"You guys," he muttered disgustedly, before unhooking a key from the wall just inside the door. "Here." He pointed to an oldfashioned mail slot cut into his front door. "When you're done with it, put it back here." Back upstairs, Willy paused before Mary's door, again listening to the murmurs of life around him, and more specifically to how well he could hear them. It was a reflex born of years of practice. His pilgrimage here was emotionally stimulated. He wasn't running an investigation. But habits, good and bad, were hard to break, and this one told his subconscious that the walls in this building were as thin as might be expected-and, as the woman downstairs had demonstrated, not without ears.

He carefully slit the police label at its crease, fitted the key to the lock, and pushed the door open.

The smell that swept out to envelop him wasn't staggering, but it wasn't good, either: cloying, sweet, with an overripe pungency that caught in his throat. He began breathing through his mouth and closed the door softly behind him.

He didn't turn on any lights at first. He just stood there, looking around, letting his eyes adapt to the darkness. He could see from the faint glimmer seeping in through the far door facing him that he was already in a small, narrow kitchen. He'd noticed earlier that the building easily dated back a hundred and fifty years, maybe more. The kitchens had probably all been afterthoughts, put in where entryways had once allowed visitors to take off their coats.

Moving slowly, he passed by a counter, sink, and stove to his left, a closet and a shallow pantry on his right. At the doorway opposite, he stopped again.

Light through a dirty window on the right wall etched a glowing rectangle across the floor and partially up the wall beside him, brightly enough that he could see most of the room's details. There was a dark, caved-in couch before him facing the window, a narrow coffee table in front of it, and some shelves lining the wall opposite, bracketing both sides of the window.