The Dead Key

by D. M. Pulley

  Ramone stared at the side of the vacant building flanking the alley and sucked his cigarette. “I wish I knew. She stopped talkin’ to me about it and disappeared. She just told me to keep my eyes open. So I’ve been watchin’, man, and the shit don’t make sense. All these new security measures been put in. They doubled the guards, but ain’t no one there at night anymore. They have this new fancy camera system, but the shit is off half the time. The vault’s bein’ left open at odd hours. It’s almost as if they want to be robbed.”

  “Were they robbed? Has Max been back at the bank?”

  “I keep lookin’. If I get my hands on that girl, I don’t think I’ll ever stop shakin’ her. She’s gone and got herself in a world of shit. She should have listened to me.” He threw his cigarette angrily. “Probably why I ain’t seen her . . .”

  Max was avoiding Tony and Ramone. She didn’t want them getting involved. Beatrice swallowed hard. Between the key, her aunt’s apartment being trashed, the hospital being watched, and the FBI, it was too late for her.

  “How did they find my suitcase?” She’d been careful to lock it and all traces of herself up in a closet on the eleventh floor.

  “Don’t think they did.”

  “But they said they’d found evidence.”

  “Evidence can mean lots of things, especially when a white man’s talkin’. I’ve been watchin’, and they seem desperate.”

  Ramone had been watching for her too, she realized. Maybe he had followed her back to Little Italy. Maybe he’d followed her to the Lancer. Maybe he was hoping she might lead him to Max. What did she really know about Ramone besides the fact that he knew pimps and gangsters and worked security for the bank? She couldn’t trust him or Max. Not anymore.

  “I . . . I should go. Thanks for your help back there, Ramone. If you ever see Max again . . . tell her I said good-bye.”

  “Where do you think you’re goin’? You can’t just walk home from here, you know. Do you even know where you are?”

  Beatrice bit her lip. “Oh, I’m sure there’s a bus stop nearby.”

  “Like hell. Let me call you a cab, okay?” He grabbed her by the arm and led her back toward the lounge.

  “I can’t go back in there!” She shook her arm free and searched the empty street.

  “You’re with me.”

  “No! Just let me stay here. I’ll stay in the alley out of sight, I promise.”

  Ramone dropped her arm and kept walking toward the entrance, shaking his head. “You’re gonna freeze to death.”

  She waited until he vanished around the corner. Heart pounding, she turned and ran to the shadows in the alley away from Ramone and the Lancer Motel.

  CHAPTER 66

  Eleven blocks later, Beatrice finally stopped to catch her breath. She was on Chester Avenue and twenty-five blocks east of the bank. The freezing air burned her lungs. Her hands and feet stung from the cold, and there wasn’t a cab in sight. She hid between the pools of yellow light from the streetlamps, searching the road for a bus, a taxi, anything. Behind her, there was no sign of Ramone or anyone else.

  She hoisted her suitcase and kept moving. Chain-link fences and empty buildings flanked the sidewalk. She rushed past a bashed-in storefront. Broken glass was scattered on the floor inside the abandoned store. There were no open stores, no restaurants, no cars in that part of town. Boarded-up buildings lined the street one after the other. Beatrice paused at a bombed-out row of townhouses and shivered.

  Making her way closer to Public Square, she hoped to find a cab or someplace warm to thaw out. She fantasized about the lobby of the Stouffer’s Inn and the big cushy bed overlooking the alley.

  Then it occurred to her. She had no way to pay for it. After the hotel room the night before, she had less than five dollars cash to her name. All of her money was stuck in her checking account at the bank. In her panic to leave the building, she’d forgotten to get it out. How could she be so stupid?

  The cold wind cut through her coat as it whipped down the empty street. The suitcase banged against her leg as her feet pounded up Chester toward the tall buildings.

