Jason Pinter - The Mark

“Only one way to find out,” I said. “We need to find Hans.” Amanda nodded in resigned agreement.

“If he’s living in New York, he must have an address.”

I nodded again. “Time to find our old buddy Mr. White Pages.”

We walked another five blocks and found an all-night diner. Fire burned through my leg with each step. Stepping inside to the welcome smell of grease and grilled meat, I asked the chef for the pay phone. He nodded and used his spatula to point us toward the restrooms.

Tattered copies of the yellow and white pages sat on a small desk beneath a soiled phone. I flipped through the white pages until I found a listing for an H. Gustofson, then glanced over my shoulder. I made a violent coughing noise, and simultaneously tore the page from the book.

Hans Gustofson lived just ten blocks away. My wobbly legs could handle it, barely.

“You think we should call ahead?” Amanda asked, grinning.

“Now what would be the fun in that?”

We made the walk in fifteen minutes, our bodies hunched over as though straining against tremendous resistance. We were no longer concerned about being inconspicuous. The last few days had sapped our energy to the point where we actually were relying on the wind to propel us.

Gustofson lived in a brick town house on 90th and Columbus. Upper West Side. Pretty decent neighborhood. Like all good brownstones there was no doorman, only a buzzer-based security system. These things were tough to crack, only done so by the most daring and intuitive thieves and espionage artists.

Or a college graduate who’d spent his entire freshman year breaking into said buildings to surprise his girlfriend for some late-night sex.

I slid out my American Express corporate card, doubting that the Gazette had this in mind when they gave it to me.

“Watch the master,” I said to Amanda, deftly slipping the plastic between the door and frame. I leaned in close and listened, sliding the card gently in a north-south direction. I heard the telltale click and the door swung open.

“Better than MacGyver,” Amanda said.

We stepped into the musty lobby. Chinese food menus were scattered about the floor. A plant stood in the corner, looking like it was last watered during the Cold War. Crispy brown leaves surrounded the pot like dandruff. A black-painted staircase wound upward. The building was five stories. No elevator. Perfect.

I checked the tenant directory and found Hans. He lived in apartment 5A. Of course he had to live on the fifth floor. One step at a time, I told myself. Not five whole flights, but one step at a time. Positive thinking. Amanda sighed beside me.

“Do we have to walk all the way up there?” So much for positive thinking.

“Unless there’s a donkey attached to some sort of pulley system, I’m afraid so.”

By the time we reached the third floor my calf muscles felt like they were sloughing off my body. My wounded leg had gone numb again, which scared the shit out of me. Amanda panted as she followed a few steps behind. I offered to go alone, to rejoin her downstairs when I was through. She offered a four-letter response. My kind of girl.

As we reached the third-floor landing and headed for the fourth, a foul smell caught my nostrils. Bad Chinese food, maybe. Or someone who’d worn the same pair of socks for three or four hundred years. But as we reached the fourth floor, I noticed an ominous scent lurking beneath that smell. Something sour. More sinister. I turned to Amanda. We both had the same thought. There was something rotten one flight above us.

There was only one apartment on the fifth floor. Like a penthouse suite in a town house of clogged toilet bowls. Amanda pinched her nose, covered her mouth. Several envelopes were stuffed underneath the door to apartment 5A. It had been a while since Hans opened his mail.

I put my ear to the door, listened for any sign of movement. Hearing nothing, I inspected the doorframe. It didn’t look like my credit card would do the job this time. Maybe I could pose as some long lost cousin of Hans Gustofson’s. Claim Amanda was the daughter he’d never met, persuade the super to let us inside.

“What’s that?” Amanda asked suddenly, pointing to a deep indentation below the dead bolt. I looked closer. Someone had broken into Hans Gustofson’s apartment, and judging by the depth and relatively small number of scrapes, they’d done it quickly. Perhaps while he was at home. The lock looked too damaged to close.

“Henry,” Amanda said, “we should call the cops.”

“We will,” I said. “But I need to see what’s in there.”

My heart pounded as I backed up against the wall opposite the door, crouching in a three-point stance. The muscles in my legs tensed. I blocked out the pain, focused.

“Henry…”

I took three quick breaths, then launched myself at the door.

My shoulder slammed into the metal, and instead of the thick crunch and pain I expected, the door buckled inward and I fell to the ground in a heap. I was inside Hans Gustofson’s apartment.

The foul odor immediately clogged my nostrils and I had to put my shirt over my nose. Staggering to my feet, I felt a sticky substance on my palms. Then I noticed my palm print in a puddle of what I immediately knew was dried blood.

Oh, Jesus…

Nausea washed over me as I surveyed the foyer. The apartment was lit only by the haunting glare of moonlight shining through an unseen window. To the left of the foyer was a short hallway. I stepped into the apartment. The entire place was littered with debris. Not garbage, but debris. Broken glass. Shredded cotton. Electrical equipment shattered. Mail strewn about.

“Henry…” I heard Amanda whisper behind me. “Oh, God, Henry, look.”

On the wall by the front door was a large matte of blood about head height. Like an abstract painting, blood had dripped down the beige wallpaper and dried in ghastly thick lines. A crowbar lay on the floor, the hooked end chipped and caked with dried blood. The same weapon the intruder had used to break in had also been used to maim someone, perhaps fatally. Something terrible had happened here…

Blood spatters dotted the hallway, marking a gruesome path through the foyer down the hall and into the main apartment. I said a silent prayer.

“We should leave,” Amanda said softly. “We should call the police.”

“No.” My voice was more forceful than I intended. “We can’t leave. Not yet.”

Holding my breath, I followed the blood droplets like a trail of crimson crumbs. Entering the living room, I pieced the scene together, the gruesome events that had taken place.

Someone had broken into Hans Gustofson’s apartment, while he was home. He’d confronted the intruder at the door, where he’d received a vicious, possibly fatal, blow to the head. Then the apartment was ransacked. Tables overturned, books strewn about, mattresses torn apart. Camera equipment broken and rendered useless. Photo albums torn through and discarded. It was impossible to tell if the thief had found what he was looking for. Everything looked like a standard break-in, except…

One thing didn’t make sense. The blood drops…they led back into the apartment. The assault had taken place by the door, but it looked as though the victim had crawled back inside. There was a telephone in the kitchen, but it was clean, untouched, less than ten feet away. The victim was alive, but hadn’t attempted to call for help. Why?

I looked around. The living room was covered in prints and framed photographs, mostly of nude women in soft light, very artsy and subtly shaded. Beautiful. In these photographs I glimpsed a hint of the magic that had once carried Hans Gustofson to the forefront of the art world.

I tiptoed through the carnage, feeling my way in the dim lighting, and came to a hallway with a T-intersection. Both paths led to closed doors. The blood trail curved to the left, stopping at a closed door.