The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  Stairs were always stacked one on top of the other in a building. Maybe there were more of them. She searched the dark-wood panels cladding the triangular section of wall under the stairs until she found it. There was a door-sized panel cut into the wood beneath the upper landing. It was perfectly flush with the surrounding wall and the tight seam along its edges was barely visible. She ran her hands along the perimeter and found nothing—no handle, no hinges. When she pushed on it, a latch clicked. The panel swung open to a small service closet.

  “Brad! I found something!” she called over her shoulder as she stepped into the hidden passageway and saw a metal service door marked “Utilities.” She tried the handle. It was locked.

  “Hey there, Sherlock! You found it!” Brad said, trotting up to her side.

  “It’s locked.”

  “You got the keys.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Iris fumbled in her field bag while Brad looked over her shoulder into her tangled mess of pens and fast-food wrappers. She could feel him smirking as she struggled to find them. The keys Brad had given her were buried in a side pocket next to her cigarettes. It took five tries, but she finally managed to wrench the door open.

  “After you,” he said, swinging his arm to the door with a bow. Brad was a dork.

  Iris blindly felt inside the wall until she found a small light switch. A bare bulb at the bottom of the stairs clicked on. The stairs to the basement were steep, with open metal grates for treads. Iris stepped down nervously as they wobbled beneath her. A nest of spiderwebs hit her face before she reached the last step, and she struggled not to screech like a girl. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a narrow passageway. Pipes and conduit raced overhead down the narrow hallway and out of sight.

  “These must be the tunnels,” Brad said from behind her.

  “Yeah, but how are we supposed to know where they’re going?” Iris asked, peering into the dark.

  “They left breadcrumbs.” He pointed to a small plaque on the wall next to the stair that read “First Bank of Cleveland.” He clicked on his flashlight and began heading down the tunnel. “Let’s see where this takes us.”

  Iris nodded reluctantly and followed him down the narrow hall, ducking her head so as not to hit the tangle of pipes and wires overhead. Through puddles, falling insulation, and dangling wires, they walked for what seemed like five city blocks until they came to a larger room. The walls were old brick, and the brick ceiling vaulted over them like a Roman aqueduct.

  “Wow!” Iris said, staring up at the ceiling.

  “It’s a junction,” Brad said. “Look at all of the different paths.”

  Six branches headed out of the cavern. Small plaques were set over each entrance. “Terminal,” “Arcade,” “East 9th” the signs read.

  “Where should we go?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure I’m up for any more spelunking.” Iris had her fill of cobwebs and dust, and she was certain she could hear mutant sewer rats scurrying in the distance. “I’m exhausted, and I still have a ton of work to do.”

  “Aw, where’s your sense of adventure?” Brad slugged her in the arm.

  “Maybe next time.” She felt like a pathetic female but was too tired to care. Voices were still whispering in the back of her mind.

  “I’ll be right behind you. I just have to see a little more.”

  Iris turned and retraced her steps back to the metal staircase and the naked lightbulb and up to the lower banking level. She swatted at the cobwebs with a squeamish shudder. On her way across the carpet toward the vault, she paused at the deposit clerk’s desk. It was where a patron would have requested access to their deposit box.

  Ramone had said that when the bank closed they lost all of the keys to the vault. The last person to see them probably worked right there. She leaned over the counter. The drawers had locks, and there was a small safe. Every door was flung open, and everything was picked clean. There was no nameplate on the counter and only one chair behind the desk.

  Brad would be returning any moment, and she’d hate for him to catch her snooping. She hurried back to the round entrance that led to the vaults. But it wasn’t there. There was a crescent moon of light where the doorway should be, and then it went black with a loud thud. Someone had swung the vault door open, blocking the round portal to the lower lobby where she stood. She was locked out.

  “Hey! Ramone! Open up!” she shouted, banging on the steel vault door blocking her way. There was no response. “Seriously?”

  The way back into the vault room from the lower lobby where she stood was through the round portal. The only other option was to go up the marble stairs to the main lobby above, walk down the hall to the rear of the building, and take the service stairs back down. Iris ran the entire way, determined to give Ramone a piece of her mind. She’d left half her notes and field bag on the other side of the damned round door.

  She slammed through the service stairwell door into the vault room, yelling, “Hey, Ramone!”

  A flash of a blue shirt turned a corner at the end of the vault corridor and was gone.

  “Ramone!”

  She stormed past the vault toward Ramone’s little bedroom. “Ramone, why did you . . . ?”

  The room was empty. The service elevator was whirring loudly to her right. He must have ducked out again. “What the hell?” she asked the empty room.

  She staggered back to the vaults to collect her things. “I really need to quit smoking,” she panted.

  Her lungs felt like two black tea bags after her mad sprint. She bent down to pick up her clipboard when something shiny caught her eye.

  A ring of keys was hanging from one of the safe deposit doors.

  CHAPTER 44

  Iris stepped into the vault and touched one of the keys hanging from the lock of Box 249. She paused and looked back out into the empty corridor. Someone had been in the vault while she and Brad were down in the tunnels. Someone in a blue shirt. It must have been Ramone. He always wore a blue shirt, and after her freak-out the night before he was probably just avoiding her.

