Chapter 6
CATE
The door closed upstairs and I stood at my easel with a swab drying in my hand, and somewhere around the third full second of staring at the stairs I decided no. No. You do not get to do that in my basement and then say it's late and leave.
I went up after him. Took the stairs two at a time in my socks, threw the door open —
The street was empty.
Both directions. I came out onto the stoop and looked toward the avenue and looked toward the el and there was nothing.
Parked cars. The gates down over the fish store.
The laundromat doorway, dark and vacant.
Ten seconds — maybe fifteen, I'll give it fifteen — and a man the size of a doorframe was gone off a straight, flat, empty block with no cab, no footsteps, no nothing.
Again. Fifth Avenue all over again.
I was holding Nonna's rolling pin. I have no memory of picking it up.
I went back inside and chained the door and threw the bolt and then my hands stopped working.
Not dramatically. They just — stopped. I stood in the hallway between the eleven saints with my back against the door and the rolling pin still in my fist and my heart slamming, and for a solid minute the inside of my head was just noise.
He vanished. He vanished, twice now, that's two vanishings, people don't vanish, there's no — the street was EMPTY, I looked BOTH WAYS like a good girl and the street was empty and I swore an OATH to a DOOR —
St. Jude watched me from the wall. Patron of lost causes. He had a look.
"Okay," I said, out loud, to the hallway. "Okay. Okay okay okay." Breathing. In through the nose, the way Nina's yoga phase taught both of us against our will. "You are a thirty-four-year-old woman. You are a professional. You find things under surfaces for a living. You can do this."
I peeled myself off the door. I put the rolling pin on the shelf. I picked it back up. I put it down again and left my hand on it.
"Evidence," I told St. Jude. "We're going to do evidence."
Exhibit A: he heard something. Mid-sentence — my sentence, I was talking about the bottom edge — and he was up and at the window like the chair had caught fire. That's not a startle. A startle has flail in it. That was a response. Trained, aimed, fast.
Exhibit B: there was nothing there. I looked. I looked while he was interrogating my window latch and I looked again from the stoop. Dusk and parked cars. Nothing.
Exhibit C: lock the door behind me, no one through it tonight, say it. Say it. He made me swear. Twice. Over a painting. Insurance men do not make you swear.
Exhibit D.
I stood in front of St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes, and made myself do Exhibit D honestly, because the evidence only works if you don't lie about the evidence.
When he crossed the room — too fast, too close, close enough that I had to tip my head back, close enough that I could see the exact place where his jaw met his throat and feel the temperature coming off him — my heart went off like a starting gun.
And then he looked down at me. That face, that impossible Caravaggio face, aimed at me point-blank from a foot away, and those eyes — dark past dark, and this close I could see the blue living down in them, banked, like something burning behind smoked glass — and breath: gone.
Heat everywhere, and I mean everywhere, and here is the problem, here is the thing I would not be telling Nina: not one molecule of it was fear.
A strange man stood over me in my basement demanding oaths about a door, and my body responded like the band had started playing something slow.
So. Either something is very wrong with him, or something is very wrong with me, and I have reviewed the evidence and I would honestly prefer him.
I looked at St. Jude. St. Jude looked at me.
"Not one word," I said, and went to call Nina, because those were the terms.
She picked up on the first ring. "Report."
"He made me swear to lock the door."
A pause. The TV went mute on her end. "Go on."
"Right before he left. He got — weird. Stood up in the middle of me talking, stared out the window like the street owed him money, asked me if the gate holds, if the latch works.
Then he made me swear no one comes through the door tonight.
Say it, Cat. Twice. And then — 'it's late, I have to go.
' Gone. I went up after him and the street was empty. "
"Empty."
"Empty-empty. Fifteen seconds, Nina. Both directions."
She was quiet the way she gets when she's rearranging furniture in her head. "What did he hear?"
"Nothing. There was nothing. I looked."
"He doesn't sound like any insurance guy I've ever met, Cat. The window thing, the swearing — that's not assessor behavior, that's like... ex-military or something. Special forces. One of those."
"Yeah," I said. "Could be. He's got a body like—"
Silence. The specific Nina silence. I heard my sentence arrive about a block behind my mouth.
"Like what, Cat."
"Like a person. A regular—"
"Like WHAT."
"Like the doorway was built around him, okay?
Like Michelangelo got a commission and overdelivered.
