77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz Page A

was to further minimize the already small chance that anyone on the well-vetted security team might use such an occasion to engage in theft.
    Because Earl Blandon had a short fuse and was so reliably saturated in alcohol that he was flammable if not explosive, LoganSpangler decided to enter the apartment alone. If the senator wasn’t in need of help, he would be greatly displeased by the intrusion. Paranoia was Blandon’s armor, righteous indignation his sword, and he never missed a chance to take offense. One uninvited visitor would anger him, but two would infuriate .
    Interior design held no interest for Logan, but when he turned on the living-room lights, he noticed that the senator had mimicked the power decor of certain men’s clubs. Deeply coffered ceilings. Dark wood paneling. Immense leather armchairs. Heavy wood side tables on claw feet. Bronze lamps with parchment shades. Above the limestone fireplace mantel hung a glassy-eyed stag’s head with a fourteen-point rack that Blandon had undoubtedly bought rather than earned by his skill as a hunter.
    In the dining room, the table was a long slab of highly polished mahogany. Every seat was a captain’s chair with arms and a high back, but at the head of the table stood a larger and more ornately carved chair, with silver inlays, as if to imply that the host, if not technically of royal blood, could nevertheless claim to be of a station superior to that of his guests.
    As he toured the apartment, touching nothing but light switches and doors that needed to be pushed open, Logan remained, as always, aware of the pistol at his right side, though he did not imagine that he would need it. In a withering world that seemed to be darker and more violent by the day, the Pendleton offered an oasis of peace.
    Continuing to call out to the senator as he proceeded through these chambers, Logan came to the master suite. Here, the ceiling coffers, with their baroque moldings, were painted white, and pale-gold paper gave a soft texture and a light pattern to the walls.
    The bed was neatly made, everything in order. Because Earl Blandon didn’t seem to be the kind to routinely, meticulously cleanup after himself, Logan suspected that the man had never made it to bed the previous night.
    Those residents who did not have full- or part-time housekeepers of their own, like the senator, contracted with a domestic-service agency, approved by the owners’ association, for whatever assistance they required. Generally, they preferred a maid once or twice a week. According to the schedule filed with the security office by the head concierge, who arranged for the service, Earl Blandon’s maid came every Tuesday and Friday.
    This was Thursday. No housekeeper had been here to make the bed.
    In the master bathroom, a couple of large rumpled towels lay on the floor. When Logan stooped to finger them, he found they were not damp. When he opened the glass door, he saw not one bead of water in the marble-clad shower stall, and the grout joints appeared dry.
    The senator had showered perhaps twenty-four hours earlier, before going out for the evening. He evidently had not slept in his bed the previous night. Evidence was mounting that on returning home, he’d gotten into the elevator but, impossibly, had never gotten out.
    As much as politicians might try to convince the public that they were mages with magical solutions, they didn’t have cloaks of invisibility or get-small pills that shrunk them to the size of an ant. If the senator hadn’t disembarked from the elevator by its doors, he must have gone through the emergency exit in the ceiling.
    How Blandon could have done that in the twenty-three seconds during which the elevator camera wasn’t functioning and why he would have done such a thing baffled Logan Spangler. A close inspection of the elevator might reveal a clue.
    When he turned to leave the bath, another rumble rose from under the building, and the lights went off both in this