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Coming back to the present, Evan pushed the key in and turned it, thinking that this really was an old place with all this analog entrance shit instead of facial recognition. As the dead bolt released, there was a clunking sound, and then he was in the shallow space where the mailboxes were. The steps up to the second door were perma-dirty, wedges of grime in the right angles at each level, the foot traffic scuffs indelible now.
The tide of people had been too pervasive for too long, filthy toes in worn-out soles, over and over again on the same path.
Kinda like the route to that elevator.
Evan used the key once more, and then he was at the bottom of the stairs. The balustrade was rickety on the way up, but he had to use it because of the gunshot wound in his thigh. There was no knowing when he’d gotten nailed. Probably a stray fly-away, a ricochet, an off-target out-the-way.
At the top, he went to the left, to the second of the two apartments on that side.
As the key went into the lock, he paused. He missed Mickey, even though his cousin had never been nice. It was kind of like how if you lived in a crappy house, you still got homesick when you were away from the dripping faucets and the chipped floors and the creaky doors. Home was where the familiar was—
Evan froze as he opened the way in.
The first thing he noticed was the smell. Old urine, sharp and lemony.
Frowning, he stepped inside and closed things behind him. As his weight transferred, the floorboards creaked and he hesitated.
What was that other sound?
The apartment had a short hallway that opened into the living room, and he put his back to the wall and eased his way down, the gun with the suppressor in his hand. As the corridor yielded to the open space, he stopped again.
Across the bare floor, in front of the puffy leather sofa… tipped over on her side… a woman was tied to one of Mickey’s crappy kitchen chairs. There was a gag in her mouth, and duct tape had been used to keep her hands restrained in front of her, while nylon was doing the job locking her forearms and ankles to the chair’s structure.
The woman began flailing around, her red-rimmed eyes bugging, her frazzled dark hair tangling even more, her buckled shoes clapping—
Evan put his forefinger to his lips. “Shhhh.”
She stilled the big movements. The little stuff, like her panting and the way her mouth worked against the gag, kept on going.
The whimpering sound reminded him of a dog left behind.
Evan left her where she was and scouted the rest of the apartment, even going through the closets. Mickey had been a messy person, and seeing the laundry on the floor, the bed with its wrinkled wedge of a comforter, and the hodgepodge of shoes and boots all over the place, was a reminder of how the guy had always been moving. The only time his kinetic energy had decreased was when he’d been high or passed out drunk.
Evan had always wondered why his cousin had never channeled all that into cleaning. But he’d certainly never shared that opinion.
A quick catalogue of assets was necessary, and Evan took the top mattress off the box spring, and was rewarded for the effort. Two more handguns. A couple of magazines. In the bedside table, some handcuffs—no key, though. The closet yielded a rifle, for which there didn’t seem to be any bullets, and two boxes of nine millimeter ammo. Also a baseball bat. And a duffle, which was handy to pack shit up.
In the bathroom, he went to the medicine cabinet and—
Evan froze when he saw his reflection in the mirror. “Oh… God.”
Leaning into the glass, he pulled down his lower eyelids, one after the other. The whites of his eyes were now… gray.
“Fuck,” he breathed as he dropped the bag and gripped the edge of the sink with both hands.
He was still going bald and his face was the same, but he was looking at a stranger—even though he couldn’t define exactly what had changed. Maybe it was the flat quality of his skin, like he was a wax figure of himself.
Lowering his head, he tried to keep the tears back and lost the battle. The weeping racked his body, and he felt dull aches and pains from all the sawing breaths. But he couldn’t stop the explosion of emotion, his eyes squeezing shut, his lungs burning—
Hard to know exactly when he saw the black smudges on the floor. But when they registered, he lifted his head… and knew what he was going to see before he focused.
He was crying black tears, his pasty cheeks scored with mascara-like riverways.
Throwing out a hand, he expected there to be a towel hanging on a rod, but there wasn’t one. He ended up scrubbing off his face with the limp shower curtain.
When he could focus a little better, he ran some water, and he didn’t wait for it to get warm before he splashed it into his eyes—the cold felt good, but it was a distilled sensation, like through a filter of numbness. Turning back to the shower, he avoided the black stain he’d left and wiped things dry in another place.
He was pivoting away when he saw the toilet.
