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Jack pulled right in front of the entrance and turned his lights on, but he left his sirens off.
“Lots of drugs move through here, and lots of junkies. We routinely have to roust the empty apartments for the landlord so he can rent them out.”
I saw the flutter of a few curtains as faces peeked to see what was going on, and then like rats, they scurried away.
Jack opened the door for me and I stepped into a dingy lobby with oppressive heat and gray threadbare carpet. The heater rumbled and spat and poured from the vents above, and my skin was damp with sweat in seconds. Several rows of mailboxes sat to the right side, and there was a single elevator to the left with a sign taped to it that saidUse the Stairs.
“Of course,” I said.
Jack grunted. “And he lives on the third floor.”
“Even better. Heat rises.”
Jack led the way up the stairs, his hand resting on his weapon. The heat became more oppressive as we climbed higher. We didn’t see a single person and didn’t hear a peep. It was as if we had the whole building to ourselves.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
“The people who live here get really good at disappearing when the cops show up.”
“This wasn’t what I was expecting after hearing Darnell talk about Steven the other night. He said Steven has a girlfriend. No girlfriend would come here. It would be hard to live here and then keep the façade that everything is normal at work.”
“Maybe he stays with the girlfriend,” Jack said. “We’ll see if we can track her down too. Darnell mentioned Pickering suffered from PTSD and that he’d go off on his own sometimes or lose his temper. Maybe Steven struggled too. He serves his country and comes back home and nothing is the same. He’s still young, but he feels old. He works at the construction company in the day and the restaurant at night, and if he works enough hours then he doesn’t have time to think about the bad things. He doesn’t care about where he sleeps because he’s hardly ever there. He probably has a girlfriend on a regular basis because that’s someone who can occupy the hours he’s not working.”
“Sad,” I said.
“It is,” Jack agreed. “And all too common. This is just a flophouse. He probably has little, if any, personal belongings.”
By the time I made it to the top my hair was damp with sweat and I was sucking in as much air as I could through my mouth so I didn’t have to smell through my nose. The floor squeaked beneath our feet, and I could hear the low rumble of a television behind the first door we passed by. Steven’s apartment was at the end of the hall.
“Apartment 3F,” Jack said as we approached.
The television across the hall was loud enough to hear word for word and sing along with the insurance jingle, but I slowed my steps as we approached 3F. The smells of overcooked food and disrepair morphed into something I was all too familiar with.
“Jack,” I said.
“Yeah, I smell it,” he said, and pulled his weapon from his holster and put it down at his side. Then he rapped on the door directly across the hall loud enough that whoever was inside could hear over the television.
He waited a couple of seconds and then used his fist to pound again.
The door opened and a scrawny rooster of a man who looked to be on the better side of seventy jerked the door open. He wore a dingy wifebeater and a pair of gray cargo pants that had the top button undone.
“What?” he yelled. “I’m watching my shows.”
Jack pulled out his badge. “The guy across the hall. When was the last time you saw him?”
“Who knows? I don’t keep tabs.”
“Any visitors? Any fights?”
“There’s always visitors and fights in this place. Not my business. There’s a reason I keep my TV up so loud.”
“You haven’t noticed the smell?” Jack asked incredulously.
“Always smells like a piss pot in here,” he said. And then he slammed the door shut.
“Seems like a nice guy,” I said, pulling on a pair of gloves.
Jack rolled his eyes and then knocked loudly on Steven Machilenski’s door. There was no sound from inside. We hadn’t expected one.
