The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  “Me? Uh, no . . . These are some of Doris’s things. I thought she might like them.” Beatrice’s breathing was almost back to normal.

  “Why are you in such a rush?”

  “There was a car out there . . . Some guys shouted something. I guess I got scared.”

  “Can’t say I blame you. You shouldn’t be wandering around by yourself at night.”

  “I know. I just wanted to get to the hospital before visiting hours are over.” Beatrice glanced back toward the street. She could no longer see the car. “I should really be going.”

  Gladys looked down at Beatrice’s suitcase again. “You know, that reminds me. I hate to bother you, honey, but Mick asked me to clean out Doris’s locker a few days ago on account of the fact that—bless her heart—she’s probably not coming back to work. Do you have a second?”

  Beatrice nodded reflexively and followed Gladys back to the service area, where Doris must have clocked in every day.

  “I know this is terribly awkward, but can I give you her things?”

  “Uh, sure. Of course. I’ll make sure Doris gets them.” Beatrice hadn’t planned on ever going back to the hospital, but there was nothing else she could say.

  “There wasn’t much. She just kept a few emergency items.” She handed Beatrice a zippered bag the size of a medium purse. She patted Beatrice’s gaunt cheek gently. “If I don’t see you again, good luck to you, honey.”

  CHAPTER 61

  Friday, August 28, 1998

  “Iris.”

  She was hiding in the bathroom on the fifteenth floor. The handle of a brown leather suitcase was heavy in her hand. The lights were out, and all she could hear was her own breathing.

  Until the voice whispered again, “Iris!”

  “What!” Iris hissed back.

  The voice was coming from the air shaft. Iris reached out and touched the iron grate. It was loose and it teetered a bit. She jerked her hand back, but it was too late. The metal fell from the wall with a crash that seemed to echo forever. Flashlights slashed through the dark. She could hear hard footsteps in the hall. Iris had no choice. She dropped the suitcase and reached inside the black cavern, feeling blindly until her hand fell on the rung of a ladder. She gripped it hard and pulled her torso and legs into the duct. Voices were coming from the office next door. She began climbing up the ladder one iron rung at a time.

  A flashlight bounced off the sheet-metal walls of the mechanical chase. She hugged the ladder and tried to disappear in a shadow. There was a slatted louver overhead. Thin slices of the muted night sky floated just beyond her reach. Something tickled her neck. It was buzzing. She brushed it off. Then there was another and another, until hundreds of flies were crawling up her neck and in her ears. Screaming and clawing at herself, she let go of the ladder. She fell into the blackness.

  Iris screamed herself awake. She sat up, clutching her sheets until the falling feeling in her stomach had passed. She shuddered and buried her face in her hands. She could still see slats of night sky racing away from her as she plummeted down the air shaft.

  The clock on the floor read “5:30” and the a.m. button was lit. Perfect. She was up before dawn on the day she was getting fired. She considered going back to sleep, but thoughts of flies forced her out of bed and into the kitchen.

  A cigarette and cup of day-old coffee later, it was still only 6:00 a.m. She curled up on the couch and watched the sky grow paler, until the sodium streetlights flickered and then went dead. She was getting fired in two hours and had no idea what she would do with herself. Maybe she would just disappear. No one would care if she did—not really. Nick and Ellie might feel a slight twinge, but their lives would go on without their missing so much as a beer. There was only one person who would really give a shit.

  Iris lit another cigarette and picked up the phone.

  Her mother answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mom, it’s Iris.” Tears flooded her eyes at the sound of her mother’s voice.

  “Iris? Honey, are you all right? It’s so early.”

  “I knew you’d be up. I had a bad dream.”

  “Oh, sweetie. No. I wish I could give you a big hug. What’s wrong?”

  “I . . .” Iris wanted to confess it all—the dead body, the keys, the voices, getting fired, her bad drinking habits, her pathetic love life, her loneliness. She wanted to climb onto her mother’s lap and be rocked and held like when she was a girl. Her mother would hold her until she felt better. But Iris knew that woman had her own loneliness and would never let go. She would insist Iris come back home, where her life would be filled up with her mother’s nagging complaints about her father, gossip about the neighbors, thoughts on the latest TV show, overbearing advice, and endless chatter, chatter, chatter about nothing. Iris couldn’t breathe. She swallowed a sob.

  “I don’t know. Just nerves, I guess. Is Dad around?”

  “I think he’s asleep.” Her mother’s voice fell with disappointment. “I’ll go check.”

  One minute later she heard another receiver get picked up. It was still her mother. “Can he call you back, honey?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  Iris knew he wasn’t calling back. He never did. He expected her to stand on her own two feet and didn’t want to hear her sniveling on the phone. She knew what he would say anyway. He would tell her to come clean and go to the police. There would be other jobs. She should call the detective once her last day at work was done. Iris stiffened her chin, mind made up.

  “That’s fine. Everything’s fine, Mom. Don’t worry about me. Love you.”

  “I love you too, honey. Call anytime.”

  Iris climbed into the shower and let the hot water run down her face. When she closed her eyes, she was back in the air shaft. She pressed her forehead against the shower wall. The nightmares had to stop. She had to get rid of those keys.

