Dead Ringer: Chapter Twenty-Four
Go here to read Chapter Twenty-three.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
If I’d been paying attention, I would have remembered whether or not I locked the door to the Pastoral Care office. I was rattled all the way down to my toes about too many things — my falling-out with Will; Mark’s sudden and unexplained departure; my anxiety about how my boss Fred was going to react when I told him I’d been moonlighting as an assistant to a private investigator; the low thrum of awareness that Rachel Roper’s killer was still out there somewhere; and guilt at neglecting Jenny Malone, who, by the way, was doing great for a kid who’d just had someone else’s heart put into her thirteen-year-old body.
When I returned from my visit with her, I found the office door unlocked, which would be fine if Mavis was back from lunch. But she wasn’t.
Something along the back of my neck twitched. I let the door swing open and stayed in the hall. “Hello?” I called out. Shit, shit, shit. Our file cabinets were crammed full of confidential information. If I’d left the door unlocked, a lot of people’s private concerns could have been put at risk, and my ass would be on the line. And if I hadn’t, then who had been in here? And for what reason? We didn’t keep petty cash. And how had they gotten in?
I stood at the doorway and listened, mentally marking the direction I’d run if I had to, down the long hallway and around the corner to the first door my keycard would let me into, Respiratory Diseases.
The only sounds were the soft ding of a far-off elevator and the quiet whoosh of refrigerated air moving through the HVAC ceiling ducts.
“Hello?” I tried again, and this time I walked inside, leaving the door open behind me. I looked around. Mavis’s desk was maniacally neat, as she’d left it. Fred’s office door was open, the lights off, just as when I’d gone up to see Jenny. Feeling like a third grader, I tiptoed over and peered in, peeking behind his door just in case.
Right then, Mavis returned from lunch. I swiveled around to see her standing by her desk, looking at me. “What are you doing?” I’d expected her tone to be accusatory, but she seemed more perplexed than anything.
“When I came back from my visit with Jenny Malone, I found our main office door unlocked,” I said. “I was afraid someone was in here. Irrational, I know, but I thought I’d better check. I feel terrible. I must have forgotten to lock it.”
“Oh, it’s been sticking a lot lately,” she said, setting her purse on her desk. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But there are all these files in here,” I said, my head spinning. I’d been ready for her to jump down my throat. I couldn’t imagine she’d miss a chance.
She shrugged. “I’ve sent requisition forms to maintenance several times for a new deadbolt, but Fred doesn’t seem worried, so…” Her nonchalance was unnerving.
“Could you please send another requisition? And I’ll double-check to make sure the door is securely locked next time,” I said, but she already had her back to me, dropping in her chair and firing up her computer. I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. “Mavis?”
“Yup, doing it right now,” she said, typing away.
My “Thanks!” was dismissed with a wave of one hand that almost seemed friendly.
I’d left my office door open, as I always did. Whatever it was at the back of my neck twitched again. Something was off. A smell. A feeling. The way the air changes when someone comes into and leaves a room.
I did a quick scan, trying to spot anything out of place. My computer was still off. No file or desk drawers open, the top of my desk as I’d left it, with a stack of grant reporting paperwork on the right, a yellow legal pad with random notes on the left, at the front a blue stapler, a green ceramic mug with “My Blood Type is Coffee” stamped on it that held a handful of pens, a small white bowl full of yellow sticky note pads, and the multi-line telephone. Next to it, the Rolodex, flipped open to the card with the number I’d last looked up. WindDancer.
The leather chair crunched beneath me as I sat and surveyed the room, feeling an agitation I couldn’t tamp down. Everything looked the same, but I couldn’t shake the sense someone had been in here. I opened the large right-hand desk drawer, pulled out my tote bag, and methodically went through it. Wallet still there with the ten dollar bill I’d gotten back as change from Kroger, two credit cards, my North Carolina driver’s license, a faded photo of Sean and me when we were young, back before our mother got sick and things started falling apart. The plaid cloth makeup bag I carry for the few times I actually care enough to wear any, intact with mascara, a small container of powdered taupe eye shadow, and a tube of Summer Rose cheek tint. The small blue zippered bag with the tampons I needed less and less, check. Loose at the bottom were several pens and paper clips, a wad of folded Kleenex, and a scattering of store receipts.
I reached my hand into the side pocket where I kept the notebook I used for Omega Investigations, but it wasn’t there. A slow panic began to rise. In that way you do when your brain won’t accept what it doesn’t find, I snaked my hand back and forth in the pocket, hoping the notebook would magically appear from whatever parallel dimension it might have slipped into. Nothing.
Unbelieving, I took the bag over to the window where there was better light and opened the pocket to look inside. Still nothing.
So. Someone had either broken in or waltzed in through an unlocked door and not bothered anything else but had made a beeline to my office and opened the drawer where I kept my tote bag and had looked in the side pocket in order to steal the notebook where I’d recorded everything I’d done for Omega Investigations?
It seemed utterly implausible, even absurd. But then where the hell was my notebook?