  Twenty blocks later, her freezing hands felt as though their skin had been scraped off with a saw blade. Her toes were so numb she could barely walk. The suitcase dangled from the raw meat of her fist until it finally fell to the ground. She doubled over, trying to warm herself. God was punishing her. She shouldn’t have run. Behind her, she almost hoped to see Ramone shaking his fist, but she’d run too far and several streets north. He wouldn’t find her. There were no cars in sight.

  Her dazed eyes circled the street. The buildings had grown taller. The First Bank of Cleveland was only six blocks away. It was the last place she wanted to go, but she had nowhere else. An unlit sign hung over her head. The dead bulbs spelled out “State Theater,” and she remembered reading the name on a plaque on the wall in the tunnels.

  There was a side alley to the left of the entrance. She dragged her suitcase into the narrow passage between the buildings, searching for a doorway, a manhole cover, anything that might lead her out of the cold. Teeth chattering, she stumbled deeper into the alley between snow-covered dumpsters. She debated climbing inside one to get out of the wind, but then at the back of the alley she saw it. A small shed with a blank door was tucked next to a standpipe. It looked remarkably like the one behind Stouffer’s Inn. She reached into her purse and pulled out Max’s keys. Her stiff fingers could barely grip the icy metal, and they tumbled into the snow at her feet.

  Beatrice crouched down and dug through the razor blades of ice to retrieve the keys from the slush. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. A large shadow in a hooded jacket lurched to a stop on the sidewalk fifty paces behind her. It turned in her direction. Beatrice gasped and snatched the keys from the snowbank. They jingled loudly in her shaking hands as she struggled to slide one into the lock. It didn’t fit. The freezing keys stuck to her wet skin as she wrestled another one free. The shadow was moving toward her.

  She shrieked in the back of her throat and forced a key into the lock with two raw hands. The door swung open mercifully, and she threw herself inside.

  The room was pitch black. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it. The warmth of the room sharpened the stabbing pain of frost in her fingers and toes. She breathed hot air into her hands. Something thudded loudly against the door. She jumped away from it with a yelp. Her purse hit the ground as she fell onto something big and metal. The doorknob rattled back and forth.

  “Go away,” she whimpered.

  Thump. Thump. Then the noise stopped.

  Beatrice held her breath, listening until she was certain whoever it was had given up and left. She slowly picked herself up off the metal box she’d landed on and felt around on the clammy ground for her purse. Only then did she realize she had left her suitcase in a pile of snow on the other side of the door.

  “Oh no!” she gasped, spinning toward the door. There was no way she was opening it up again. Whoever it was on the other side probably stole the suitcase anyway.

  A thin thread of light leaked in through the doorframe. As her eyes adjusted, she could just make out the bulky thing on the floor. She reached down. It was a hatch. She felt her way to a handle. The cover swung up, and she knew what lay beneath it. It was a ladder.

  Beatrice felt her way blindly down into the tunnel below. The darkness swallowed her whole. Not even the glimmer of light from the doorframe could reach her at the bottom. She didn’t have a flashlight, or a match, or anything. It didn’t matter. It was warm, and she was hidden from the world above. She wanted to lie down so badly, she no longer cared where she did it. She crouched to touch the ground below her and cringed. It was wet. A drop of water fell in the distance. Then another. She crept slowly toward the sound with her hands held out in front of her.

  The pain in her fingers and toes slowly receded a
s she inched her way down the tunnel. After five minutes in the dark, she could no longer tell if her eyes were open or closed. Her breathing grew more and more thunderous in the infinite black. The dripping sound led her to a fork in the tunnel. She followed it to the right and down another narrow passageway. She felt her way, searching for a dry place to sleep, until she no longer had any idea how far she had gone.

  Hysteria began to take hold in the back of her brain stem. She didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t see. She was growing more disoriented and convinced she would never be able to find her way out. Her pulse quickened to a dizzying pace. Her throat tightened as her breathing grew more rapid. She sucked in air frantically and stifled a scream. She was drowning in a black sea. She was buried alive. She stumbled forward, no longer even holding up her arms to protect her face. Out. She had to get out.

