27 The Neighbor

Andrea ducked back out of Kyle's condo and walked up the hallway to his neighbor in unit 5105. There was no doorbell, as visitors would usually call up from the lobby, so Andrea just knocked politely. After waiting a minute with no sign of a response, she knocked less politely.

There was the muffled sound of a crash from inside, followed by distant yelling. The banging and shouting gradually grew in volume. There was the sound of numerous locks and bolts being undone before the door opened an inch.

It was barely enough to see a single scowling eye peering through the crack.

"WHAT!" he yelled.

Andrea was slightly taken aback. She tried to formulate her most winning smile as she said, "Good morning, sir, are you Mr Sanders Crowshaw?"

"I don't want any, go away!" he shouted and slammed the door.

Andrea knocked again. Again the door opened the smallest slit for the beady roving eye to peer out. This time it took a moment to look Andrea up and down

Andrea spoke quickly. "I'm not selling anything, I'm here to talk to you about–"

"WHAT?!"

Andrea tried to speak louder without shouting. "I'm here to talk to you about the 911 call you made the other day."

"I already told the police everything!"

"I understand sir, but I'm not with the police, I'm–"

"I don't care, go away! If you don't leave, I'm calling the police!" he screamed and slammed the door again.

Andrea was about to knock again, when she smelled the approaching odor of smoke. As she suspected, it was Steel sauntering his way down the hallway, hands in his pockets and cigarette still in the corner of his mouth.

"You having a little trouble with the locals there, Mason?" he asked, leaning insouciantly against the wall.

"I'll manage," she insisted. Turning to address him directly, she asked, "Are you following me, Detective?"

"I dunno, are you preceding me?" He sniffed. "Unless you stole a look at my itinerary, I figure this is just a case of great minds thinking alike."

Andrea doubted that, but there was nothing she could do. She would have preferred to talk with Crowshaw by herself, but it wasn't like she had any authority to make Steel leave. She knocked on the door again. This time there was no response.

"Scusi," said Steel, pushing past her. He hammered on the door so hard that, well-built as it was, it rattled in its hinges. "Open up, we got questions!" he bellowed.

There was a pause before more crashing and shouting from within. Again the door opened the smallest crack.

"I told you—" Crowshaw began, then his eye had to angle upward, recognising that the well-dressed petite blonde who had been there before had been replaced by a hulking balding figure in a trenchcoat. "Who are you?"

"Detective Leo Steel. We got questions." Again, the badge was flipped out, flipped open, flipped closed, and tucked back in his pocket in one smooth motion, like he was doing tricks with a switchblade.

Either he does that a lot, or he must spend time at home practicing, Andrea thought.

"You can't come in. I already told the police everything."

"I wasn't asking," Steel growled, shoving the door inward and knocking Crowshaw stumbling.

"Hey!" shouted Andrea, stepping in front of Steel and putting her hand on his chest to hold him back. She knew she probably looked ridiculous squaring up against his looming bulk, but she wasn't about to stand by and watch that kind of behavior. She waved a warning finger in front of Steel's face. "That's enough!" she warned.

Andrea was sorely tempted to bat that stupid cigarette right out of his mouth.

Turning back to Crowshaw, she put on her best professional smile and inhaled to speak loudly and clearly.

"Mr Crowshaw. I apologize for my 'colleague,' but I do need just two minutes of your time for some questions. I promise—just two minutes and not a moment more. Otherwise, I will have to contact the police to arrange a meeting for us at the precinct, and I know that would be a much greater inconvenience for you…"

Andrea was betting on Crowshaw not wanting to leave his condo. Now she could see him more clearly, he was a frail looking man wearing a tatty pair of pajama pants and a stained white vest, holding himself up on a walking stick with tennis balls on the feet. He reluctantly conceded and allowed them both in.

As Steel slammed the door shut behind them, it became clear why Crowshaw hadn't just used the peephole. It looked like he had taped a quarter over the hole. Between that and all the extra locks, Crowshaw was clearly some kind of paranoid.

Looking around the condo, it was also obvious that he was some kind of hoarder. As large and spacious as the residence was, there wasn't a flat surface that wasn't piled high with boxes and old newspapers and other assorted detritus. There was barely enough room between the piles to maneuver, and it looked like several of them had toppled recently. Apparently that had been the crashing earlier.

