Night kills

27

The West Seventy-second Street address listed for M. Scott wasn't far from Columbus Circle. It was an old building, at least twenty stories tall, with an ornate brick and stone front that was chipped and stained. Maintenance or repair was being done on the building. Blue iron scaffolding nestled tightly against it, across and above the entrance, though at present no one was working. A red plastic cone lettered CAUTION stood to the side of the three shallow stone steps leading to its entrance. Jill thought that was apropos.

It wasn't the kind of building that featured a doorman. In fact, one of the wide entrance doors was propped open by a crude wooden wedge. Jill stepped inside, where it was a few degrees cooler and dim after the hot brightness of outside.

To her left was a bank of tarnished brass mailboxes. In a card inserted in the narrow slot above the locked box of apartment 16C was the name M. Scott. It was in slightly smeared black ink and appeared to have been there a while. Jill peered through the narrow grille in the box's door and saw only darkness. There was no mail inside. None that showed, anyway.

Jill moved farther into the lobby. It was large, with mismatched upholstered furniture arranged in two groups around low tables. One of the tables had a left-behind newspaper scattered over it. The other had an arrangement of plastic flowers in a glass vase on its center. Two elevator doors stood at the opposite end of the lobby, across an expanse of gray and white tiled floor. There were ancient stains on the floor that looked like they'd been made by people stepping on cigarettes to put them out. The elevator doors were wood, with fancy brass inserts that were as tarnished as the mailboxes. The lobby obviously hadn't been redecorated in years, but it looked reasonably clean. A wide wooden stairway to the left of the elevators had rubber treads on the steps and stopped at a landing that turned out of sight.

The lobby was empty, as far as Jill could see. Unless someone was seated in one of the two high-backed upholstered chairs facing away from her. Sounds from outside were faint. The busy sidewalk and street seemed far enough away to be another world, though they were just beyond the propped-open door.

As she glanced back at the door and mailboxes, Jill noticed an intercom system on the wall opposite the brass boxes. She hadn't seen it before because it was coated with the same beige enamel as the walls.

She went to it and found 16C, then pressed on an enamel-glutted button, which, to her surprise, actually depressed under the pressure of her finger, and waited.

No buzz. No voice. No answer.

Jill gave the paint-coated button another push, thinking the ancient intercom probably hadn't worked since the fifties.

She gave it up, stood staring at the elevators for a moment, and then strode toward them. She'd come here to learn something, and so far she'd been shut out. She was frustrated.

At least the elevator buttons hadn't been painted over. She pressed the "up" button.

Nothing lit up. There was no response until the narrow brass arrow on the floor indicator above one of the elevator doors trembled, then started to descend from the number nine.

Jill waited patiently. Finally there was a grinding, clunking sound, and the elevator door slid open.

No one stepped out.

Inside, the elevator was surprisingly small and paneled in dark wood with a heavy grain. Jill saw that the building had twenty-five floors. She pressed the button for sixteen and stood waiting for what seemed a full minute before the door slid closed. When she was completely surrounded by the oppressive paneling, the elevator lurched and began its ascent.

The walls of the hall on the sixteenth floor were paneled halfway up with the same wood as used in the elevator. The upper half of the walls was a much lighter beige than that in the lobby, and it was pinkish.

Jill left the elevator and turned right, then walked down a dimly lit hall toward a small, dirty window and a sign indicating a fire stairs door. Apartment 16C was about halfway there.

Its ancient, six-paneled varnished door looked like all the other doors except for the apartment number. Just beneath the brass numerals was a round peephole.

Jill found that her hand was quaking as she raised it, made a fist, and knocked.

She kept her eyes trained on the peephole, watching for movement or a change of light on the other side.

No answer. No movement. No sound from the other side of the heavy old door.

Jill swallowed, then knocked again, much harder.

The door across the hall opened, startling her.

She turned around and saw a small, Hispanic woman in her forties looking out at her. She had a shabby white robe wrapped around her and tied with a matching sash. Her graying dark hair was mussed. Jill noticed that her feet were bare and her unpainted toenails needed trimming. The woman said nothing, simply stared inquisitively at Jill.

"I'm looking for Madeline," Jill said.

