Since Kera had never been so irresponsible as to not show up for work without calling in sick, Madison had become immediately concerned, especially when coupled with the fact that Kera had been acting strangely for months. That was when Madison had started texting Kera to ask if she was okay. When there had been no response to several texts, she tried calling and left several voice messages over the course of the day. Today was the second day and still no Kera.
Madison took her phone from the pocket of the white medical coat that she was encouraged to wear by her department head and placed yet another call. She listened to it ring and intuitively knew that Kera wasn’t going to answer. The moment the ring was interrupted, and Kera’s outgoing voicemail began to play, Madison disconnected. There was no need to leave yet another message. Instead Madison made a snap decision. With the hour and a half she had before her next appointment, she would go to Kera’s building and ring her buzzer. Her hope was that even though Kera wouldn’t answer texts or phone calls, it might be harder for her to avoid responding to an actual visitor. It had suddenly occurred to Madison that maybe Kera had been caught up in a mad, passionate romantic affair these months and that perhaps her lover had dumped her. This scenario seemed to match the facts. In that case, maybe Kera was in dire need of a friend. It also helped that Madison was familiar with Kera’s apartment since she had visited prior to the holidays. Kera liked to cook and had insisted on making dinner on several occasions, so Madison knew exactly where it was.
Exiting the hospital onto First Avenue and still wearing her medical jacket, Madison intended to quickly walk down to the main entrance where she knew she could easily catch a taxi. But it turned out she didn’t need to go that far. Almost immediately she hailed a free cab coming north in moderate traffic, telling the driver to take her to Second Avenue and 23rd Street.
Kera’s building was three in from the corner heading west. It was a nondescript brick structure that mirrored the surrounding buildings. Before entering, Madison looked up to what she thought were Kera’s windows. They were closed, whereas a number of other windows in the façade were open. The weather was particularly mild for an early spring day.
At that moment a well-appointed middle-aged businesswoman emerged from the building. Like all New Yorkers, she seemed in a rush, but Madison called out to her and brought her to a halt. Madison asked if by any chance she knew Kera Jacobsen, who lived on the fourth floor.
“Sorry,” the woman said quickly with a shake of her head. In the next instant she was off toward Second Avenue as if she was a power walker.
Undeterred, Madison went into the building’s foyer, where there was a large group of metal mailboxes that covered the wall to the left, each with a button and a nameplate. There were also three marble steps up to the locked front door. To the right was an ornately framed mirror and a hastily constructed wooden wheelchair ramp.
From her previous visits, Madison had a good idea where Kera’s mailbox was located. When she found it, she pressed the buzzer button for Kera’s apartment, holding it in for five to ten seconds. Above the mailboxes was what looked like a speaker grate that had been painted over multiple times. She stared at it, as if by doing so she could entice it to come to life. But it didn’t. Outside she could hear the distant undulation of a diminishing siren, an omnipresent background sound in New York City. Then there was the brief blaring of a car horn, but not a peep from the speaker.
She tried pressing the buzzer again, this time keeping pressure on it for nearly half a minute. She felt there was no way Kera could avoid hearing it no matter what she was doing. But the speaker above the mailboxes stayed frustratingly silent.
“Come on, girl,” she said as she pressed Kera’s buzzer for the third time. She kept it pressed for more than a minute out of frustration, yet she knew it was hopeless. Just then the inner door opened and a nattily dressed, tall, thin-faced Caucasian man appeared. Like the previous woman, he seemed to be in a hurry, yet when he saw Madison holding down Kera’s buzzer, he stopped short. Behind him the inner door clicked shut.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
Madison released the button. “Actually, there is,” she said. “By any chance do you know Kera Jacobsen? She lives in 4B. She’s a woman my age.”
“I don’t believe I do,” the man said. “Why do you ask?”
With obvious concern, Madison told the story of Kera’s unexpectedly not showing up for work at the hospital and not answering her phone or responding to multiple texts. “Plain and simple, I’m worried about her,” Madison added. “And she’s not answering her buzzer, either. Of course, I can’t be entirely sure the buzzer is working.”
“Mine’s functioning,” the man said. “But they can be finicky. Do you work at the same hospital as she?”
“Yes. We are both pediatric social workers.”
“Maybe you should go up and knock on her door,” the man said. “Just to be sure.”
“I’d like to do that,” Madison said.
The man got out his keys, unlocked the door, and then pushed it open for her.
“Thank you,” she said. She smiled before walking inside and to the elevator.
Once she’d arrived at 4B, she took a deep breath, then pressed the doorbell. When nothing happened, she pressed it again. When she couldn’t hear any doorbell ringing within the apartment, she raised her hand and knocked on the metal door. Then she listened intently but heard nothing, even after putting her ear against the door. With a disappointed shake of her head, she knocked again even louder. She tried the door, but it was locked, as she suspected it would be. With a sense of frustration, she shook the door. Since it was old, it rattled in its metal jamb and that was when she detected a whiff of a foul odor. It was very slight but disturbingly rank, even nauseating. With some trepidation, Madison rattled the door again and hesitantly put her nose closer to the separation between the door and the jamb. The smell was more intense although still slight, and it keyed off a memory. She had experienced a similar smell when she was a young teen. She and some friends were walking in the woods and came across a dead woodchuck. It was the smell of putrefaction, the smell of death.
Stunned, she backed away from Kera’s door. She wanted to flee, but willed herself to pull out her phone instead. With a trembling finger she punched in three numbers.
“This is nine-one-one,” the call taker said in a practiced monotone. “What is your emergency?”
“I’m at my friend’s apartment door,” Madison began.
“What is the problem, ma’am?” the operator interjected.
“She doesn’t answer when I knock and hasn’t answered her phone for a couple of days. She also hasn’t shown up for work.”
“Do you think she is in need of assistance?”
“There’s a bad smell,” she managed. “When I shook the door, I could smell it.”
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes, of course it is,” Madison said, feeling impatient. “Otherwise I would have gone in.”
“What kind of smell is it?”
“It’s the smell of death,” Madison said. She didn’t quite know how else to describe it. Another mild wave of nausea spread over her as her mind recalled the noxious odor.
“Are there animals on the premises?”
“Not that I know of,” she snapped. “I don’t think so. Listen, I think you’d better send somebody over here.”
“What is the address, ma’am, and your friend’s name?”
Madison struggled with her anxiety as she gave Kera’s full name, the address, and the apartment number. She had never called 911 before and had imagined it would have somehow been easier. She didn’t want to think about what the police may find behind Kera’s door.