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“No. He cursed any future children I might have.”
“So what did you do?”
“Me? I know swearwords this dude never heard before. Thing is, I would’ve recognized the guy’s voice if I’d heard it before. My ears are, like, good enough to be insured by Lloyd’s of London. But I don’t know him. And I know everyone who lives here. I even know her,” he said, pointing to Cindy. “Third floor, right?”
“And you’re saying no one else in the building complained about your sound system?”
“No, because A, I only work during the day, and B, we’re allowed to play music until eleven p.m. Besides which, C, I don’t play the music loud.”
I sighed, unclipped my cell phone, and called the crime lab. I got the night-shift supervisor on the line and told him we needed him.
“You have someone you can stay with tonight?” Rich was asking Blaustein.
“Maybe.”
“Well, you can’t stay here. Your apartment’s a crime scene for a while.”
Blaustein looked around the wreck of his apartment, his young face sagging as he cataloged the destruction. “I wouldn’t stay here tonight if you paid me.”
Chapter 101
CINDY, RICH, AND I CONNECTED THE DOTS during the elevator ride down to the lobby.
“The dogs, the piano, the treadmill . . .” Rich was saying.
“The Web-meister’s apartment . . .” Cindy added.
“It’s all the same thing,” I said. “It’s the noise.”
“Yep,” Rich agreed. “Whoever this maniac is, noise makes him a little bit violent.”
I said, “Rich, I’m sorry I snapped at you before. I had a bad day.”
“Forget it, Lindsay. We close this case, we’ll both feel better.”
The elevator doors slid open, and we stepped out again into the lobby. At the moment, the space was packed with about two hundred freaked-out tenants, standing room only.
Cindy had her notepad out and moved toward the board president as Conklin used his body as a plow. I drafted behind him until we reached the reception desk.
Someone yelled, “Quiet!” and when the rumble died, I said, “I’m Sergeant Boxer. I don’t have to tell you that there have been a series of disturbing incidents in this building —”
I waited out the heckling about the police not doing their jobs, then pushed on, saying that we were going to reinterview everyone and that no one was permitted to leave until we said it was okay.
A gray-haired man in his late sixties raised hi
s hand, introducing himself as Andy Durbridge.
“Sergeant, I may have some useful information. I saw a man in the laundry room this afternoon whom I’d never seen before. He had what looked like a dog’s bite marks on his arms.”
“Can you describe this man?” I asked. I felt a new kind of tension in my gut. The good kind.
“He was about five six, muscular, brown hair going bald, in his thirties, I think. I looked around already, and I don’t see him here.”
“Thanks, Mr. Durbridge,” I said. “Can anyone here pin a name on that description?”
A petite young woman with caramel-colored bedspring curls waded through the crowd until she reached me.
Her eyes were huge, and her skin was unnaturally pale — something was frightening her half to death.