"You were knocking so loud, I thought it was my door," the woman said, without a trace of accent.

"I'm sorry. Do you know Madeline?"

"Seen her a few times, is all. I'm not home a lot, and when I am…"

"What?"

"Nothing. People in this building pretty much mind their own business. You woke me up. Made me drag my ass in here and see who was at the door. Who was nobody. I don't mind telling you that pisses me off. I work nights and try to sleep during the day."

"I'm sorry."

"You should-"

"I said I was sorry. Twice."

The woman stared hard at her. "Apology accepted," she said abruptly and moved back inside and closed her door.

Jill was angry at first, and then she had to smile. At least the woman's rudeness had broken the spell of anxiety that had come over her. Or was she the rude one? She'd awakened the woman.

She shook her head and walked back toward the elevator. This little bit of detective work hadn't yielded a bit of information, but she felt better. At least she'd done something instead of sitting around her apartment letting the questions eat her alive from the inside.

She rode the elevator down to the lobby and waited while the old door took its time sliding open.

And was startled to see silhouetted against the light a woman entering the lobby.

Madeline!

Or someone who looked remarkably like her. She was the same size and shape as Madeline, had the same walk, the same tilt of the head.

Jill was rooted to the elevator floor. Couldn't budge.

The woman was walking toward the elevator. Toward her.

Jill's mind worked frantically. She'd been standing staring at the woman. She couldn't leave the elevator now. She'd stay where she was, as if she'd entered the elevator just before the woman came into the lobby.

Then the woman was ten feet away from her, no longer in silhouette.

She barely glanced at Jill and entered the elevator to stand beside her.

She wasn't Madeline, yet she was. They were so similar that anyone might mistake one for the other at a glance or from a distance. And after seeing this woman a few times as Madeline, there wouldn't be the slightest doubt as to her identity. At that point, even standing next to the real Madeline, this one would be chosen as the original.

This woman was perhaps slightly taller, and of course she was well groomed, with her blond hair cut the same as Madeline's, only clean and combed. Her eyes, her nose, the thrust of her chin, everything about her was like Madeline's. What wasn't like Madeline's-the slope of her forehead, the curve and fullness of her upper lip, the slight cleft in her chin (or did the real Madeline have such a cleft?)-all seemed to achieve a balance so the end result was that she looked like Madeline.

The woman pressed the button for the sixteenth floor, and Jill was afraid the woman might hear the wild hammering of her heart.

The elevator door slid shut.

Jill thanked God the buttons weren't illuminated. The woman wouldn't know that none of them had been pressed before she'd entered the elevator.

As the elevator rose, Jill knew what she had to do. She'd come this far, and afraid though she might be, she'd not stop now. Despite her fear, and the chance she was about to take, she'd go further.

But not farther up than the sixteenth floor.

Trying to seem casual, she exited the elevator first and turned left, away from 16C. She walked slowly, and near the opposite end of the long hall she stood before a door and pretended to be fishing in her purse for her key.

From the corner of her eye she watched the woman who looked like Madeline walk the opposite way down the hall, stop, and enter an apartment. She hadn't glanced back at Jill, hadn't seemed at all curious about her.

Jill hurriedly walked back down the hall, extending her arm and pressing the "down" button as she passed the elevators, in case she had to get away in a hurry. She had to make sure. To be positive.

With a glance at the numbered door to the apartment the woman had entered, she was sure.

The woman had gone into 16C.

Jill strode swiftly back along the hall, breaking into a jog so she'd be in time to enter the elevator that was waiting, door open, already at floor sixteen level.

It seemed to take forever for the creaking old elevator to descend all the way to the lobby.

Finally, back out in the sun and bright air of Seventy-second Street, Jill made herself walk at a normal pace away from the apartment building toward Columbus Circle. Her breath came fast and uneven, in tiny gusts that she couldn't control. Her mind danced from one possibility to another, not liking any of them.

Now that she had this information, what was she going to do with it?

She remembered what mad Madeline had told her that day in her apartment: "They'll learn about what's going on and see that any investigation stops. And that I'll be killed. And now that I've talked to you, that you'll be killed."

"You're halfway to nothing already."