  “Never steal from a graveyard. You might disturb the ghosts,” the old man had said.

  Iris walked naked and dripping from the bathroom toward her closet. The blinking light of her answering machine stopped her in her tracks. Someone must have called while she was in the shower. She hit the button.

  “Iris, this is Detective McDonnell. I’m afraid I’m going to need to ask you a few more questions. Meet me at the bank this afternoon at 2:00 p.m.” There was a long pause, and he added, “Don’t mention anything about the investigation or the bank to anyone—not even your employer. And Iris, I’m sorry to remind you that withholding evidence from a police officer is a felony.”

  The detective’s last words were like bullets. She stood frozen, listening to the dead air of her machine until it beeped off. He knew she was hiding something. Her eyes darted around her apartment. The police could break in while she was at work if they had a warrant. There was evidence of her thieving everywhere. Scrambling, she gathered up all the artifacts from the bank she’d brought into her home. The keys, her notes from talking with Suzanne, the article about the city’s default, her field sketches, Beatrice’s file, the files from the suitcase, even the shorthand book. She threw them all into her field bag and zipped it shut.

  CHAPTER 62

  Iris was going to throw up. Withholding evidence was a felony. She lit a cigarette with shaking hands and told herself that the detective was giving her another chance.

  A car horn beeped behind her and she stepped on the gas.

  Somehow she was supposed to meet the detective in the middle of a workday without discussing it with anyone. How would she manage that? Maybe she wouldn’t have to manage shit. Maybe she would just get fired and walk out. Maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. Or maybe the whole meeting was just the detective’s way to get her alone and arrest her privately. She pressed her forehead to the steering wheel and waited for a light to turn green.

  When she skulked into the office fifteen minutes early, it
was as if nothing had changed. The bank and the dead body were all just a bad dream. She found her way back to her cubicle and wished to be a nameless, faceless engineer again. The desk was barren. The computer was turned off. It was as if she had never existed. She settled into her chair and stared at the keyboard, wondering whether she should even bother to turn the machine on. She had no work to do.

  She peered out at the sea of desks, searching for a friendly face. Nick was nowhere in sight. She scanned the windows into the offices surrounding her. Mr. Wheeler was lecturing someone seated in front of his desk. It was a female. She was waving her hands. Iris’s eyes widened a little when she saw Amanda spring up from the chair and storm out of the office. The rest of the doors were closed.

  Brad was sitting at his workstation as usual. She could see only his back, but his head was in his hands. Iris scowled at him for a solid minute. He didn’t move. Something was wrong. She walked over to his desk.

  “Hey,” she said in a low voice to the top of Brad’s head.

  He glared at her. His hair was rumpled, and his eyes were red. Brad, the perfect proto-engineer who never had a hair out of place, was a mess. He said nothing.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been let go,” he said, as if he was struggling not to throw his computer across the room.

  “You? Are they crazy?” Iris gasped loudly.

  He shot her a deadly look.

  She lowered her voice. “I don’t understand. You work so hard. You’ve got seniority. What happened?”

  Brad stared at his keyboard. “I have no fucking idea.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Nothing. They asked me some questions about the bank and then told me the project was shutting down and they needed to ‘reallocate resources.’ ” He slammed a drawer shut.

  “God, Brad, I’m so sorry. That’s total bullshit.” She kept her eyes on the carpet, not wanting to gawk at him in his agony.

  “Iris, we need to have a word,” a voice said behind her.

  Iris flinched.

  It was Mr. Wheeler. Her stomach dropped to the floor. She knew what was coming, but adrenaline came pounding through her veins anyway. She nodded meekly and followed him to his office. She glanced furtively out into the cubes for any sympathetic faces. No one looked up at her.

  Once the office door was closed, Mr. Wheeler sat down behind his desk.

  “Iris, I’m sure you’ve heard by now that WRE has been forced to face some harsh realities,” he began.

  Iris nodded and stared at his polka-dotted necktie as he explained the recent staffing changes. It was corporate crap about maximizing efficiency. She silently wished he would just cut to the chase and fire her already.

  “So I’m sorry to inform you that we have eliminated your position for the time being.”

  There it was. She’d never failed at anything in her life until that moment. She struggled to keep her back stiff and straight so she wouldn’t collapse like a dead fish.

  “I understand. Thank you for this opportunity,” she managed without crying.

  “We still have a few more questions if I may. You were involved in a very sensitive project and considering the way it ended . . .” Mr. Wheeler’s voice trailed off.

  “You want me to keep the police investigation confidential, right?”

  Mr. Wheeler smiled with his lips but not his eyes. “It would be terribly embarrassing to the company and our client if the details of the crime scene went public.”

  Iris nodded. “I understand.” She wasn’t eager to explain to a reporter how she’d found the dead body anyway. She had enough problems.

  “We also must insist that you turn over to us your notes and drawings of the building and anything else you may have taken from the premises.” His eyes narrowed. “If we discover that you have retained sensitive materials or any property that rightfully belongs to our client, we will have no choice but to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.”

