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“Can he get inside the apartment?”

“Yes, sir.”

The tall black security cop and I rode up in silence. He stood with his back to the far wall of the elevator, his right hand nervously rubbing his holstered gun butt, his eyes fixed on the row of floor numbers, no doubt wondering what kind of mess I was about to get him in.

On the forty-fifth floor, the doors whispered open. “Which one is it?” The guard nodded silently at the door opposite us. I rang the doorbell and waited. “When did you come on this morning?”

“Six.”

“See this guy at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Would you know him if you did?”

“No, but Will checked the log. He left last night.” That surprised me. “You mean late?”

“’bout midnight.”

“And he hasn’t been back?”

“No, sir.” I pondered that for a moment, ringing the bell again. “Did he have any visitors?”

“One, just before. He left with him.”

“You get a name?”

“Will told it to me-’case you asked. Name was Gunther.”

I felt like a mild electrical jolt had hit the base of my skull. “You better unlock this.”

We were greeted by total silence, punctuated only by the ticking of a distant clock and the steady faint hum of the building’s circulatory system. We stood, the guard slightly behind me, in the front hallway of a huge apartment, its acreage of living room stretching out before us. It was not the apartment, however, that caught the eye, but what extended beyond it. Through the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bank of windows, Lake Michigan reached as far as the eye could see-a solid blue sheet as clear and featureless as the sky above it, giving me the giddy feeling of somehow being in flight, high over the earth.

I turned back to the guard. “Why don’t you stay here? I want to look the place over.”

The kitchen, dining room, guest bedroom, even the bathrooms all had spectacular vistas, either out onto the lake or along its shore. And all of them were appointed in the latest modern spaceship fashions, with an excess of tubular steel, glass, and synthetic marble. It occurred to me that Shilly had decorated his home much like an operating room.

I located the master bedroom last-again huge, sterile, and expensive, but not pristine. The bed had been slept in-one side only-and there were clothes on the floor, a pair of pajamas draped messily over the foot of the bed. One of the closets was open and a single drawer of a gigantic recessed chest gaped wide open. The one jarring note was the delicate, rhythmic, melodious pulse of the alarm clock by the side of the bed-designed, no doubt, to drag you ever so comfortably away from your dreams.

I stood in the middle of the room, taking my time, ignoring the alarm. Indeed, it was helpful-it and the pajamas and the clothes on the floor all told me he’d been in bed when his midnight caller had come visiting.

There was a slight sound behind me and I turned to see Norm Runnion standing in the doorway, as attuned as I was that something had gone wrong here.

“This may not be exactly legal,” he said.

“If I’m right, it won’t matter much. You see the log downstairs?”

He nodded. “I take it that wasn’t you.”

“I think it was Shattuck-right after I told him about Shilly.”

My tone of voice told him what I thought of myself at the moment. He pursed his lips. “I’ll call in a lab team. You check the place out already?”

“Not completely.” Nor would I be able to, now that the locals were here. But he surprised me. He smiled thinly and muttered, “Well, finish up-I won’t be long.”

With that reprieve, I moved swiftly to the kitchen and then to the bar just off the living room, all my senses focusing on the fastest search of my career.

Apparently, Shilly had eaten dinner out, which his dishwasher, pantry, and fridge told me he did regularly, and he hadn’t entertained his late-night guest with a cocktail-no dirty glasses, no melted water in the ice bucket.

I returned to the bedroom, playing back Shilly’s activities here according to the evidence. So, a normal evening, finished when he sets the alarm and goes to bed. The desk then rings from downstairs. Shilly answers from the box by the bedroom door. Gunther again. No doubt cursing the name but not daring to refuse him, Shilly lets him up and opens the front door. There is no peephole-the building has armed guards, after all, and his visitor is a cop.

I made a mental note to get a description of “Gunther” from the night deskman later. Maybe the guy’s holding a gun, or maybe he’s just the holder of Shilly’s secret-enough to get him out of his pajamas and into… what?

I moved over to the open closet and the drawer, hearing Runnion’s distant voice on the phone down the hall. Casual clothing only-blue jeans, windbreakers, sweaters, T-shirts. I continued searching, finding the suit he’d worn the day before inside another closet filled with suits and dress shirts. It was on a special counter, to be taken out and cleaned. No doubt people came and did things like that for him every day-clean and wash and tidy up.

So, dressed casually, Shilly leaves with Mr. Gunther. But maybe not quite yet. I went into the bathroom. If I’d been under duress, I’d use the bathroom to leave a sign of some sort-the one place I could have a moment’s privacy before being forced out the door. Hollywood stuff, but that’s what people fall back on when they have no personal experience to guide them.

I got close to the mirror-ten feet long and half again as high, looming over two marble sinks. The surface over one of them was smeared, slightly greasy, and vaguely pink, over about a two-foot square area. I shook my head, muttered, “Christ,” and poked carefully in the trash basket near the toilet. There was a thick wad of toilet paper covered with red, and a flat-nosed lipstick, its usual perfect tip crushed like the end of a crayon.

On the floor, near the corner, was a broken glass with a toothbrush nearby, and a rack where the towel was so skewed, it was barely hanging on. I faked the motions, pretending to write on the mirror, being hip-checked by someone coming through the door, being thrown across the room, knocking the glass off its perch and disturbing the towel below it. On the floor, near the glass, barely discernible except from my hands and knees, I found a single half-wiped drop of blood. A cut hand? A lip? Maybe a nose? Again, something to ask the night crew in the lobby.

Kevin Shilly had been snatched-just a few hours after I’d given his name to Bob Shattuck. Small-town cop in the big city helps prominent local citizen get abducted-or worse.

“Why would Shattuck grab Shilly?” Runnion asked from the door.

I got up. “I don’t know. When we talked, he was all innocence. He’d even been meditating when I knocked on his door… Son of a bitch.”

Runnion mulled that over for a few moments before finally saying, “I have to wait here for the lab crew, but I can have a unit meet you at his place so you’ll be a little more official. What’s the address?”

I gave it to him. “Is this going to get your butt in a sling?”

He shrugged. “It’s a little unorthodox, that’s all. No problem, as long as you don’t go inside without an invite or a warrant.”

I gave him a quick smile. “Thanks.”

“Sure.” He looked vaguely wistful as I headed for the elevator, as if he envied me. I couldn’t see the attraction myself, considering how hard I was kicking myself in the ass.

Downstairs, I thanked the deskman for his help and asked him how the security worked in the building.

“This is the public entrance-the only way outsiders get in or out. They check in at the desk, give their name and maybe the company if they’re delivering somethin’, then we call the tenant. When they leave, we log ’em out.”

“How about when a client comes and goes? Isn’t there a garage under here?”