Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran Read Free Book Online Page B

was Vic’s left hand—it was the same size and had the same low Whirl of Esteem. I made a note on it and put it aside. Another print—a match. Another—a match.
    After fifteen prints I came across one that wasn’t a match to either hand. It was big and probably male.
UNKNOWN MAN
, I labeled it.
    I went through the rest of the prints. I found a few more, but most were smeared and degraded. Those people had, likely, visited Vic’s house, but not for long and not lately. They’d touched the front door and that was about it. Unknown Man had been in the refrigerator. He’d been in all the kitchen cabinets. He’d been in the bathroom and the bedrooms. Unknown Man hadput his hand on the bookshelf. His index finger touched the spine of
Nana
.
    Unknown Man had fed the birds.
    Â 
    There was a knock on my door. It was the clerk from the front desk.
    When I’d checked in to my hotel on Frenchman Street I’d opened the door and stepped inside and tripped over the bed. From the bed I found a light switch and flicked it on. I was also in reaching distance of the TV, the closet door, the bathroom door, and the dresser.
    I’d gone to see the clerk at the desk again. He was a young man, white, in his twenties, and looked like a college student or dropout. He wore a rag wool sweater and shorts and socks and sandals. I guessed, from the looks of him, that
Dude, he liked to party
.
    â€œHey,” I said. “Hi. My room’s a little small.”
    The clerk looked at me blankly.
    â€œYour room?”
    â€œYeah. Yeah. My room. I checked in yesterday. Room—” I looked at my key. “108.”
    The clerk shook his head slowly. He looked at me like he was worried about what might happen if he made me angry. “Uh, I don’t know,
ma’am
. I think that room is taken.”
    â€œYeah,” I explained. “It is taken. It’s taken by me. I was wondering if maybe you have a bigger room available?”
    He looked at me long and hard and finally a spark of recognition lit in his eyes and spread through his face.
    â€œRiiight,” he said, with a little smile. “I remember you. Room 108, right?”
    â€œRight,” I said. I gave up on the room and moved on to my next query. “Do you like to party?”
    Â 
    I opened the door and let him in. He looked around. “Dude. This room is small.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “Someone should do something about that. You got it?”
    He handed me a large white envelope with the hotel’s logo printed on the corner. I shut the door. I’d paid him up front. I sat on the bed and opened the envelope and smelled the weed. It was shake, probably Mexican, but not half bad. Although if there’s any weed that’s more than half bad, I haven’t met it yet. I put it aside for later and went back to the fingerprints. The next step was scanning them to see who they belonged to.
    There was a phone book in my room. It was from 2005.
    I asked the clerk at the desk for a phone book. He gave me the same one.
    I looked at him.
    â€œThat’s it,” he said. “They haven’t made a new one.”
    We looked at each other.
    â€œIt might be kind of out of date,” he said.
    Â 
    In the phone book I found a list of copy places. I stuck the mystery prints in my purse and drove over to the closest spot, on Elysian Fields. I’d scan the prints into the computer, fake some credentials for myself, unlock some passwords, and compare the prints to the databases.
    At the copy joint there was a note on the door.
    Â 
Back in fifeteen minutes
    Â 
    I waited fifeteen minutes. I waited twenty-five. No one came back. I checked the phone book and went to the next place, up in the Central Business District. The young man behind the counter didn’t know what a scanner was, although if I wanted to come back when the manager was available, which might be later or tomorrow or never ever