The Dead Key Part 32

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 f.u.c.king 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.

"G.o.d, Brad, I'm so sorry. That's total bulls.h.i.t." 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 c.r.a.p 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 embarra.s.sing 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 gla.s.s, 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 h.e.l.l 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 lucky 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 h.e.l.l 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 "f.u.c.k 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 a.s.surance 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 G.o.d We Trust is the key . . . Inside man lost . . . Mole hunt bust . . . f.u.c.k 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 a.s.s. Iris was going to be sick.

When she left the bathroom, Nick was standing in the hallway outside as if he'd been waiting for her.

"I heard," he said. The sympathy falling from his face made her want to scream.

"I'll be fine! I just can't believe they fired Brad." If Brad couldn't hold on to an engineering job in this world, she had no chance.

Brad's desk was already collapsed into crisp cardboard boxes. The rest of the office, with its matching desks set in neat little rows, didn't seem to notice. She had never belonged there in the first place. Her chest tightened until she could barely breathe.

"I know." Nick frowned. "If I didn't know better, I'd think it had something to do with the old bank."

"What do you mean?"

"Mr. Wheeler's been grilling everyone that worked on the bank building. The drafters, the junior architect, even me. It seems like the only people being laid off are the ones that were involved in the project."

"But doesn't that make sense? The project has been shut down."

"I'm not sure. They've been asking some pretty weird questions. They also confiscated my camera. And that's not all." He lowered his voice. "I went looking for the photos of the bank I'd uploaded to the server last week. This morning they were gone."

Iris scowled and studied the floor. "Mr. Wheeler threatened to press charges if I don't return any items I might have taken from the premises. I have no idea what he was talking about."

"He said something like that to me too. He said if I didn't divulge all 'pertinent information,' I'd be fired. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm next."

"What did he want to know?"

"He said he knew we were friends and wanted to know if you'd mentioned anything unusual about the bank."

Iris glared at Nick. "He knew we were friends?"

"Yeah. We sometimes go to lunch together. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone seems to know a lot more than that." She stared pointedly at him.

He scowled, catching her meaning. "What? How?"

"I have no idea. I figured you must've told someone about us. 'Cause I sure as s.h.i.t didn't."

"Hey." He held up his hands in self-defense. "I've got more to lose than you on this type of thing. I could get nailed with s.e.xual hara.s.sment in the workplace. I didn't say a word."

She supposed that might be true. "So, what did you tell him?"

"Just the stuff you'd told me about how the building was full of strange files and desks full of paper."

"Did you tell him anything else?" She clutched her field bag a little tighter.

"Just that you were really curious about the safe deposit boxes in the bas.e.m.e.nt." He chuckled, nudging her shoulder. "It was like you were obsessed or something."

"What?"

She almost hit him in the head with her field bag. He'd painted her as a crazed thief. Worse yet, she sort of was a crazed thief.

She headed for the elevators. "I've got to go. Just tell everyone that I had a breakdown and couldn't stop crying, okay? It's not like I have work to do anyway."

"Are you okay?" His eyebrows were furrowed with concern as she stepped into an elevator cab. "Was it something I said?"

"No, it's not you. I just-I just can't be here right now. I'll call you later, okay? Thanks for covering for me."

The doors slid closed. She paced back and forth in the little steel box until the doors opened to the main lobby. It was only 10:00 a.m. She wasn't supposed to meet the detective at the bank for four more hours, but she needed answers now. Across Euclid Avenue, the abandoned bank was waiting.

CHAPTER 64.