  A chill ran through her as she tried to turn the key. It didn’t move. She tried harder. It wouldn’t budge. She yanked the key to pull it out of the lock, but it was stuck. She twisted the key, then jiggled it. Finally, she simply unwound the ring from the one stuck key to release the others. There were twelve identical bronze keys on the ring. Letters were engraved on the heads. She flipped through them—“D,” “E,” “O.” “First Bank of Cleveland” was etched around the perimeter of each face.

  A loud banging came from the lower lobby. It was Brad on the other side of the vault door.

  “Iris? Iris, open up! This isn’t funny!”

  Shit. She scrambled to open the doorway. She pressed the red button, and the round steel door began to swing, opening the entrance to the lower lobby. The keys were still in her hand. It was too late to put them back without an explanation. She squeezed them in her fist. Brad would surely confiscate them and turn them over to Mr. Wheeler or the owners. End of story. Or she could ask Ramone about them first and then hand them over herself. It wouldn’t make much difference. Besides, what Brad didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. The second before he came barreling through the opening she stuffed them into the pocket of her field bag.

  “Hey, what gives?”

  Iris held up her empty hands. “I have no idea. I had to run up the stairs and back down again to get over here. I just made it back down, and I’m kinda pissed. I think I saw Ramone.”

  Brad grunted and hoisted his field bag back onto his shoulder. “We should go see how your computer’s coming along.”

  Iris gathered up her notes. “So how were the tunnels?”

  “Amazing. They go on for blocks. I think that junction is under Euclid Avenue.”

  “Did you find Jimmy Hoffa?” Iris asked, trying not to le
t her bag jingle with stolen keys as they walked down the hall.

  “No, but I found some strange stuff—clothes and food wrappers. It looks like somebody’s living down there or something.”

  “Ramone said the homeless sometimes get in the building through the tunnels.” She tried to sound casual even though the disembodied breathing still rasped in the back of her head. They stepped onto the elevator and headed back up to the personnel office.

  “The homeless? Why didn’t you say something before?” He glared at her. “Maybe you shouldn’t be working here alone.”

  “I’m a big girl. Ramone’s here.”

  She didn’t want it getting back to Mr. Wheeler or anyone else that she was too scared to do the job. They might send her back to the office. A man would never complain about this sort of safety concern, and she knew it.

  “I think that you should keep a radio with you from now on in case you need Ramone, okay?”

  “Need Ramone for what?” Ramone stepped out of Linda’s office on the third floor to greet them.

  “In case I need help . . . like opening a door or something. Brad wants me to have a radio,” Iris said, avoiding his eyes. She needed to find a way to get him alone to ask about the keys.

  Ramone didn’t argue. “I think I have a couple sets. I’ll bring one up.”

  “I’ve been keeping Ramone pretty busy this morning,” Arnie chirped from behind a giant monitor. “We’ve had trouble getting the power to work. We had to patch into the next office.”

  “You’ve both been up here all morning?” Iris turned back to the guard, trying not to sound alarmed.

  “Yeah.” Ramone rolled his eyes in Arnie’s direction.

  “But . . .” Iris bit her tongue to keep from saying more, especially after all of that big-girl tough talk. She glanced over at Brad, but he was oblivious to everything but installing AutoCAD on the new computer. Someone had been down in the vault, and it wasn’t Ramone. Now she had their keys. She swallowed hard. Ramone would get her a radio. She would put the keys back. It would be fine. They were just keys. Someone from the real estate holding company might have had a set. It was their building after all, but it didn’t make sense that they had run off when she surprised them in the vault. Iris mentally wrung her hands while Brad explained the CAD layering system.

  The lunch hour came and went without mention. Brad, Arnie, and Ramone finally vacated the third floor around 3:00 p.m., leaving Iris alone with a glowing monitor, a two-way radio, and twenty sheets of hand sketches that needed to be digitized by Monday.

  The dead calm in the personnel office was only broken by the soft clicking of the keyboard and mouse. Every fifteen minutes she checked in with Ramone. He was starting to get annoyed. After two hours on the edge of her seat, she couldn’t take it anymore. She grabbed her field bag and Ramone’s radio and headed back down to the vault.

  She pressed the call button and rested her forehead on the service elevator doors. Iris tried to remember what the intruder had looked like. Blue shirt and darkish hair, but she’d only seen him from the back.

  This was crazy. The intruder might have come back. She gripped the radio tighter, debating whether or not to buzz Ramone. She had no idea how she would explain what she was doing in the vault. She was lost in thought when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  Iris screamed.

  “Jesus, Iris! Take it easy!” It was Nick. He backed away with his arms up to guard his face. He still had a faint black eye from the last time he snuck up on her.

  “Nick!” She swatted him in the arm. “You scared the living shit out of me! Stop doing that!”

  “Sorry! You’re right.” He laughed. “One of these days you’re liable to kill me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What do you think I’m doing here? I came looking for you.” He eyed her up and down.

