Kat hopped in a cab, rummaging again through her bag for the paperwork she would need for her new client. She silently made note of the can of mace she had been carrying, unopened for the last six months, chastising herself for the hundredth time about never taking it out of the packaging. Truth be told, she was too afraid of accidentally spraying herself in the face to touch it. She was shocked to discover that her new client lived in a brownstone barely 8 blocks from the diner, on a quiet, tree-lined street. She paid her cabbie, embarrassed, and checked her reflection briefly in the taxi window before it sped off. She would have tried to look less like a hobo, had she known she would be meeting prospective new clients today.
She unfolded the placemat, already crumpled, for the thousandth time, checking and double-checking the address against the row of brownstones with their manicured shrubberies and ornately carved stoops. Her memory took her back to distant adventures wandering around Chicago's Gold Coast before shaking them off, smoothing her hair, stuffing the paper away yet again, and breathing her ubiquitous sigh to steady her nerves.
Her shoes clicked softly on the stone steps and her heart thudded with them. Why was she so nervous? The events of the day had done nothing to soothe her frazzled nerves, and she hadn't had an afternoon to come to grips with the anxiety of having to interact with someone new. Meeting the dog would be the easy part, she bonded quickly with animals. The man whom the voice on the other end of her phone belonged to, well, that was another story altogether.
As she scrutinized the panel of door buzzers, searching for "H. Hawke", a familiar feeling gripped her. The feeling she referred to as 'The Hand of Fate'. Something about this day would prove to be significant, whether it was this meeting, or the one she had just departed from, she was unsure.
She pressed the buzzer, heavy behind the force of her hand. Somewhere within, she heard the ancient sound of a bell tolling. She waited, a seemingly endless moment. Just as she began to think that perhaps there was no one home after all, the door before her opened with the slightest squeak.
"Good afternoon, Miss Corvis. I trust you had no difficulty finding me?"
He was a small, slight, older man. He was every bit as birdlike as his name suggested he might have been, peering curiously at her through square-framed spectacles.
"No trouble. I'm a bit early, it turns out I just happened to be in your neighborhood." Kat replied, slipping on her best 'customer service' face.
"Excellent" the man said softly. "Please, come in."
He conducted her slowly up a flight of stairs to the second floor, and when he swung the door open a clattering of nails on hardwood flooring preceded the exuberant arrival of a large shepherd dog.
"I think he likes you." Hawke remarked, as Bear enthusiastically trotted around Kat's feet, tail bobbing, smiling his dog smile. Kat offered Bear a hand to sniff, before scratching the scruff of his neck.
"I tend to get along pretty well with dogs." Kat smiled.
"I want to thank you for being so accommodating." Hawke began, leading Kat into the flat. "I had surgery a couple of years ago, and Bear needs someone a little more… athletic to wear him out."
"I can definitely do that for you. I've just got a couple of things I'll need you to sign, and I'd love to spend a little time getting to know Bear before we venture out. Sound good?"
"Of course." Hawke was smiling.
Harold allowed Kat to lead him through a stack of paperwork, releases, liability, and the like. He found it interesting that this girl, who arrived on his doorstep in a hoodie and fading denim, had once spent her life moonlighting as a showgirl. He also found it interesting that the way she spoke to him was distinctly different from the way she had spoken to Reese in the diner. Her tone, her cadence, even the timbre of her voice had changed the moment she knew she had business to conduct.
The photographs Finch had tacked up on his board in the library showed an energetic young girl, someone who might have been mistaken for "spunky" and "cute". And it was true, when she engaged him in conversation; she would still have seemed as such. But the moment he disengaged, eyes tracking over the surface of the next form he was being asked to sign, she looked away, and there was a hint of shell-shocked hollowness hiding in her eyes, something she was trying hard to cover with a carefully maintained ambiguous smile. He would not have mistaken this woman for "spunky" any time soon. He recognized this hollowness as something he had carefully erased from his own face on many occasions. He couldn't explain why, but when it was his own expression, peering back at him from a mirror, or a computer screen, or the surface of his tea, it was a bearable reality. In her, it was painful.
He was inwardly grateful that Kat's attention would drift to Bear, or elsewhere in the room while he was signing the various bits of paper that she pushed at him. He was used to signing for his many aliases, but after five or ten quickfire signatures, his reflexes began to rebel and he found himself scrutinizing every page to be sure he hadn't inadvertently allowed a "Finch" to flow out of his pen instead.
Finally, he laid down his pen, adjusted his glasses, and pushed the stack of forms back across the table to Kat, who shuffled through them halfheartedly before tucking them into her bag and assuming her best customer service face once again.
