“You know, I’m getting pretty regular workouts in, but if you tell me she’s on the top floor, I might cry. I’ll try to do it quietly, but tears will fall.”
“She was on two.”
“Really!”
Since the building probably hadn’t had viable security since some contractor tossed it up, Eve didn’t have to master in.
“Would we have walked up twelve flights if?”
Eve glanced toward the pair of elevators. Someone had drawn a damn good example of a skull and crossbones on the one to the right.
“What do you think?” she said as she shoved open the door to the stairwell.
“I think I’m glad she lived on two.” Peabody wrinkled her nose. “What do you think that smell is?”
“The moldering corpses of people who took the elevators combined with the sweat and despair of tenants who live above, oh, the fifth floor.”
“I hate to say it, but I think you could be right. But look! Aw, somebody painted a rainbow on the wall here.”
“What’s at the end of that rainbow, Peabody?”
Peabody took a closer look. “It’s a big pile of shit. Well, if you ignore that, the rainbow’s pretty.”
“No one ignores a big pile of shit, Peabody. No one.”
Eve shoved open the door on the second floor.
Though the smell wasn’t much better, and the street noise reverberated, the hallway was almost preternaturally quiet.
No thumping music, no screaming babies, no blasting entertainment screens or shouted arguments.
“Night shift workers,” Eve concluded. “Street LCs.”
As they started down the hall, the elevator behind them opened with a grind and thump.
Two women stepped out, one with a pink cloud of hair, the other with a fall of blond with roots done in what Eve thought might be vermillion.
One risked various infections and parasites in her bare feet with a pair of six-inch, shiny black spikes held in one hand. The other wore hers, with the crisscrossing red straps that climbed to her crotch.
Eve held up her badge.
Pink Cloud shrugged. “So what?”
“Chablis. Either of you know her?”
Red Straps added her own shrug. “So what?”
“So, she’s dead.”
At that the two women looked at each other.
“What the fuck’s wrong with people?” Pink Cloud demanded. “I mean what the serious fuck? She kept out of trouble. Did her job, kept clean. How the hell did she get dead?”
“Did you see her last night, on the stroll?”
“Sure, sure, we saw her. Hell, I walked out and down with her. Shit,shit, this is really upsetting, you know? I gotta sit down. My feet are screaming, and I’ve gotta pee.”
“Do you mind if we come in, ask you some questions?”
