John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

Catherine Demeter’s block was still a little down at heel, and kids wearing sneakers and low-slung jeans sat on the steps of most of the buildings, smoking and whistling and calling at passing women. She lived in apartment 14, probably near the top of the building. I tried the bell but wasn’t surprised when there was no answer from the intercom. Instead I tried 20, and when an elderly woman’s voice responded, I told her I was from the gas company and had a report of a leak but the super’s apartment was empty. She was silent for a moment, then buzzed me in.

I guessed she’d probably check with the super, so time was limited, although if the apartment didn’t reveal anything about where Catherine Demeter might have gone, I’d have to talk to the super anyway, or approach the neighbors, or maybe even talk to the mailman. As I passed into the lobby I used a pick to open the mailbox for apartment 14, finding only a copy of the most recent New York magazine and what looked like two junk mail drops. I closed the box and took the stairs up to the third floor.

The third floor was silent, with six newly varnished apartment doors along the hall, three on each side. I walked quietly to number 14 and took the black bag from under my coat. I knocked once more on the door, just to be sure, and removed the power rake from the bag. Angel was the best B &E man I knew, and even as a cop I’d had reasons to use him. In return, I’d never hassled Angel and he’d stayed out of my way professionally. When he did go down, I’d done my best to make things a little easier for him inside. The rake had been a thank-you of sorts. An illegal thank-you.

It looked like an electric drill but was smaller and slimmer, with a prong at its tip that acted as a pick and tension tool. I stuck the prong in the lock and squeezed the trigger. The rake clattered noisily for a couple of seconds and then the lock turned. I slipped in quietly and closed the door behind me, seconds before another door in the corridor opened. I stayed still and waited until it closed again, then put the rake back in the bag, reopened the door, and took a toothpick from my pocket. I snapped it into four pieces and jammed them into the lock. It would give me time to get to the fire escape if someone tried to enter the apartment while I was there. Then I closed the door and turned on the lights.

A short hallway with a threadbare rug led to a clean living room, cheaply furnished with a battered TV and a mismatched sofa and chairs. To one side was a small kitchen and to the other a bedroom.

I checked the bedroom first. Some paperback novels stood on a small shelf beside the bed. The only other furniture consisted of a wardrobe and dressing table, both of which appeared to have been made up from IKEA kits. I checked under the bed and found an empty suitcase. There were no cosmetics on the dressing table, which meant that she had probably packed a small overnight bag when she left and taken them with her. She probably hadn’t intended to stay away for long and she certainly didn’t appear to have left for good.

I checked the closet but there were only clothes and a few pairs of shoes inside. The first two drawers in the dresser also contained only clothes, but the last one was filled with papers, the accumulated documents, tax forms, and employment records of a life spent moving from city to city, from job to job.

Catherine Demeter had spent a long time in the waitressing game, moving from New Hampshire to Florida and back again with the social season. She had also spent some time in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Phoenix, as well as numerous small towns, judging by the collection of wage slips and tax documents in her drawer. There were also various bank statements. She had about nineteen thousand dollars in a savings account in a Citibank, as well as some stocks and bonds, bound carefully with a thick blue ribbon. Finally, there was a passport, updated recently, and within it three extra passport-size photos of herself.

Catherine Demeter, true to Isobel Barton’s description, was a small attractive woman in her mid-thirties, five-two, with dark hair cut short in a bob, pale blue eyes, and a fair complexion. I took the extra photos and put them in my wallet, then turned to examine the only item of a very personal nature in the drawer.

It was a photo album, thick and worn at the corners. Within it was what I assumed to be a history of the Demeter family, from sepia-tinted photos of grandparents through the wedding of what I guessed were her parents and on through the photos of two girls growing up, sometimes with parents and friends, sometimes together, sometimes alone. Pictures from the beach, from family holidays, from birthdays and Christmas and Thanksgiving, the memories of two sisters starting off in life. The resemblance between the two was clear. Catherine was the younger, the overbite visible even then. The girl I took to be her sister was perhaps two or three years older, with sandy-colored hair, a beautiful girl even at eleven or twelve.

There were no more pictures of the older girl after that age. The rest consisted of Catherine alone or with her parents, and the record of her growth was more periodic, the sense of celebration and joyfulness gone. Eventually, the photos dwindled away to nothing, with a final picture of Catherine on the day of her high school graduation, a solemn-looking young woman with dark rings beneath eyes that seemed close to tears. The testimonial attached came from the principal of Haven High School, in Virginia.

Something had been removed from the final pages of the album. Small pieces of what appeared to be newspaper rested at the base of the album pages, most merely tiny fragments as thin as threads, but one about an inch square. The paper was yellowing with age, with a fragment of a weather report on one side and part of a picture on the other, the tip of some sand-blond hair visible in one corner. Tucked into the last page were two birth certificates, one for Catherine Louise Demeter, dated March 5, 1962, and the other for Amy Ellen Demeter, dated December 3,1959.

I returned the album to the drawer and went into the bathroom next door. It was clean and neat like the rest of the apartment, with soap, shower gels, and foam bath arranged neatly on the white tiles by the bath and towels stored in a small cabinet under the sink. I opened one side of the mirrored cabinet on the wall. It contained toothpaste, floss, and mouthwash, as well as some nonprescription medicines for cold relief and water retention, evening primrose capsules, and assorted vitamin pills. There were no birth control pills or other contraceptives. Maybe Stephen Barton took care of that, although I doubted it. Stephen didn’t seem like the sensitive type.

The other side of the cabinet contained a miniature pharmacy with enough uppers and downers to keep Catherine moving like a roller coaster. There were Librium, for mood swings; Ativan, to combat agitation; and Valium, Thorazine and Lorazepam for anxiety. Some were empty, others half empty. The most recent came from a prescription from Dr. Frank Forbes, a psychiatrist. I knew the name. “Fucking Frank” Forbes had screwed or attempted to screw so many of his patients that it was sometimes suggested that they should charge him. He had been on the verge of losing his license on a number of occasions, but the complaints were either withdrawn, never got to court, or were suppressed through the judicious application of some of Fucking Frank’s funds. I heard he had been unusually quiet lately after one of his patients had contracted a dose of the clap after an encounter with Frank and then had promptly slapped a lawsuit on him. This one, I gathered, was proving difficult for Fucking Frank to bury.

Catherine Demeter was clearly a very unhappy woman and was unlikely to get any happier if she was seeing Frank Forbes. I wasn’t too keen on visiting him. He had once tried to come on to Elizabeth Gordon, the daughter of one of Susan’s divorced friends, and I’d paid him a visit to remind him of his duties as a doctor and to threaten to throw him from his office window if it ever happened again. After that, I tried to take a semiprofessional interest in Frank Forbes’s activities.