Code 61 - Donald Harstad [9]
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.
I looked up, just to oblige. I stared at the peeling white paint of the door.
“What?”
“Byng, I'd swear to God that door was covered with black weatherproofing when I got here. I looked at it…. ”
We checked. There was no material on the ground anywhere near the door. There was nothing in the nearly dry conduit. There was no wind.
“Guess you're mistaken, Carl.”
“Yeah.” But I didn't think so. “Think we can get into that building tonight?”
“I suppose. Why?”
“I'd like to see if that door opens.”
We drove around the block, parked, I grabbed my camera, and we just walked in the front door, went up two flights of steps, and were on the third floor. Security in a rural Iowa town isn't too tight. The third floor was gutted, totally unused, and covered with birdlime, rat droppings, and accumulated debris. Dusty? Oh, my. Perfect medium for the footprints we could see leading to and from that damned door. I took photos, with Byng holding my little tape measure as a scale. Then we went to the door. I had Byng do it, but it opened easily. There were two ringbolts, brand new, attached to the outer door frame. They'd been painted black, and bright silver shown through where something had rubbed the paint off.
“Rope?”
“I'd bet on it,” I said. I didn't know enough about climbing to be able to guess whether the rope would be a safety feature, or would actually be used to help our suspect traverse the flat wall between the victim's window and this door. Or both. “It must have been useful.”
“Yeah.”
“He must have just about reached this door when I came into the alleyway,” I said. “He just froze in the frame. And when I went up the back stairs, I wasn't more than twenty feet from him.”
“Me, too,” said Byng. “When we went up the ladder.”
“Good thing we came fast,” I said. “I wonder how close he was to her when she came out the back door. Ten feet or less?”
“Probably.”
I got a spooky feeling when I said, “And I'll bet you she didn't hear a noise down below. I'll bet what she heard was him, and she just naturally assumed it was down at ground level.”
Byng leaned way out the opened door. “Boy, Carl, there ain't much place to grab hold of on that wall. It'd be a mean climb, even with a rope, I think. Well, though, like she said, those crazy rock climbers can find handholds all over the place.” He shone his flashlight out the door, toward Alicia's apartment.
“Hey, Carl?”
“What?”
“I think there's rings in the window frame above Alicia's apartment, too.”
“Can I take your word for that?”
“Sure.” He chuckled. “He really musta shit his pants when we came up.”
“Yeah. Or laughed his ass off watching me go up that ladder.”
Examination of the floor revealed that the suspect had paced back and forth between the boarded windows at the front and rear of the building. The boards had been pried, and then replaced, so they could be moved aside fairly easily. He was looking at or for something. Maybe us, as we looked for him.
I shined my flashlight up into the rafters.
“Whatcha lookin' for, Carl?”
“Him.”
“Oh.”
We were on the way down the stairs when Byng thought of something else.
“This is gonna sound dumb, Carl, but Alicia's boyfriend had his car keyed by somebody last night. Parked on Main Street, pretty near her apartment door. Scratch on the sidewalk side,