cabinet.
“This is where we keep the keys,” I explain to Detective Canavan, who has followed me through the door to the reception desk and now stands with me behind the counter. The key box is large and metal, mounted to the wall. Inside the box is hanging rack after hanging rack of keys. There are three hundred of them, one spare for every room in the building, plus assorted keys that are for staff use only. They all look basically the same, except for the key to the elevator doors, which is shaped a little like an Allen wrench, and not a typical key at all.
“So to get at them, you have to get back here,” Detective Canavan says. I don’t miss the fact that his gray eyebrows have raised at the sight of all the mail bags, slumped haphazardly on the floor at our feet. The desk is hardly what you’d call the most secure area in the building. “And to get back here, you have to pass the security desk, which is manned twenty-four hours a day.”
“Right,” I say. “The security guards know who is allowed behind the desk and who isn’t. They’re not going to let someone go back here unless they work here. And usually there’s a worker behind the counter, anyway, who wouldn’t let anybody have access to the keys unless he or she was staff. And even then, we make them sign them out. The keys, I mean. But no one signed the elevator key out. It’s just…gone.”
“Yeah,” Detective Canavan says. “You said that. Listen, I got some real crimes—including a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway—that I need to investigate. But please, show me where this elusive key, which could prove that the young lady in question didn’t die accidentally, normally hangs.”
I flip through the hanging racks, thinking that I’m going to kill Cooper. I mean, I can’t believe he talked me into doing this. This guy doesn’t believe me. It’s bad enough he’s seenthat poster of me from Sugar Rush . If there’s anything that can undermine a person’s credibility, it’s a life-sized poster of her in a pastel tiger print mini screaming into a microphone at the Mall of America.
And okay, my conviction that girls don’t elevator surf—particularly preppie, Ziggy-loving girls—may not be what anyone could call rock-solid proof. But what about the missing key? What about THAT?
Except that, as I flip to the rack that normally holds the elevator door key, I see something that makes my blood run cold.
Because there, in the exact place it’s supposed to go—the exact place it wasn’t, just moments ago—is the elevator door key.
8
----
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get that boy
Wait and see me
You’ll wanna be me
When I get him
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get that boy
“That Boy”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Rocket Pop
Cartwright Records
----
He says he’ll be here in five minutes, but he’s in the lobby in less than three.
He’s never been inside the building before, and looks strangely out of place in it…maybe because he isn’t tattooed or pierced like everyone else who passes by the desk.
Or maybe it’s just because he’s so much better-looking than everybody else, standing there with his bed-rumpled hair (although I know he’s been up for hours—he runs in the morning) and his banged-up leather jacket and jeans.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me.
“Hey.” I try to smile, but it’s impossible, so I settle for saying, instead, “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem,” he says, glancing over to the TV lounge, just outside the cafeteria door, where Rachel, who’d been joined by an ashen-faced Dr. Jessup, along with a half-dozen panicked residence hall staffers, are milling around, looking tight-faced and upset.
“Where’d the cops go?” he asks.
“They left,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. “There’s been a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway. There’s just
“This is where we keep the keys,” I explain to Detective Canavan, who has followed me through the door to the reception desk and now stands with me behind the counter. The key box is large and metal, mounted to the wall. Inside the box is hanging rack after hanging rack of keys. There are three hundred of them, one spare for every room in the building, plus assorted keys that are for staff use only. They all look basically the same, except for the key to the elevator doors, which is shaped a little like an Allen wrench, and not a typical key at all.
“So to get at them, you have to get back here,” Detective Canavan says. I don’t miss the fact that his gray eyebrows have raised at the sight of all the mail bags, slumped haphazardly on the floor at our feet. The desk is hardly what you’d call the most secure area in the building. “And to get back here, you have to pass the security desk, which is manned twenty-four hours a day.”
“Right,” I say. “The security guards know who is allowed behind the desk and who isn’t. They’re not going to let someone go back here unless they work here. And usually there’s a worker behind the counter, anyway, who wouldn’t let anybody have access to the keys unless he or she was staff. And even then, we make them sign them out. The keys, I mean. But no one signed the elevator key out. It’s just…gone.”
“Yeah,” Detective Canavan says. “You said that. Listen, I got some real crimes—including a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway—that I need to investigate. But please, show me where this elusive key, which could prove that the young lady in question didn’t die accidentally, normally hangs.”
I flip through the hanging racks, thinking that I’m going to kill Cooper. I mean, I can’t believe he talked me into doing this. This guy doesn’t believe me. It’s bad enough he’s seenthat poster of me from Sugar Rush . If there’s anything that can undermine a person’s credibility, it’s a life-sized poster of her in a pastel tiger print mini screaming into a microphone at the Mall of America.
And okay, my conviction that girls don’t elevator surf—particularly preppie, Ziggy-loving girls—may not be what anyone could call rock-solid proof. But what about the missing key? What about THAT?
Except that, as I flip to the rack that normally holds the elevator door key, I see something that makes my blood run cold.
Because there, in the exact place it’s supposed to go—the exact place it wasn’t, just moments ago—is the elevator door key.
8
----
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get that boy
Wait and see me
You’ll wanna be me
When I get him
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get ’im
Gonna get that boy
“That Boy”
Performed by Heather Wells
Composed by Valdez/Caputo
From the album Rocket Pop
Cartwright Records
----
He says he’ll be here in five minutes, but he’s in the lobby in less than three.
He’s never been inside the building before, and looks strangely out of place in it…maybe because he isn’t tattooed or pierced like everyone else who passes by the desk.
Or maybe it’s just because he’s so much better-looking than everybody else, standing there with his bed-rumpled hair (although I know he’s been up for hours—he runs in the morning) and his banged-up leather jacket and jeans.
“Hey,” he says when he sees me.
“Hey.” I try to smile, but it’s impossible, so I settle for saying, instead, “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem,” he says, glancing over to the TV lounge, just outside the cafeteria door, where Rachel, who’d been joined by an ashen-faced Dr. Jessup, along with a half-dozen panicked residence hall staffers, are milling around, looking tight-faced and upset.
“Where’d the cops go?” he asks.
“They left,” I say, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice. “There’s been a triple stabbing in an apartment over a deli on Broadway. There’s just
Similar Books