  She was nearly running when her foot caught on something. She yelped as she toppled to her knees. Fetid water seeped into her stockings. The air was close and stale, like rotting leaves. Her hands crawled along the swampy concrete floor, feeling for her purse. Everything was cold and wet, until her fingers grazed something warm and soft. It was a hand.

  CHAPTER 67

  Friday, August 28, 1998

  Iris rushed across the street toward the First Bank of Cleveland, cursing under her breath. Nick had blabbed at work that she was obsessed with the safe deposit boxes. She hadn’t told a soul about the keys, but somehow her former boss and a police officer seemed to know she had them. The only person she had showed them to was a locksmith in Garfield Heights, who didn’t even know her name, but somehow they found out anyway.

  Withholding evidence from a cop was a felony, but if she didn’t give Mr. Wheeler what he wanted, he would press charges and ruin her career. Not that a recommendation would even matter if she had a felony on her record. At the moment, getting another engineering job she would probably hate was the least of her worries. She had to find her way back inside the bank and throw the keys into a dark corner for someone else to find. They belonged there.

  She ran to the rear entrance behind the building and pressed the call button on the squawk box. Nothing happened. She tried again and waited. Damn it. She raced around to the front of the building to see if she could spot Ramone through the windows.

  The main lobby was empty. She rested her forehead against the glass. Maybe she could just slide the keys under the door. As she debated what to do next, her empty stare fell on the black velvet sign in the lobby that listed the names of the important men who used to work there. Slowly the letters came into focus. “C. Wheeler, Board Liaison” was at the bottom of the list. Pressing her nose to the glass, she read the name again. Mr. Charles Wheeler had worked at First Bank of Cleveland.

  Iris spun to face the building across the street, where WRE’s offices sat on the ninth floor. Mr. Wheeler had worked at the bank twenty years ago and now worked a mere two hundred feet away. He could be looking down at her from his corner office windows at that very moment.

  “Oh, shit!”

  Iris ran from Euclid Avenue. If Mr. Wheeler worked at the bank, he might have known the man who died. He may know who killed him. He may know everything. She rounded the corner. A large, black truck was pulling out of the bank’s loading dock. She lurched to a stop and ducked back behind the side of the building. After three harried breaths, she peeked around the corner again and watched the truck pull away. It was unmarked—not even a license plate. It headed east, and the garage door rolled closed.

  It made no sense. Where were the police? Where was the crime scene tape? Where was Ramone?

  A hand grabbed Iris by the arm. She shrieked.

  Detective McDonnell slapped his palm over her mouth. “Come with me,” he ordered, and pulled her to his unmarked police car at the curb.

  Shit. Iris limply dragged her purse and field bag full of evidence behind her. It was a small relief when he opened the front passenger door and not the back, but she’d never been in a police car in her life. The door slammed shut. The detective slid into the driver’s seat and threw the gearshift into drive. Iris wasn’t sure if he’d just arrested her but was too terrified to ask.

  Without a word, the detective drove across Euclid Avenue and turned down Superior toward the Terminal Tower. Iris forced herself to breathe. She studied the dashboard to keep from descending into hysterics. A photograph of a young woman was taped to the console. Iris had seen her picture before. She focused on the photo as the detective made a few more turns and finally parked in an alley. He turned to look at her for the first time since he’d shoved her into his car.

  “That’s my sister.” He motioned to the faded image. “She was a real beauty.”

  Iris nodded, not taking her eyes off the photo. “I’ve seen her before.”

  “You have?”

  Iris scowled, trying to remember where. The colors had been brighter. The photo had been someplace where the sun couldn’t reach it. Ramone.

  “Ramone had her picture in his room next to one of his mom.”

  “The security guard? . . . I guess that wouldn’t surprise me. Max made friends wherever she went.” He seemed to brush it off, but Iris could tell by the way he crinkled his brow at the picture that there was more to the story. “Why aren’t you at work, Iris?”