"You're very thorough." Harold remarked, rising to rummage through a drawer for Bear's leash.
"It's definitely worth it." Kat said, half-apologetically.
"I know. I'd almost be tempted to take you on as my regular dog walker, except for the fact that Bear has a pretty good rapport with the other."
"Well… don't count me out til I bring him back."
Harold bent to leash Bear. He rumpled the dog's ears.
"Have fun." He said, and then bent closer "keep an eye on her for us."
The dog yawned in response, then stood, tail wagging expectantly, peering from Finch to Kat.
"Well… Let's go!"
While Kat was busy acquainting herself with Harold and Bear, Reese slipped off to do some work of his own. Harold's plan would keep Kat busy until later in the summer evening, which gave Reese plenty of time to cross town. He deftly negotiated New York City, despite the early evening rush. As he once again passed the Starbucks where he had first observed Kat, he peered through the plate glass windows just long enough to catch a glimpse of Detective Fusco, silently but animatedly arguing with a tall, redheaded barista. Reese smiled, satisfactorily.
"Finch, we've got eyes on the roommate." He murmured, before continuing onward. He was headed for Kat's apartment.
The buzzer was worn, bearing the names "Corvis, K./ Hess, M." Reese ignored the buzzer, arriving at the door just in time to precede a woman laden with grocery bags. He deftly stepped in to swoop the bags out of her arms as she wrestled with her keys. Moments later, as she thanked him, he slipped through the doors himself.
Katherine lived on the fourth floor of a creaking walkup, in an apartment that had no business advertising itself as a two-bedroom. Katherine's door bore a whiteboard with her weekly schedule planned out to the minute (Tuesdays conspicuously blank), and hastily penned inspirational phrases, all punctuated by halfhearted exclamation points. Reese would scrutinize this board later, but first he needed a little information on what might be beyond the door.
The bedroom door wasn't locked, and Reese quietly pushed it open. He was greeted by a room roughly the size of a walk-in closet, with a futon, a bedside table, and a tall chest of drawers all crammed inside. Along the longest wall, just above the futon, hung the posters of every prominent burlesque troupe in town. On the bedside table, Kat's laptop was perched, a vintage 1950's-era box camera sitting on top of it. Reese gingerly moved this and pulled her laptop open.
He began copying files, taking note of the built-in webcam, and then searched the room for any location that could be suitable for a camera of their own. The apartment was old, with a tiny radiator shoved like an afterthought in the corner. Eventually, with a sigh, Reese settled on stuffing it inside the overhead light, an imperfect solution, but sufficient for one night. Finally, he returned to the door, pulled out his own camera, snapped a photo of the whiteboard, and retreated.
If Kat had been honest, she was not as familiar with uptown Manhattan as she would have liked to be. She had always thought about taking long walks across the island, like she once had in Chicago, but had never felt quite as secure about actually doing it. Walking dogs satisfied her urge to keep moving, but she felt much safer with a companion with claws than she would have alone. Nevertheless, she managed to find her way to the nearest dog park (by conveniently trailing another woman, walking a schnauzer).
She spent 30 minutes hurling a tennis ball across the park, watching Bear tirelessly charge after it, only to return, drop the ball at her feet, and sit back, smiling and thumping his tail on the ground. For a dog with as much energy as he had, he was remarkably well-behaved. She did notice that every other dog in the park seemed to be greeted as a new dog, which was a little odd, but she eventually chalked it up to the fact that she wasn't even sure this was where his other walker would take him regularly.
At length, the sun began sinking low between the buildings that surrounded the park, and Kat leashed Bear and began the trek back to Mr. Hawke's apartment.
Harold was waiting for her to return. He welcomed her back into the brownstone, peering, unnoticed, at the street beyond her. There had been a lawn services truck parked at the corner for over an hour, arriving not long after she had initially left. It was an unusual time of day for lawn services, so he had taken notice. When she arrived back, the truck was still there, and a black sedan was driving up the street, parking just behind it.
"Mr. Reese, we may have a problem." Finch had stated to the air, moments before relaxing his own expression and swinging open the door to greet Kat.
"Again, I want you to know how grateful I am that you could be here on such short notice. I was in the middle of tea, would you like some?"
"I can't, I really should be heading home." Kat apologized.
"I imagine it's quite a trek, I'd be happy to give you a ride home." Harold's thoughts were spinning.
"It's fine, I can take the bus." Kat replied, "Unless there's a train stop nearby?"
"Please," he pressed. "You went through the trouble to convenience me, I should do the same for you."
"Well…" Kat waffled. She wasn't especially looking forward to the bus ride home in the dark, especially when she was only peripherally aware of her location.
"We'll have to go out the back." Harold was already herding her through the flat.