicia looked at each of us. “It just sounds so dumb.”
“That's what you think he said?” I asked. “Something along those lines?”
“Well, I guess I was pretty sure then,” she replied. “I remember saying 'No!' once or twice. I answered him, you know, so he must have said something. Right?”
“Must have. Hey, did he look like he was dangling from a rope or anything?” I had to ask, because I could think of absolutely no other way for anyone to get up there without a ladder.
“No. I couldn't see his arms or hands. Just his face.”
“And you didn't recognize him?”
“No.”
“Did he,” I suggested, “remind you of anybody?”
She thought. “I don't know. Really. It's one of those things, you know? The more you think about it, the more he might. But I don't think that would be accurate.”
I had Byng take most of the rest of the information. After all, it was a Freiberg case, and I was just assisting. While he did, I stepped back out on that godforsaken little platform, and looked at the back for possible handholds. Four big bolts, which were common in these old buildings, protruded from the wall. They were several feet apart, in a straight line across the back, at about eight to ten feet from the ground. They probably ran under the flooring of the second story, and were simply reinforcement. No rings, no hooks, and, anyway, they were well below the windowsill. A couple of hollows where the red brick had decayed and flaked away. A few cracks where the mortar had crumbled out. But nothing else. And my original estimate had been about right. It was a good ten feet from the edge of the platform rail to the window where she'd seen the suspect.
I reentered her apartment. “Do you have somewhere you could go for tonight?”
“Yes. I guess.”
“We can either take you there, or follow you. I'd really suggest you go there, just so you can sleep.
” “You believe me?”
“Got to. I just can't figure out how he got where you saw him.”
“Do you think one of those rock climbers,” she asked, “could do it? You know, like the guys on TV who go right up a wall?”
“Possible. I don't do that sort of thing,” I said, grinning, “as you can probably tell. Do you know anybody who does?”
She shook her head. “But I'm a cocktail waitress on the boat. I'll ask around.”
By “the boat” she meant the gaming boat moored just down the street. It was called the General Beauregard. “Good. If you find anybody, tell Officer Byng, here, and we can bring him out back and see what he thinks.”
She nodded.
“Just check out his teeth first,” I said.
I went with Byng to take Alicia to a girlfriend's house. Not so much because she was an attractive female and he really should have a chaperone, but because it allowed me to leave the apartment by the front stairs. That mission accomplished, Byng took me back to where I'd left my car. We both got out, and looked over the area behind the stores. There was absolutely nothing that we could say was out of the ordinary in any way. Just some trash cans, a little housekeeping debris, bottled gas canisters, and the like. Nothing else at all, and no sign of a ladder.
“You look like you're bleedin' to death,” he said.
“What?”
“The rust from the ladder. It's all over you.”
I shined my light on my hands. Sure enough, they were orangeish red with rust. So was the front of my uniform shirt.
“Cute,” I said. I glanced at Byng, already aware that he'd climbed the same ladder, and I hadn't noticed anything reddish about him. I have a way of soaking up all the dirt and stains for everybody else.
“You must have rubbed your forehead, too. And your nose.”
I got a squirt bottle of Windex and a roll of paper toweling from the trunk of my squad car, and did my face and hands. The uniform would have to be washed.
“Think we have much of a case, Carl?”
I shrugged. “Not as it stands right now. You know who she described, don't you?”
“Yeah,” he snorted. “Fuckin' Bela Lugosi.”
I chuckled. Close enough. “The important part is that she didn't say that. Just described it.”
“So?”
“So she didn't have a name for the suspect she described. That's more credible, in a way. You ever know her to do any dope? Something along the lines of acid?”
“Never heard about her,” he said, “but I'll check. Think she's seein' things?”
“Don't know. Be kind of quiet about checking up on her. I really think maybe she saw something. I just don't think it was Dracula.”
He chuckled. “Me, too. Maybe a blackbird or an owl or something… We got a few young folks who like to dress all in black, and they're a little pale.” He snorted again. “Problem is, they can't fly.”
“Yeah.”
“That fang business is weird, you know?”
“Just a pair of novelty teeth, I guess. He can put 'em in or take 'em out whenever he wants to. If we develop a suspect, shake him down right away. He'll be carrying his teeth in his pocket.”
We had walked along the conduit, and I'd been staying about three steps back from the edge.
“Have a problem with heights?” asked Byng conversationally.
“Sometimes,” I said.
He shined his light up the back walls of the buildings, to that door into emptiness I'd observed before.
“Bet you'd just hate to open that one,” he said.
