At last, a long, low groan broke the almost-silence, the first real indicator that there was someone alive on the other side of that door – although, from the sound of it, he wished he wasn’t.
“Glenn Jackson?” Bradley called, more quietly now.
Silence fell again.
“Mr. Jackson, this is the police. Open the door.”
Another groan. Then, some muttering that sounded like muted but strongly-felt profanity.
We waited
More sounds: Feet shuffling, more cursing and then – from just on the other side of the door – a long bout of tubucular coughing.
We waited.
Finally, a voice, albeit slurred and shaky, “Can’t fool me. Already talked to the cops. Go ‘way.”
“We have a couple more questions for you,” Bradley said to the door, and added, with a glance at me, “This shouldn’t take long.”
“Yeah, well… If you’re a cop, let’s see a badge, flat-foot.”
Bradley blinked, then said, with what I thought was, for him, a remarkable degree of patience, “The door is closed, Mr. Jackson. How can I show you my badge?”
A moment passed, during which I like to imagine that Jackson blinked as well, just for symmetry’s sake, then: “Well-reasoned, well-reasoned,” he said.
The door opened, and Glenn Jackson poked his head out.
He looked very much like Jenny Kim had described him: Skinny, hunched over in a way that made it hard to say how tall he was, ill-fitting clothes that looked like Goodwill fodder, long uncombed grey hair and a scraggly beard to match.
Not that I took all this in right away, because the stink that erupted from the open door to his apartment made my eyes water too much for finer details at first. Puke, and stale booze and the tang of unwashed body.
He was a textbook example of a derelict on a bender.
Maybe… a little too textbook?
Bradley, when we could both see again, held up his badge, “I’m Detective Bradley. This is Officer MacAvoy. You’re Glenn Jackson?”
Jackson peered at Bradley’s badge, “Well, of course I’m me. Who else would I be?”
“So you won’t mind showing us some I.D.?” I asked.
He scratched his head. “I got the papers they gave me when I got out of the army.”
“That’ll do for a start,” Bradley said.
Jackson turned and walked into the room, “Well, come on in then. I’ll find them for you. They’re around.”
Bradley turned to me, “After you,” he said.
“Oh, thanks,” I replied, and followed Jackson in.