  She looked like shit. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail. Her shirt was covered in black stuff. She hadn’t slept in two days and couldn’t even remember if she had on clean underwear.

  “I—I thought our date was later,” she stammered. “I need to go home and shower.”

  The word “shower” made his eyebrows lift and his eyes wander over her body as if he were sudsing her up right then and there. She hit him in the arm. “Hey, I thought we were going on a real date!”

  “Of course! Do you have beer?”

  “Huh?”

  “At your house. Do you have beer at your house?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Well, I’ll need something to keep me entertained while you get ready.”

  “I just . . .”

  The elevator doors opened. She needed to go back to the vault and return the keys, but she didn’t want to explain the whole thing to Nick. Mostly, she didn’t want to admit she’d taken the keys at all. Wretched guilt gnawed in the pit of her stomach. If Nick knew, she might get in trouble at work for slacking off and stealing from the building. She had no idea if he could keep a secret or if he would keep one for her. Besides, the whole thing sounded so stupid.

  “Okay.”

  Nick followed Iris home to her new apartment three blocks from his house. She chain-smoked the whole way.

  “Don’t you have to go home first?” she asked nervously as he got out of the car.

  “What for? Hey, nice place. Good location.” He winked at her and sauntered up to her front door.

  She fumbled with the key, feeling his hot stare all over her. She couldn’t believe she was inviting him into her house. Her jaw muscles tightened in determination. She would be damned if he talked her into bed again before at least buying her a steak. It wasn’t dignified or ladylike or whatever it was supposed to be.

  “Thanks! Well, here it is. Beer’s in the fridge. Help yourself,” she called over her shoulder and then ran into her bedroom.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” he called through her closed door. She heard him stumble around the forest of unpacked boxes, fighting his way to the fridge.

  This was a terrible idea. She hadn’t unpacked. The house was a mess. She was standing there naked and only then realized her bath towel was across the hall in the bathroom. She didn’t own a robe. She lived alone, so what was the point? Now she was naked and trapped in her own bedroom.

  “I haven’t unpacked yet,” she replied loudly, and searched the room for something to cover herself. Paper bag? Pillowcase? The room was littered with useless objects. It was only three steps from her door to the bathroom, and the kitchen was around a corner and out of sight. She cracked open her bedroom door and searched for her uninvited houseguest. He was in the kitchen, searching for a bottle opener. She could hear him opening and closing drawers. Perfect. She flung the door open and made a naked dash for the bathroom.

  She made it. She slammed the door closed and locked it. Iris had just successfully streaked through her own apartment. She couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” His voice was way too close to the door.

  “Nothing!” she sang out, and turned on the hot water and the ceiling fan so that any further conversation would be drowned out. She proceeded to take the longest shower of her life. She shaved her legs. She deep-conditioned her hair. She was debating scrubbing the shower walls when she heard a pounding on the door.

  “Hey! Did you drown in there?”

  Iris shut off the water and the fan. She wrapped a towel around herself and cracked open the door. “Sorry. I guess I was pretty dirty.” She winced. “I mean, I had a long day.”

  Nick burst out laughing. “Dirty, huh? Well that little sneak preview was pretty filthy, I have to say.”

  Iris’s eye bulged in their sockets. He’d seen her running to the bathroom. Now he was nearly in hysterics.

  “You sneak!” she protested, blushing from head to toe. She swung the bathroom door
open and slugged him in the arm. “You’re not even supposed to be here. Why couldn’t you just pick me up like a normal person so we could go have a normal date?”

  Nick backed away, chuckling, as she smacked at him in protest. Iris didn’t realize until it was too late that he had backed into her bedroom. Her hair was dripping from the shower, and she was wrapped in a ratty towel that was barely big enough to cover her ass. It was a trap. She took a step back toward the door.

  “Hey. Not so fast.” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her against his warm, soft shirt. He gazed down at her, then kissed her softly on the lips. She couldn’t help but kiss him back. His fingertips left a trail of fire down her back. He grazed her neck with his lips, and she gasped involuntarily. Before her head could catch up to his hands, her towel was on the floor.

  CHAPTER 45

  Iris woke the next morning to an empty apartment. All that was left of Nick was an empty pizza box and a handful of beer bottles. She’d chased him out in the middle of the night. She had to work in the morning and was far too uneasy to actually sleep next to him after he’d seduced her again. And again. She rolled over on the dirty sheets and buried her head under her pillow. The bed would have to be burned.

  On the way to her car, she decided to bring coffee and doughnuts over to Nick as a sort of peace offering after throwing him out so abruptly. He couldn’t be too angry with her after their night together. At least she hoped not.

  She stopped by the coffee shop across the park and drove the three blocks to Nick’s little townhouse. A sweet old couple was out walking a dog. Iris smiled at them before climbing up his stairs. She knocked and waited. She knocked again, trying to balance two cups of coffee and a bag of fried dough. On the third knock, a disheveled Nick answered the door in boxer shorts.