77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

that when he retired next from the Pendleton job, he might become head of security for a cemetery. A field full of stiffs in their narrow little condos would be even more quiet and proper than Edna and Martha Cupp. And when he retired from that job, he could just lie down in a prepared hole and let them cover him with a dirt blanket.
    He wasn’t bitter about being forced out of the department at sixty-two. That was six years earlier, ancient history. Though not bitter, hehad become a cynic. In truth he had always been something of a cynic and a grump on the job —which served him well when he was dealing with homicidal dirtbags, helped him to understand them and find them and bust them—but he had been good-humored and relatively easygoing when off-duty. With all of that action now gone from his life, however, Logan wasn’t working off this negative energy every day, and as a consequence, he suspected that he might be souring into an around-the-clock grump.
    He could live with that.
    From the elevator, he turned right, walked about twenty feet, and turned right again into the north corridor. The apartments were all on the right side, three of them, with views of the courtyard. The farthest belonged to Mickey Dime; in addition to having inherited money, Dime was supposed to be a successful corporate consultant for matters of employee-conflict resolution. The inherited money might be true, but Logan was convinced the rest of it was the product of a bull’s back end. Next door to Dime was the Abronowitz apartment. Bernard Abronowitz was in the hospital, recovering from surgery.
    The nearest and largest of the three apartments belonged to the former senator, Earl Blandon. If the disgraced politician had gotten on the elevator but had never gotten off, as the security cameras seemed to suggest, there was a mystery to be solved that might test the wits of the cleverest of detectives. Considering how lacking in drama the past six years at the Pendleton had been, Logan doubted that any such puzzle waited to be solved, and he expected Blandon to answer the doorbell in one state of inebriation or another.
    After Logan rang three times but received no answer, he rapped sharply on the door. He waited and then rapped again.
    Earlier, he had phoned the day-shift concierge, who had relieved Norman Fixxer at 6:00 A.M., and had ascertained that the senator hadnot left the Pendleton through the lobby during the morning or early afternoon. Now he called the evening concierge, Padmini Bahrati, who had come on duty at 2:00 this afternoon, and she was certain that since she had been at the front desk, the senator had neither departed the building on foot nor asked for his car to be brought around to Shadow Street.
    Of course, if Blandon left the grounds by the east gate of the courtyard, he could have gone to the garages behind the Pendleton and driven away without requesting valet service. With that possibility in mind, Logan phoned Tom Tran and asked him to check the senator’s garage stall.
    Two minutes later, the superintendent reported that Blandon’s Mercedes was in the garage. He had not driven away.
    After ringing the bell at 3-D yet again and after receiving no response, Logan unlocked the door with his passkey. If the senator was at home, he had not engaged either the security chain or the blind deadbolt that couldn’t be unlocked from the corridor.
    Holding the door open but remaining in the hall, Logan called, “Senator Blandon? Sir, are you home?”
    The senator’s apartment was half the size of that occupied by the Cupp sisters. Unless he was unconscious or in the shower, he should have heard Logan.
    In an emergency, when there were reasons to believe that a resident might be mortally ill or otherwise incapacitated and unable to grant admittance, the owners’-association protocols required that a security guard enter the apartment with a passkey but only in the company of either the concierge or the superintendent. The idea