He walks the length of the hallway to the rear stairwell. A few yards from the door leading to it is another door, which opens on a small room holding the chute for the trash compactor and a pair of recycling bins. A service elevator allows the hall porter to clear the bins.
There might be a security camera in the stairwell, though it seems unlikely that they’d have one for every floor. There’s no camera here, in the 268
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compactor room, but tenants are apt to wander in with their trash, and how could he account for his presence?
He has a sudden vision of a stream of tenants, old ladies carrying shopping bags full of trash, and himself with no choice but to stab them each in turn, dismembering them and stuffing them piecemeal down the compactor chute, desperate to get one out of the way before the next one shows up.
He chooses the stairwell instead. There’s no camera anywhere to be seen, and if he can’t see it how can it see him?
He props the door open an inch or two. That’s enough to provide a clear view of the entrance of 14-G without giving his own presence away.
Now all he requires is patience. And that quality is one he’s always had in abundance.
36
I slept poorly, and kept slipping in and out of a drinking dream. I woke up remembering none of the details, but concerned at first that it was somehow more than a dream, that I’d actually had a drink.
Elaine was still sleeping. I got out of bed quietly to keep from wak-ing her. Our bedside tables each sported a handgun—the nine on my side, the .38 on hers. In the shower, I tried unsuccessfully to come up with some suitable version of The family that prays together stays together. When I got back to the bedroom the bed was empty, and so was her night table.
I got dressed and went to the kitchen. She wasn’t there, but she’d made coffee, and the .38 now rested on the counter next to the coffee urn. I walked around looking for her, then returned to the kitchen when I heard the shower running. I poured myself a cup of coffee and toasted a muffin, and I was pouring a second cup by the time she joined me. She was wearing a belted silk robe, one I’d given her for Christmas a couple of years back. It had been one of my more successful presents. She hadn’t put on makeup yet, and her scrubbed face looked like a girl’s.
She asked if I wanted some eggs, and I thought about it and decided I didn’t. She turned on the TV and got the local news, and there was nothing on it that demanded my attention. There was really only one topic of interest to either of us.
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I said, “He may have left town.”
“No. He’s out there.”
“If he is, he hasn’t got much time. They’ve got his prints.”
“That’ll help a lot. ‘Attention—be on the lookout for a man with the following fingerprints . . . ’ ”
“The point is the city’s closing down around him. If he didn’t catch a train yesterday, he’ll have trouble boarding one today. They’ll be looking for him at Penn Station. And Grand Central, and the bus terminal and the airports.”
“He could have a car,” she said. “Or he could kill somebody and take theirs.”
“Possible.”
“He’s still in town. I can tell.”
I’d be quicker to dismiss claims of intuitive knowledge if I hadn’t learned over the years to trust them when I have them myself. And I’d have been especially hard put to argue with her this time because I agreed with her. I wasn’t as certain as she was, but I didn’t think he’d left.
And hadn’t I felt him watching me on the way home from the meeting last night?
Maybe, and maybe not. Maybe anxiety was sufficient explanation for the way I’d felt. God knows there was enough of it on hand to do the job.
I said, “I think you’re probably right. Right or wrong, though, we have to act as if he’s here.”
“Meaning stay inside.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I’m not going to argue with you. I’ve got the worst case of cabin fever I’ve ever had in my life, but I’m also scared to death. At this point it would be hard to get me to leave the apartment.”
“Good.”
“I hope it’s not a permanent case of agoraphobia. I heard about a man once, he used to edit a science-fiction magazine, and he wouldn’t leave his apartment building.”
“Afraid of aliens?”
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“God knows what he was afraid of. God knows if it even happened, some john told me the story, he used to sell stories to the guy and I think played poker with him. None of that matters. The point is it started with him never leaving the Village, always finding an excuse not to go north of Fourteenth Street or south of Canal. Then he wouldn’t leave the block, and then he wouldn’t leave the building.”
“And then it got worse?”
“Quite a bit worse. He wouldn’t set foot out of the apartment itself, and then he wouldn’t leave the bedroom,