Andrea had to wonder how someone who looked like he did could afford a condo this expensive… and then fill it with so much junk so quickly. Couldn't he easily afford to have someone clean for him?

She suspected that there was a very sad story behind Crowshaw's situation, but that wasn't what she was here to talk about.

"Well, go on then, ask your questions!" he squawked.

Steel tucked his hands into his pants pockets in a way that pulled back his trenchcoat a little. Andrea's suspicion had been right, he was wearing a shoulder holster and was making sure that Crowshaw knew it.

"Don't worry about me, I'm just here to look pretty," he grumbled.

He sounded like he'd had his feelings hurt. She didn't particularly care. She needed to focus on Crowshaw with the time she had bought herself.

"Can you tell me when the disturbance you reported started?" she asked. Establishing an accurate timeline was her top priority.

"Days ago!" he shouted. "Yelling, arguing, fighting. I called building security and reported to them, but they never do anything." He turned and started tottering back through the room, weaving around the towering piles.

Andrea followed him, desperately trying not to let anything touch her. "What was it that prompted you to call the police instead of the building security?"

Crowshaw seemed to be looking for something. He kept stopping and poking into piles, levering them up to peer inside in a way that threatened to send them crashing down.

"Screaming! Worst screaming I ever heard." He shook his head in disgust. "All the other noise, the fights and so on, that was just bothering me, but that scream… I don't care what you're doing, no-one should make noises like that."

Andrea felt like she was almost getting lost in the maze as she tried to keep up with him.

"What time was this? The screaming, I mean." She was trying to keep her questions neutral so as not to be leading.

"I don't remember. Sunset? Ask the police, they have records, don't they?" He scowled at Steel who was following along behind them.

"And which day was this?" This was the key question. The call had come in on Wednesday, but according to what she had been told by the coroner, Beatrix had actually been murdered on Tuesday.

"Wednesday," he replied.

"What about Tuesday evening, did you hear anything unusual then?" she persisted.

"Of course not," Crowshaw rolled his eyes, "If I'd heard screaming like that on Tuesday, I would have CALLED on Tuesday, wouldn't I? I tell you, whatever they were doing in there," he waved a scrawny arm toward the wall to the neighboring apartment. "It wasn't normal I tell you, the way they carried on–"

"What did they sound like?" Steel interrupted.

Crowshaw gripped his stick with both hands. "Man, woman, young… annoying. Loud enough to wake the dead!"

"You got anything else?" Steel asked Andrea.

She would have liked to take more time to probe further into what Croshaw remembered, but time was up. Besides, she was uncomfortable both surrounded by the filth and with Steel looming so close behind her. She had the answers she came for.

She thanked Crowshaw for his time. He angrily waved her away and went back to watching TV with the volume cranked to the maximum. Andrea and Steel let themselves out.

Steel threw his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his heel, pulling out another to light up as he did so. "So, what do you think of the old hermit?

Andrea didn't think things with Crowshaw added up, but she also was reluctant to share too much of her insights with Steel. "Did anyone else hear anything?" she asked.

Steel nodded up the hallway. "5106 is empty, up for sale." He thumbed behind him back towards the elevator. "5104 is a corner unit, so 5103 doesn't even share a wall, there's the hallway between. And let me show you something." He grabbed her arm and pulled her a couple of steps down the hall. "What do you hear?"

"Nothing," Andrea said, snatching her arm away. She did not appreciate being manhandled.

"Exactly!" said Steel. "You heard the TV on our way out, but these walls…" He pounded hard on the wall with his fist; there was barely a thud. "Now in MY apartment, the walls are so thin you can hear every time the neighbor farts. But folks who pay these prices, they don't want to have to hear their neighbors."

"So you don't think Crowshaw heard the murder?"

"Nope, probably just his TV or voices in his head. He seems crazy enough. Just dumb luck he ended up calling in when there had been an actual murder next door."

That felt like too much of a coincidence to Andrea, but she had to admit Steel had a point about the walls. There was something else she needed to clear up though.

"So 'Detective' Steel, care to tell me who you really are?" she asked.