I grabbed my keys. “Mavis, I’ll be back in a minute,” I called as I sailed into the hallway. Maybe it was in my car. On any given morning in Brady traffic, I’d have to hit the brakes hard more than once. It could have slid out of the side pocket, I reasoned, willing the lost item to surface as I rode down in the elevator.
A wall of heat smacked me as I exited the cool lobby of the hospital. The sun gleamed in the trees, and tufts of clouds floated in the pale blue sky. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” I muttered, as I hurried toward my car.
But the notebook wasn’t there. I looked on the front and back floors, under the seats. I even opened the trunk and stuck my head in, thinking I might have gone momentarily crazy and tossed it in there.
“Hey, Blainey.” A man’s voice came from behind, and I jumped and hit the top of my head on the trunk latch.
“Ow!” I muttered, and swung around to see Guy Trubiano standing behind me. “Oh, hi,” I said, putting a hand to my head. “Hi,” I said again, like a nitwit.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
“You didn’t,” I lied, which he clearly knew.
“You bonked your head pretty hard. Lemme take a look.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” I said, trying to wave him off, but he’d already moved to stand in front of me. He tilted my head forward, so that it nearly rested against his chest. I stared down at his white Nikes, feeling the fool while thinking he smelled like something delicious and spicy that had just come out of the oven. His fingers were in my hair, gently feeling around. He pressed lightly, and I whimpered as a hot jolt shot through me.
“There’s no blood,” he said, letting go, “but you’re going to have a nice lump there. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said, gathering myself and taking a step back from him. “It wasn’t your fault. I’m fine.”
“Well, you ought to get some ice on it,” he said. “Should help keep the swelling down. You might take some ibuprofen, too.”
“Thanks,” I said. I slammed the trunk shut and moved past him and around my car to close the driver’s side door.
“I haven’t seen you in the ER for a while,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m on a rotating schedule with some other chaplains. I’ll be there this weekend, though,” I added.
“Ah,” he said. “I’m out of town.”
An awkward silence grew, one cavernous enough that you could drive a truck through it.
Finally, Guy spoke. “Hey, do you wanna get coffee some time?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. I noticed he’d stayed where he was rather than following me to the front of the car, which I appreciated. Maybe a man who understood boundaries?
“Just coffee,” he said. “No pressure. But I’m guessing it’s kind of obvious that I think you’re pretty swell.”
Pretty swell? Had he parachuted in from the 1950s? I had to admit, though, he was pretty swell himself, with his copper-colored hair and big smile and even the serpent tails of two matching dragon tattoos that snaked down both arms. He squinted against the sunlight and tilted his head.
“Sure, let’s do it,” I said.
“Great,” he said, and after a beat, “When?”
“No pressure,” I said, laughing.
He laughed, too. “Just don’t wanna miss my chance,” he said.
I took a good long look at Guy Trubiano — at the slight jut of his hip as he stood looking at me, and the hands that had so expertly explored the wound on my head, at his neck, how had I never noticed before, the man had a really lovely neck for such a big, muscular dude, and the way he smiled halfway while using those dark eyes to see right through me.
“I have some time now,” I said. God. What was I doing?
He looked at his watch. “I have exactly fifteen minutes and seventeen seconds before my shift begins.”
“You’ll need to buy. My wallet is upstairs.”
“Let’s go,” he said, and without thinking, I let him take my elbow and steer me toward the hospital entrance.
In the back of my mind, while noticing I didn’t at all mind Guy’s hand on me, was that missing notebook. Losing it would be a disaster. It contained all my notes, which I didn’t want floating around, and also that I especially needed right now. Everything from details about Rachel to my interactions with Weston was in there. I could recreate a lot of it from memory, but not all of it. I’d jot down details about people’s reactions, which was part of how I recorded things, not just the information but getting the person down on the page. Like when Gina came to Mark’s office for the first meeting about Paolo, I’d put a little note in the margin: “She licks her lips a lot, what’s that about?” Sometimes, these side notes are meaningless. Sometimes, later I’ll see how they fit into a bigger picture, clues that had been dropped, like breadcrumbs, along the way.
Was there a possibility I’d left the notebook at home, that I was getting all spun up about nothing, when the whole time it was sitting innocently on my bedside table or kitchen counter, or minding its own business on the sofa in my den?
But if not, if someone actually had broken into our Pastoral Care office and stolen my notebook, who had done it and why? I could only imagine one person, and that would be whoever took a hypodermic needle, filled it with enough fentanyl to fell a bull elephant, and quietly injected the drug into Rachel Roper’s IV, taking the time after she’d stopped breathing to brush her hair and place her beautiful hands in a horrible mimicry of eternal rest. Someone who had surveilled the Pastoral Care office looking for an opportunity — like a door with a malfunctioning lock — or who had managed to get access to a master key. In other words, a stone-cold killer.
“Are you okay?” Guy asked, and I realized I’d stopped dead in my tracks, holding my breath and staring at the marble floor of the hospital lobby.
I had to find that notebook.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, looking up at him, taking in his confused expression and knowing there was no time to explain. “I have to go.”
I took off running toward the stairs without looking back.