When I woke up the next morning Mr. Winkley was meowing outside my door. He made for me to follow him to Nancy’s room. She had never let him run loose like that before. He started meowing again and I picked him up and put my hand over his mouth so that Elsie wouldn’t hear. I knocked and called Nancy’s name but there was no answer. I tried her door and it was locked. I didn’t want to think that she had left in the middle of the night without taking Mr. Winkley. I knocked on Gladys’s door and called to her.
“Gladys!”
“Pipe down out there!” she said. “People are trying to sleep!”
“I’m looking for Nancy. She’s not in her room.”
“Yeah well I haven’t seen her.”
The Colonel stuck his head out from his room, which was right next to mine. With his flat-top haircut and thin face, his head sticking out sideways looked like a triangle.
“Willy,” he whispered, like he had some secret to tell me. He looked up and down the hallway to make sure nobody else was out there, and waved for me to come over. I thought maybe he knew where Nancy was.
“Come here,” he whispered. “I have something to show you.”
We went in and Mr. Winkley hopped up on the Colonel’s bed and went to sleep. It turned out the Colonel just wanted to play chess. He’d invented a foolproof strategy that he wanted to try out on me.
“I can’t play chess now, Colonel,” I said. “Nancy’s gone. I was supposed to put up her bird feeder, but she doesn’t answer her door, and it’s locked. Mr. Winkley was in the hall meowing. Something’s wrong.”
“Oh, I’m sure there’s a perfectly rational explanation,” he said. “You’ve taken quite a fright. Why don’t you just sit down here, and while we’re awaiting Nancy’s return, we can have a little game.”
“This isn’t a game,” I said. “She was afraid that somebody might break into her room, and then last night she said she might be leaving.”
“Well then, that explains it. You see, she’s not going anywhere. She only wants you to think that. You still have a lot to learn about the female mind, my boy. Sit down and I’ll explain.”
I sat at his table. The chess board was all set up on it.
“Her fears,” he said, “which prompted her to engage your services in repairing her door, are all in here.” He pointed to his own head. “Don’t you see? It’s not the outside intruder she fears, but her innermost desires which she cannot acknowledge.”
“What are you talking about, Colonel?”
“A young woman’s desires. It is highly dubious that she ever had any intention of leaving. She probably placed Mr. Winkley outside your door, pinched him until he meowed, and then ran off when you opened it. She wants to make you aware of how much you care for her.”
Mr. Winkley jumped off the bed and went to scratching the Colonel’s door.
“You see,” he said, pointing at Mr. Winkley. “There is an entity whom we see as the devil, who scratches at the door of our unconscious. We lock our door against him, thinking to keep him out. But where is he, really? He is inside.” The Colonel pointed at Mr. Winkley, then at his own head. “He’s not trying to get in. He wants only to be let out, to be free, where he cannot harm us.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. “I’m going to ask Elsie if she’s seen Nancy,” I said.
“Oh posh, Elsie is probably in cahoots with Nancy. The two are doubtlessly engaged in a conspiracy.”
“I’m going to find Nancy.”
“Very well, then. I’ll go with you.”
“Okay. Don’t let Mr. Winkley out.”
I ran down the stairs and asked Elsie if she’d seen Nancy.
“She hasn’t gone out,” Elsie said. “She must be in her room.”
“I don’t think so. She doesn’t answer her door, and it’s locked.”
“Did you say anything to upset her, Willy? Nancy might not want to see you.”
By then the Colonel had come down the stairs, and we went outside and looked up and down the street.
“Her window!” I said, and ran around the back of the hotel and up the fire escape.
When I got up to Nancy’s window I tried to open it but it was latched. I squatted down and looked in. I couldn’t see much at first, because the sun was bright and the light was off in her room.
Then I saw her lying on the bed, and I knew. When somebody looks right at you, and your eyes lock onto theirs; when neither one of you moves and time stops and the bottom falls out of your stomach, you just know right away. She didn’t move, and nobody could sleep with their arm twisted behind them like that and their eyes wide open. A needle and syringe hung from the crook of her other arm fallen off the side of the bed, and a rubber cord was tied above. You always know when somebody’s dead.
I was squatted there at the window, and I looked down at the ground through the grate, because I didn’t want to see Nancy like that. It felt like the fire escape was pulling away from the building, and I grabbed onto the window ledge to keep from falling. I tried to stand and I lost my balance and fell against the railing. By then the Colonel had come around to the back of the building and I saw him standing on the ground in the alley looking up at me and his mouth was moving and I could see that he was shouting something, but it was like they turned the sound off and I couldn’t hear anything.
He must have known from the way I looked, because he ran back around the corner.
I caught up with him inside the hotel as he and Elsie were going up the stairs.
Elsie wouldn’t call the police until she was sure, and she wouldn’t give me or the Colonel her key ring. We finally made it to Nancy’s room and waited while Elsie caught her breath and sorted through the keys, but she couldn’t open the door because the deadbolt was locked, and it was the kind that works only from the inside.
The police had to break in the door to get into the room. The hinges didn’t come off, and the keyed lock didn’t break because Elsie had unlocked it. The deadbolt and chain lock were ripped off the door frame, but still screwed to the door.
It was only a few seconds between the time the door swung open and the time the police moved us away, and I thought I didn’t see the statue. I didn’t exactly not see it, though, so I wasn’t sure.
“I think it was probably there last night because I didn’t see it missing then,” I told the cop. He had a small book he was writing my answers in. “It should be on her bureau.”
“Wait here,” he said. He went in the room and talked to the other cop, and came back.
“Okay, Willy,” he said. I wanted to ask about the statue but he went off to talk to Elsie.
Then the other cop came out of the room and went over to talk to the first cop, and I thought they were talking about me, because I was the last one to see Nancy alive. I went over and asked them about the statue.
“You seem very interested in that statue,” the first cop said. They wouldn’t tell me anything. I walked away and the cops were whispering something, but I couldn’t hear what it was.
They weren’t looking, and they hadn’t said to stay out of the room. I wanted to see if the statue was in there, and I turned the door knob.
“Hey!” The first cop ran over and threw me against the wall. My knees gave out and my back slid down the wall and I ended up sitting on the floor against it.
With all the commotion Elsie