His sister-in-law's apartment house was a deep U-shape, with four entrances and about six times that number of units. It was run-down, the courtyard choked with weeds and roving bits of trash caught in the breeze. He pressed the apartment buzzer, but couldn't tell if it worked since there was no answer and he heard no sound of it from the window two stories above. He tried to remember if he had heard the bell the only other time he was here.
Stepping back from the door, he looked upward at the closed and curtained windows of Ellen's apartment. There was no sign of movement, and on an August afternoon, he'd have expected at least one of the windows to be open to catch the courtyard breeze. He stepped forward again and examined the entrance door. The lock was old, mechanical. That was good.
He pressed the buzzer once more, then placed his hand over the lock. Senses extended, he focused the forces of magic through him, his hand, and into the lock. He wove them together until the lock was infused with mystical energy, ready to obey his command. He willed it open. The door swung inward.
The inner door had once also carried a lock, but it was long gone, with only a shabby hole remaining. He moved through it, up the broken and musty staircase to the second floor. He stopped in front of the door at the top of the stairs, apartment 2S.
Kyle listened at the door, but heard nothing. He knocked firmly, and was surprised to hear a sudden scrambling from inside. The sound moved quickly toward him, snapping and clicking across the hardwood floor of the apartment. He stepped backward, a barrier spell ready, but the noise seemed to stop at the door.
He waited, and then whatever it was scratched, almost quietly, at the bottom of the door, near the frame. It scratched again and Kyle focused his magic and his senses, specifically his vision, projecting it forward, past the door and into the apartment. He looked down.
And the gray and white cat, as such small creatures are inexplicably wont to do, looked up at him. It was panting, thin, and starving, its nose dry and cracked from dehydration. It seemed to be trying to make a noise, but Kyle, on the far side of the door, heard nothing.
He disintegrated the lock with a carefully aimed dart of focused violet power. The cat, whose name he knew to be Grendel, scooted away as fast as it could, slipping and skidding across the floor as it disappeared around the corner.
Kyle expected a terrible smell when he entered, but the short hall was only musty, hot, and dry. Bits of metal lock and wooden door were scattered down the hall and into the Irving room, but he closed the door behind him, pushing at the twisted wood until it shut. The main room was as Spartan as he remembered it, and showed no signs of anything out of the ordinary. A single red light flashed repeatedly on the telecom.
He ignored it for the moment and pulled aside one of the heavy curtains, letting light spill into the apartment. Kyle then cautiously entered the next room, the dining room, turning right and following the path of the cat. It was nowhere to be seen, and the room was unremarkable. The kitchen to the left was the same, except that the trash can showed signs of having been rifled and raided. The cat's empty bowls were near the door to the rear stair, next to its obviously used litter box and a compacted bag of trash.
Kyle walked across the room and into the short hall that led to the bathroom at the end and the bedroom across from it. He checked the latter first. The bed was unmade. A small fan on a nearby night stand blew warm air across the sheets. The room, except for its furniture, was empty. A pair of dull eyes stared at him from under the bed. Grendel.
A quick sweep of the rest of the apartment: the bathroom and various closets revealed nothing. He filled the water and food bowls in the kitchen, and Grendel, needing no coaxing, attacked them with renewed energy.
Except for some sad-looking plants in the living room, that cat, Kyle suspected, was the only living thing that had been in that apartment in close to a week.
Of the seven messages, six were from Bern. The seventh was a wrong number.
He searched the apartment and found little, save a small cache of secreted Universal Brotherhood literature and chips in a small box in the closet. Then, in a plastic tray in me topmost drawer of the dresser, he found Ellen's house keys and wallet, with her credstick slipped neatly into its holder in the wallet's spine. Also stuffed in there was a small wad of about a hundred and twenty dollars' worth of paper money. Unless these were all spares, Ellen Shaw had gone out a week ago without her money, her ID, or her keys, and never returned.
Kyle poked through the apartment for another hour or so, eventually refusing to feed Grendel after the cat begged for a fourth bowl of food. When he finally left, Kyle could do little about the door lock, so he used his magic to warp the wood slightly once the door was closed. The door would open, but someone would have to use his shoulder to do so. He'd let Beth know about the cat.
Outside, the kids had moved closer to this end of the street, and an Eagle Security patrol car had pulled up alongside a white minivan parked in front of a fire hydrant near where the kids had originally been playing. One officer, a young Chinese man, was obviously scanning the license plate and running it through his portacomp. His partner, a woman, Kyle suspected, though he couldn't tell much more about her, was on the driver's side talking to someone he couldn't see through the tint on the windscreen. As he came out, they both turned and looked at him.
His pocket phone rang.
Kyle let it ring twice more as he slipped into astral perception and carefully scanned the area. It looked normal, completely and utterly normal, including the van, the patrol car, and the two officers. He reached into his pocket on the fourth ring and slowly extended the interface cable and plugged it behind his left ear.
"Yes," he said to the caller, eyeing the white minivan.
Hanna Uljaken's voice echoed in his ear just as the plug clicked home in his datajack and her image sprang up in his view.
"Kyle, it's me." She was obviously still in his hotel room.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She seemed puzzled. "I'm fine. How about you?"
"So far, so good."
She was suddenly alert and cautious. "Devress just called me. I'm wanted back at the Truman apartment immediately. He wouldn't say, but something was definitely up. He asked where you were. I told him I'd let you know."
Still listening, Kyle watched the two police officers casually move away from the van and climb back into their own car. Though the street was two-way, the police car went in reverse until it reached the end of the block, then backed into a turn before moving forward again and out of sight. The minivan didn't move.
“I’ll be there as fast as I can, but it'll be about twenty minutes," he told her. "I'm at the edge of the city." For some reason, he didn't feel like telling her even generally where he was.
He saw her nod. "I'll let them know," she said, "Oh, and I found-"
He cut her off. "Wait and tell me when you see me. And ask the front desk to put extra security on my room. Have them bill your boss."
She nodded again. "I will."
"Copy any information you might have off the room's computer and take it with you. If the search is finished on my datapad, take that with you too."
"I will."
"And have Knight Errant come pick you up. Call Facile right away, even before you start copying files."
Hanna was obviously disturbed by his tone and the content of his requests, but she agreed. "I'll see you in twenty minutes at the Tower."
She disconnected.
Kyle did the same, got into his car, and quickly pulled away, making a U-turn so as to drive past the minivan. He couldn't see inside as he went by, but he did note the registration plate.