  “I was fired today. Well, laid off. Things were pretty weird, so I left.”

  “Weird how?” He studied her intently.

  “I don’t know. I guess they were asking a lot of questions. I got your message this morning and . . . I got nervous. What’s going on? Why aren’t the police still in the building?” She couldn’t bring herself to directly ask if he was charging her with a felony.

  “They’ve shut the investigation down. The coroner ruled it an open-and-closed suicide.”

  “What about the bookcase and the lock?” she asked. Mr. Wheeler’s name was spelled out in white letters on a kiosk in the back of her mind. It just felt wrong.

  “Circumstantial evidence. It wasn’t enough to get warrants.”

  “Oh.” Iris frowned and tried not to look at her field bag. “What does this all have to do with me?”

  He studied her a moment and said, “You told me some things about the building. I went and looked for the files where you told me to look, and they were gone.”

  Her mouth fell open. “Gone?”

  “Well, at first I thought you might have been pulling my chain, but I could see shadows of what could have been filing cabinets in the carpet. There were also wheel tracks in the dust on the floors. Someone moved them. Recently.”

  “I saw a black truck.”

  “I’ve seen them too. Someone is clearing out the building. I can’t get a straight answer from the county, and the building owner isn’t taking calls. My boss told me to drop it. They think I’m obsessed with the old bank and finding my sister.” He rubbed his eyes. “Shit, I’m surprised they even let me take the call in the first place.”

  Something was really wrong. None of his words explained why he’d called her, why he’d threatened her about withholding evidence, or why she was in his car. What was worse, he’d just admitted no one was listening to him. “I still don’t understand what this has to do with me.”

  “Someone’s been watching your house. I think someone’s been following you.”

  Her blood stopped cold. “What?”

  “I’m not sure who it is. I started tailing you last week because you were my only lead, and I’m sorry, but something about your story just didn’t seem right.”

  “My story?” Her voice cracked.

  “I don’t think you’re telling me everything,” he said simply. “Now I think you may be in danger. Someone down at the county doesn’t want this investigation to move forward. Someone is moving evidence out of the building. Someone is following you. Now, you can either tell me why, or I can drop you off at your
house and you can take your chances.”

  She opened her mouth, but no sound could escape through the knot in her throat. He watched her carefully as she processed what he’d said. Mr. Wheeler knew about her affair with Nick, her drinking habits, and her late mornings. Mr. Wheeler seemed to know about the keys. She could still feel the squeeze of his hand, but this time it was around her neck.

  Iris slowly reached down to the floorboards and grabbed her field bag and her purse. She fumbled with trembling hands and lit a cigarette. The detective patiently waited and unrolled her window. She blew a shaky stream of smoke out the window and then pulled out the keys.

  CHAPTER 68

  Detective McDonnell took notes as Iris told him the whole story. He nodded while she confessed to stealing keys from Suzanne’s drawer, the vault, and finally the bathroom floor just inches from the rotting corpse. The last confession made the detective stop writing. His eyes filled with disbelief and then rage.

  “You took something from the crime scene? Are you fucking nuts?” He studied her face as if he were actually trying to measure her sanity. “Do you realize that’s a felony? You’ve just destroyed your credibility as a witness. I can’t use any evidence you give me! Even if they did let me reopen the case, I got nothing. Goddammit!”

  He slammed his hand against the dashboard and turned to the window. Her eyes watered and her cigarette dropped from her shaking lips.

  “I was in shock,” she protested as she fumbled for the burning ember in her lap. “Can’t I plead temporary insanity or something? I’d never seen a dead body before. I walked into the room and picked up this key. Then I found the flies and the bones and I threw up. The next thing I knew, the room was filled with cops. I didn’t realize I even had the key in my hand until I was down by my car and it was . . . too late. I was scared. I thought I was going crazy. I’ve been hearing voices. Isn’t there anything I can do to make this right?”