“Okay, good.” Kate handed her a card and added, “If you think of anything odd or unusual that’s happened, give me a shout.”
“I can,” she said. “What’s this about?”
“We’re searching for a missing woman,” Kate replied. “And we have a few markers that identify this area as one possible place, but we’re definitely not saying this is the location. We’re just checking it out to see if it’s a better option than the other places.”
The other woman immediately replied, “Other options should be better. This place never has anything wrong like that.”
And, with that, there wasn’t a whole lot more Kate could ask, but she did see through the young mother’s doorway to the window where the church was. And, indeed, it was a pretty straight-on view. But, from Kate’s point of view at the apartment’s doorway, nothing shouted that anything was wrong in the apartment itself. Smiling, Kate nodded her thanks and walked down to the next one.
There could have been an ever-so-slight change in the angle of perception which was not shown in the drawing. What if Simon—through the poor tortured woman’s sight—hadn’t seen the window head-on but maybe by a peripheral glance or something? And, God, Kate hated even thinking what she was thinking because it just sounded so bizarre that she didn’t want to justify it.
When she knocked on the second door, a young man came out, a headset on his ears. He frowned when he saw her. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Just wondering if you’ve heard any disturbance in the area recently,” she asked.
He looked at her, shrugged, and said, “Nothing ever happens here.”
“You’re sure about that?” she asked, with a lopsided smile. “It seems like everybody who says that always ends up wishing they hadn’t.”
He laughed. “Maybe,” he agreed, “but, in truth, it’s not a great place for singles. It’s a great place if you want to raise a family and to live a dull and boring life. Other than that, there’s never any noise, no parties. It’s stupidly calm and quiet.”
She wondered about that but smiled and added, “There are good things about that too.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I wouldn’t mind a little bit more life though.”
“Yeah, you’d probably like a little more of a party scene.”
“I’m young,” he explained. “I don’t want to go to my grave thinking that this is all there was to life.”
“Interesting,” she noted.
He shrugged, looked at her, and asked, “Why?”
“Just your perception.”
“Yeah, my parents say that all the time,” he agreed. “I like my music, but it’d be better if I had somebody to share it with.”
“Nobody else around in the building?”
“No, not that I’ve seen,” he noted. “Well, I’m not much of a dater, so maybe that’s the problem.”
“It can be hard to meet people,” she agreed, with a nod.
“This town is dead,” he told her. “Seriously it’s almost impossible to meet anybody here.”
She’d heard that complaint more than a few times, so knew what he meant. She got his contact information and handed him a card, telling him the same thing she’d said to the other resident.
With that done, Kate headed upstairs to the next floor and did the same thing. In one case nobody was there but in the other was an older woman, single and living alone, who was just way too chatty. But Kate had found that people like that were usually great sources of information. Only this one didn’t really have anything to report. Just not a whole lot of information to be had.
“Everybody is lovely,” the woman had gushed.
And, with that, Kate took her cue and marked this building off her list. She did the same with the next three buildings, and, by the time she came to the fifth one on her list, she was tired and feeling like she was truly wasting her man-hours on this excursion. Frustration was building because surely there had to be some other way of making this list shrink. Although with five buildings almost done now, it wouldn’t take that long to get through all nineteen. She again updated Missing Persons. This alone should get her out of the doghouse with them.
As she walked up the stairs and got to the floor that she presumed would be pretty close to eye level with her target window—in this case, the third floor—she knocked on the first apartment. When there was no answer, she tried knocking several more times.
The apartment beside her opened up, and a woman stuck her head out and frowned.
“Sorry,” Kate said, “I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’m trying to find the owner of this apartment.”