Are you happy? He looks like something I'd charge a client six figures to restore and he sits in Nonna's kitchen chair holding a clipboard like it's a rosary, and I notice, I have EYES, noticing is my JOB—"
"Uh-huh. It's professional."
"It's professional."
"Cat, honey." The change drawer, somewhere on her end, slammed shut like a verdict. "You just described the man's body to me at nine o'clock at night using the word 'commission.' You can pay ME a commission to come examine him. Hell, I'll do it for free."
"Shut up, Nina."
"Free of CHARGE, Cat—"
"SHUT UP, Nina."
She let me have the win. Then her voice came back without any theater in it.
"But seriously, honey. You just told me this guy vanished. Twice now. Just — gone, off an empty street. That's terrifying. That is objectively a terrifying thing."
I was quiet.
"Cat. You're not scared."
"I'm not." I looked at the rolling pin under my hand. "I should be, right?"
"Yeah," Nina said. "That's the part that worries me. My Cat, who once made a locksmith show ID, cross-referenced — isn't scared."
"I'm aware of the irregularity."
"Rolling pin stays by the easel."
"It's already there."
"Good girl. Call me tomorrow. And Cat—" her voice dropped out of precinct, down into the Tuesday-lasagna register. "If the gut ever does say run? You run first and make it make sense later. Swear on the saints."
"I don't believe in the saints."
"SWEAR ANYWAY."
I swore anyway. I checked the chain. It was chained. I checked it anyway.
I didn't sleep much.
The bell rang at eight and my body had been up since seven.
That's its own exhibit, by the way. No alarm.
Up at seven, showered, dressed, coffee going, and — this is the part I'd take to confession if I still went — I'd rehearsed.
Standing at the bathroom mirror with my toothbrush like a microphone, I had prepared remarks.
About last night. You don't get to go full doomsday prepper in my studio and then vanish off my block like a magic trick.
I want an explanation or I want a different assessor. Strong. Reasonable. Airtight.
I opened the door with the whole speech loaded.
"About last night—"
"You locked the door." He looked at me for one second — one — like a man checking a seal. "Good."
And he came past me down the stairs and took the chair, HIS chair, eighteen inches left of everything, and opened the paperwork, and the speech died in my hand like a match in the rain.
I stood at the top of my stairs. I looked at St. Anthony, patron of lost things. "You seeing this?" I said. St. Anthony declined to comment.
I went down and worked.
But here's what was different, and I knew it by nine and stopped pretending by ten: I was watching him now.
Really watching. Yesterday he was an infuriating piece of insurance furniture with a jaw.
Today he was a man who had heard something on my empty street, and everything he did ran through that filter.
So I ran a test. I'm not proud of the methodology, but I was raised on verification.
I set up at the shelf behind him, made a show of reaching past the solvent jars, and knocked a brass jar lid off the edge. It hit the concrete like a cymbal.
Donnie would have gone through the ceiling. I flinched, and I did it on purpose.
Barrett did not move. Not a flinch, not a blink, not a shoulder. The lid rolled a full circle and wobbled flat and the basement rang with it, and the man sat in his chair like the sound was a thing that happened to other people.
Which sounds like a pass and is actually a fail. Because everybody startles. Everybody. Unless the body already knew what was falling and had decided it didn't matter before it hit the floor.
I was still standing there holding my elbows when he said, without looking up:
"Did the lid tell you what you wanted to know?"
Heat went up my neck. "I don't know what you're—"
"You took it off the shelf, held it a moment, and dropped it." A page turned. "If the test has a next phase, I'd prefer to schedule it."
Busted. Completely. And here's the thing about being caught red-handed by a wall — you can deny it and lose, or you can put your cards down.
I put my cards down.
"No," I said. "It didn't tell me what I wanted to know. You were supposed to jump."
"I don't startle."
"Everybody startles."
"Yes," he said, and turned another page.
I stared at the back of his head. "Nina thinks you might be military. Special forces, one of those. Is that it? Is that why a cymbal goes off behind you and nothing happens? Should you have jumped, once upon a time?"
He was quiet long enough that I thought the wall had closed for the day. Then:
"I've seen battle."
Flat. No decoration on it. And it landed in the room with a weight that the words alone didn't explain, and I took it as confirmation — ex-military, there it is, mystery half-solved, wait till Nina hears — and filed the strange heaviness under case closed.