The Empty Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page B

the man other than that he was covered in blood up to his elbows.
    “Can’t say that I did, Gross.” The streetcar passed over the Gürtel, the second ring road delineating the outer districts of the city. Suddenly the housing tracts became bigger, grayer, and dingier; worker tenements thrown up in the past several decades with none of the grace or serendipity of the buildings in the districts between the Ringstrasse and the Gürtel.
    “You sure?” Gross sounded honestly surprised. “Try to reconstruct the room at the morgue, Werthen. Visualize the furniture, the lighting, and then narrow in on the pathologist so concentrated on his work that he did not bother to vet us. Can you not see some very distinguishing characteristic? A hint: It was red.”
    “I’m sure the man does not have blood on his arms at all times, Gross.” Werthen was growing exasperated with this game.
    A pensioner wearing a Tyrolean hat and seated just in front of them turned round and stared at Gross and Werthen with rheumy eyes.
    Gross tipped his derby hat at the inquisitive old man, returning to the subject at hand.
    “No, no, Werthen. A birthmark, not blood. In the shape of a crescent, and located on his left temple in plain sight as we entered.”
    The old man continued to gawp at them as Werthen closed his eyes for a moment, re-creating the autopsy room in his imagination. He saw the pathologist’s hands at work in the viscera of a cadaver, then let his mind work its way upward on the man’s body. Suddenly the telltale birthmark appeared.
    “Why, Gross, you’re right! The man did have a birthmark, and in the shape of a new moon.” Then to the old man, still craning his neck backward: “Would you care to join us?”
    The man faced forward again with a disgusted snort.
    “No reason to be rude, Werthen,” Gross said.
    Werthen raised his eyebrows at this remark, for Gross was usually too oblivious of the feelings of others to even know when he was being rude.
    “At any rate,” Gross continued, “you should learn to notice such things, Werthen. Take me. I’ve trained myself assiduously in that finest of visual arts: being a reliable witness.”
    Gross gestured with palms outward at Werthen. “The words may seem a contradiction in terms, I know. More times than I care to recall I have had cases fall apart because of witnesses who were too easily influenced by afterthoughts; who wanted notoriety and were willing to say whatever was needed to attain it; who were even color-blind. Did you know that fully five percent of adult males cannot tell red from blue?”
    “Once again, Gross, you impress one with your breadth of knowledge.”
    Gross caught the sarcasm in Werthen’s voice. “Sorry if I’mboring you, old man.” He straightened in his seat next to Werthen. “By the way, the pathologist had no birthmark. Just goes to show you how suggestible we all are.”
    The old man in front of them let out a derisive snort.
    They rode the rest of the way to Anna Plötzl’s apartment in silence.
    She lived at the end of the J line, near the Ottakring cemetery. The tenement at 231 Ottakringerstrasse was the same as five others in the block on both sides of the narrow street: five stories tall and badly in need of sandblasting. The front door was open and no nosy
Portier
was on duty to check the comings and goings of tenants.
    Inside, the building was dark and cavernous: Three different staircases led to the upper stories. Staircase A was on the left. By the second landing, Werthen realized that the apartment numbering had nothing to do with which floor the apartment was on. Anna Plötzl’s apartment was at the end of the hall on the fifth floor. As they knocked at her door, Werthen made a silent prayer that she would be at home. He had no desire to make a second trip to Ottakring to verify Klimt’s alibi.
    The door was opened on the third knock by a tiny woman who was obviously expecting somebody else. Her smile turned to a frown when she