The Hollow Girl by Reed Farrel Coleman

favor from a friend who worked for the TSA, I had been able to patch together a rough idea of Siobhan’s movements.
    Rizzo, the Kremlin doorman, had been both right and wrong the other night at Grogan’s Clover. Siobhan Bracken had taken an international flight—to Ireland, as it happened—but his recollection was off about when she left. Siobhan hadn’t left at the very end of August. On August 23, a week earlier than Rizzo remembered, she had boarded an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin from JFK. Who knows why; maybe she liked Guinness on tap, or she’d taken her new identity to heart. Siobhan was a name, after all, with both Hebrew and Gaelic origins. As my mother had been proud to tell us, Dublin once had a Jewish mayor. But why Siobhan went or what she did there was beside the point, because she landed back at JFK on September 6. There’d also been a post-Ireland, post-Labor-Day week spent in the Hamptons at a chic motel. Yes, only in the Hamptons could a motel be chic. So I could account for her movements from late August to mid-September, but after that … nothing.
    Anthony Rizzo didn’t click up his heels at the sight of me. I hadn’t imagined he would. In fact, he looked downright miserable to see me and seemed a little jumpy. I spoke to him long enough to find out if the cops had taken the tape off 5E. He said someone had been by yesterday afternoon and removed the seal and notice from the door. Entering a sealed scene was a serious offense and no matter how curious I was, I wasn’t going to risk real jail time. I told him to ring my cell if the cops or anyone else came sniffing around while I was in Siobhan’s apartment. He didn’t click up his heels about that either, but that was just too bad for him. I handed him a twenty anyway. I was nice like that, and I wasn’t stupid. Just because it was understood that I could get his ass fired didn’t mean he would ask how high when I said jump. A wise man never underestimates the power of goodwill.
    This time as I got closer to 5E, it wasn’t the smells of cooking nor the fainter but still present smell of death that got my attention. It was that the door to 5E was slightly ajar. The gap between jamb and door wasn’t large. It didn’t allow me a view of the apartment. It was as if someone had carefully closed the door without letting the locks catch. I doubted the door had been left open by the cop who’d come to remove the seal. Look, I’m the last guy on earth to give the cops a pass. Having been one, I knew how sloppy and careless they could sometimes be. A cop, even an incompetent one, would know that leaving a door unlocked like this could get him jammed up pretty bad. And this didn’t have the feel of a fuck-up.
    I reached under my jacket for my .38. Until my alcoholic fallout over Pam, I’d had it holstered to me every day for four-plus decades. I’d worn it to my weddings, had it on me in the delivery room when Sarah was born, and was reluctant to remove it in the hospital during chemo. It had once been part of who I was, a fifth limb. I hadn’t quite felt naked without it—it was more like feeling I’d left my house and forgotten to put on one of my shoes. But when I reached for it, the old .38 was there. I slowly pulled it out of its holster, pointing the barrel at the hall ceiling. I flattened my back to the wall, willing my heart to steady and trying to calm my breathing so I could hear. For a twenty-year-old building, the Kremlin was pretty quiet and there was very little ambient street or apartment noise in the hallway. That worked for and against me. I concentrated as best I could.
    I stepped to the hinge side of the threshold and very carefully pushed the door open just enough to allow me a peek inside. Even with my limited view I saw that the living room had undergone a redesign by tornado. As I legged the door open and stepped inside, I saw that the place had been totally trashed. There wasn’t a chair or sofa that hadn’t been cut