Chapter 7
On account of Roy Douglas, there was a mighty slim hope of being able to fill in my sketch, but when I jumped from the cab at the corner and hotfooted it for Number 316 and saw there was no sign of anything unusual, the chances looked slightly better. The odds against me were still about 20 to 1. If anyone else, including Roy, had beat me to it and called the cops or a doctor or even the neighbors, or if grandma had come home early, or if 17 other things, my plan was a washout.
It would have been a swell break if the door had been unlatched, but it wasn’t, so I pushed the Chack-Amory button, not daring to risk one of the others, and in about five seconds the click sounded. That might have been either good or bad, and there was no time to speculate. I entered and went down the hall, and there was Roy standing in the open door of the Chack apartment, his face pasty and twitching, trembling all over. Before he could say anything I shoved him inside and closed the door, touching it only with a knuckle. He looked as if he might start screaming. I steered him out of the little hall into a room and to a chair, and pushed him into it.
“She’s dead,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t — look at her.”
“Keep quiet,” I commanded him. “Understand? Keep quiet. I know things about this you don’t know.”
I made a survey. There was no disorder, no sign of a scrap. I didn’t blame Roy for not being able to look at Ann, because it wasn’t actually Ann. It was only what was left, and it didn’t resemble Ann at all. Lily had mentioned the two main aspects, the tongue and the eyes. The upper part of the body was sort of propped up against the front of an upholstered chair, and the blue woolen scarf around the throat had a knot under the left ear. Approaching and kneeling down, it took me ten seconds to make sure that it was a body and not a girl. It was still as warm as life.
I returned to Roy. He was slumped in the chair with his head hanging, and I doubted if there was enough stiffness in his spine to lift his head to look at me, so I lowered myself to one knee to look at him.
“Listen, Roy,” I said, “we’ve got to do some things. How long ago did you get here?”
He stared at me. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I don’t know. I came straight here.”
“How did you get in?”