They walked into the foyer and Brodie looked at the call box. A few of the buttons had handwritten names on strips of tape, but Hamdani’s apartment, 2D, had no name listed. Brodie pushed the button and waited. Asexpected, no response. He checked the glass-paneled door to the lobby. It was locked. “We’ll wait for someone to come in or out.”
“You’re going soft, Scott. Let’s just kick down the door.”
He couldn’t tell if she was serious or if she was mocking him. Actually, he could tell.
Taylor looked at her watch. “Let’s give it five minutes.”
“Three.”
“It’s about the time for midday prayers. Someone will be coming out.”
“You couldn’t get me out to pray on a day like this.” He added, “Good thinking.”
“Somebody has to.”
Brodie didn’t reply. He and Taylor waited in the outer foyer. After a few minutes, they could see through the glass-paneled door two middle-aged men in winter coats coming down the stairs and walking across the lobby toward them.
The two men opened the door and looked at Brodie and Taylor, probably thinking,There goes the neighborhood, as they exited the building.
Taylor pushed the door open before it shut and locked, then held it for Brodie, who entered the lobby with Taylor behind him.
They crossed the small lobby to the staircase and climbed to the second-floor landing, where there were four doors that led to the apartments. They approached apartment 2D, and Brodie noticed it had no peephole and no deadlock. But maybe there was a bolt or chain on the inside. He said to Taylor, “Say we’re the police.”
There was no doorbell, so Taylor knocked hard on the door and shouted something in Arabic.
They waited. No answer. Brodie put his ear to the door and said, “He’s either not home, he’s sleeping, he’s frightened, or he’s dead.”
“Or injured,” said Taylor, quoting from the manual of forced entry.
“Or maybe having sex in the shower. Okay…” Brodie looked at the door, which was more substantial than Anna’s. “We can do this.”
“Not without alerting half the building.”
“We’re cops. You just shouted that. We have ID.”
“Try the doorknob. That’s what burglars do first.”
He tried the knob, and to his surprise it turned and he heard and felt the bolt slide. He looked at Taylor and nodded.
This was where they’d draw their guns and again ID themselves as police. But they had no guns, and their status was at best ambiguous. Brodie waved Taylor back, then pushed the door open a few inches and peered inside.
You never knew what you were going to find on the other side of an unlocked door. Usually nothing, but sometimes a dead body. Brodie sniffed the air, but couldn’t detect that distinctive smell of a decomposing corpse.
Sometimes danger lurked in a quiet apartment; someone waiting in ambush, like in Baghdad, or in Anna’s apartment, for that matter.
He motioned for Taylor to stay put and stepped into a small foyer that led to a hallway.
As Brodie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he noticed a small side table in the foyer. And the reason he noticed it was because it was not against the wall. It had been moved or pushed and was now toward the middle of the foyer. A ceramic bowl that had obviously been on the side table now lay on the bare wooden floor next to a set of keys.
This was a textbook sign of a struggle in the foyer, which would explain the unlocked door. A person or persons had gained entry to 2D, either because Abbas al-Hamdani had opened the door to them, or because they had somehow secured a key or picked the lock. In either case, they’d encountered Mr. Hamdani in the foyer and apparently abducted him in some manner—either at gunpoint or by rendering him unconscious. Or they just killed him and took the body with them. But there were no signs of blood. In any case, they’d left quickly with Hamdani, and had not bothered to lock the door after them. Or Hamdani was here, dead.
Taylor had come into the foyer while Brodie was reconstructing the crime and she said in a whisper, “He got snatched.”
Brodie nodded. “Okay, let’s assume we’re alone, but be cautious, and let’s have a look around.”
Taylor nodded, then closed the door and locked it.
Brodie said, “The police will be here at some point, so let’s not disturb the scene too much.”