  His last words hung in the air. The office seemed to shrink around her. She dropped her eyes to the ground so panic wouldn’t register all over her face. Iris slowly knit her eyebrows together as if confused. Truthfully, she was. How could Mr. Wheeler, the detective, or anyone else possibly know what she had found in the building?

  There was a soft knock on the window next to the door. Iris turned to see the creepy gray-haired partner who had once stopped her in the hallway. He looked right at her and grinned. She could have sworn that he winked at her. Before she could react, he was motioning to Mr. Wheeler through the glass, pointing at his watch. Mr. Wheeler nodded back and waved him away.

  It took Iris a moment to re-collect her thoughts. Mr. Wheeler wanted her to return anything she’d taken from the bank. Or else.

  “Of course,” she said calmly. “I won’t need my notes anymore, and I can’t think of anything else.”

  “We’re going to need you to clean your desk out by the end of the day. I’m sorry, but it’s standard procedure.”

  “Okay.” Iris bit her lip hard and tried to look depressed rather than scared.

  Mr. Wheeler stood and extended his hand for a perfunctory handshake, and she took it obediently.

  “Thank you, Iris.”

  Mr. Wheeler held her hand in his a bit too long. He stood uncomfortably close and squeezed her palm hard before letting go. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

  Iris instinctively took a step backward as soon as she was released. He held the door, and she felt his eyes follow her all the way back to her desk.

  CHAPTER 63

  Iris had until the end of the day to turn over all of the items she’d taken from the building. She opened her field bag and peered inside. First, she pulled out her field sketches and arranged them neatly in a pile on her desk. There were the keys Brad had given her. There was the skeleton key and the elevator key from Ramone. Those were easy.

  Back down in her field bag, several other keys remained, along with Beatrice’s file and the files from the brown suitcase. She couldn’t give them to both Mr. Wheeler and the detective. She made up her mind then and there to throw the keys and everything else into a random dumpster, where they’d never be traced back to her. Not a random dumpster, she corrected herself, the stinking dumpster in the bank. That was where the keys belonged, and the ghosts wanted them back.

  Iris shook her head. She was nuts.

  She needed some air. She needed to think. She needed to get the hell out of the cubicle farm. Iris pulled herself out of her chair and strolled as casually as she could to the ladies’ room with her giant field bag and purse on her arm.

  The bathroom was deserted. Iris caught sight of her hopeless face in the mirror. She was twenty-three years old and officially unemployed. She couldn’t afford to be a felon too. She would have to come clean with Detective McDonnell. The keys would have to go to him, and only him.

  She bent down to splash cold water on her face. When she looked back up, Amanda was walking in.

  “Iris. I just heard the news. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.” Iris turned into a bathroom stall to avoid any more small talk and shut the door.

  “There are always other jobs,” Amanda continued.

  “Yep.” Iris sank onto the toilet, wishing the busybody would just go away.

  “Of course, you’ll need a recommendation . . . and to be honest, I’m not sure you’re going to get one.”

  Iris didn’t say anything. She was hardly listening.

  “Well, it’s not like you were a model employee, Iris.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you really think no one noticed that you’re constantly late? That you’re hungover half the time? That you had an affair with a coworker?”

  Iris gasped. “What?” She slammed opened the door to the stall.

  “You’d be l
ucky to get a referral. I suggest you give Mr. Wheeler whatever it is he wants. He has connections all over the country.”

  “I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about,” was all Iris could manage. So that was what Amanda was yelling about in Mr. Wheeler’s office. He’d put her up to this. Iris wanted to add a big “fuck you” but couldn’t muster the breath. The air had been sucked out of the room.

  “Have it your way.” Amanda turned on her three-inch heels and left.

  Iris slammed the door to the stall and sank onto the toilet with her head between her knees. They knew about Nick. They’d noticed her late mornings. Mr. Wheeler could ruin her career if she didn’t cooperate, but if she handed the keys and everything else over, she had no assurance he wouldn’t just call the police anyway.

  She opened her field bag again. A manila folder was sitting next to the vault keys. Maybe the file would be enough to appease Mr. Wheeler, at least for the time being. It wasn’t like he could even read the notes. She lifted it out and skimmed her shorthand translations again.

  “In God We Trust is the key . . . Inside man lost . . . Mole hunt bust . . . Fuck the mayor . . . Move the accounts . . . Teddy and Jim . . . Tell Max to stay on vacation . . . A bank’s only as good as its records . . . The meek shall inherit the earth.”

  It was all gobbledygook anyway. Iris flipped to the next page, where she’d tried to decipher pages of the other files. “Eleanor Finch: 25,000 . . . Rhonda Whitmore: 50,000.”

  The words of the last file were in English clear as day but still made no sense. They were letters to safe deposit box owners, explaining that their unclaimed possessions would be handed over to the state if they didn’t pay up.

  Iris stuffed the papers back in her bag. She would hand the files over with her sketches, she decided. If anyone asked about it, she would just say she grabbed them off a messy desk by mistake. She stood up and straightened her unironed pants. Amanda was right. She had been a terrible employee. She deserved to be fired. What was worse, she had failed to find Beatrice and was about to hand the last traces of her away to save her own ass. Iris was going to be sick.