Skin Deep (Page 19)

I showed her the door handle, not really certain what she was looking for. Ngozi had me pull the door open to look at the other side. The door was heavy, made to swing shut after anyone who left. Once I was outside, I couldn’t open it again. Liza had to unlock it with a key card.

“All right, Leeds,” Liza said as I turned the camera to show the strike plate on the inside of the door frame. “You—”

“Bingo,” Ngozi said.

I froze in place, then looked back at the door frame. Ignoring the rest of what Liza said, I knelt down, trying to see what Ngozi had.

“See those dust marks?” Ngozi asked.

“Um . . . no?”

“Look closely. Someone put tape here, then pulled it off, leaving behind enough gum to attract dust.”

Liza stooped down beside me. “Did you hear me?”

“Tape,” I asked. “Do you have some tape?”

“Why—”

“Yo,” J.C. said from inside the room, holding up a roll of the translucent industrial tape that lay on the counter.

I brushed past Liza and fetched the tape—J.C. had to set down his imaginary copy before I could see the real one—then rushed back. I placed a strip of it over the strike plate, stepped out of the room, and let the door slide closed.

It thumped into place. That thump covered the lack of a click. When I pushed on the door, it opened without needing help from the inside.

“We know how they got into the room,” I said.

“So?” Liza asked. “We knew they’d gotten in somehow. How does this help?”

“It tells us it was likely someone who visited the day before the body went missing,” I said. “The last visitor, perhaps? They would be in a position to tape the door with the least chance of discovery during the day.”

“I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if the door were taped,” Liza said.

“Would you have? With the key card unlocking, you never have to turn or twist anything. It’s natural for you to push the door and have it just swing open.”

She thought about it for a moment. “Plausible,” she admitted. “But who did it?”

“Who was last into this room that day?”

“The priest. I had to let him in. The others had gone home for the evening, but I stayed late.”

“Had a FreeCell game that you just had to finish?” I asked.

“Shut up.”

I smiled. “Did you recognize the priest?”

She shook her head. “But he was on the list and his ID was valid.”

“Creating a fake ID wouldn’t be much,” Ivy said to me, “considering what was at stake.”

“That’s probably our man,” I said to Liza. “Come on, I want to talk to your security officer.”

As Liza pulled the tape off the door, I thanked Ngozi for her help, turned off the camera, and tossed the phone back to J.C.

“Nice work,” Ivy noted to him, smiling.

“Thanks,” he said, slipping the phone into a pocket of his cargo pants. “Of course, it’s not actually a phone. It’s a hyper-dimensional time—”

“J.C.,” Ivy interrupted.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t ruin this moment.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay.”

13

I hit the restroom in the hallway before going to the security station. I didn’t really need to go to the bathroom, but Tobias did.

The room was clean, which I appreciated. The soap dispensers were full, the mirror spotless, and it even had a little chart on the door listing the last cleaning, where the staff had to sign to prove they’d done their job. I washed my hands, looking at myself in the mirror while Tobias finished his pit stop.

My own mundane face looked back at me. I’m never what people expect. Some picture me as some sort of eccentric scientist, others imagine an action star. Instead, they get a rather bland man in his thirties, perfectly normal.

In some ways, I often feel like my White Room. A blank slate. The aspects have all the character. I try very hard to not stand out. Because I am not crazy.

I dried my hands and waited for Tobias to wash up, then we rejoined the others outside and walked toward the security station. It consisted of a circular desk with an open center, the type you’d find at a mall beneath a sign proclaiming “Information.” I walked up and the security guard looked me over—like I was a piece of pizza and he was trying to decide how long I’d been sitting in the fridge. He didn’t ask what I wanted. Liza had called him to tell him to prepare camera footage for me.

The desk really was too small for this hulk of a man. When he leaned forward, the inside front of the desk pressed into his gut; I was left with the impression of a grape being squeezed from the bottom.

“You,” the guard said with a deep baritone voice, “are the crazy one, aren’t you?”

“Well, that’s not actually true,” I said. “You see, the standard definition of insanity is—”

He leaned forward farther, and I pitied the poor desk. “You’re armed.”

“Uh . . .”

“So am I,” the guard said softly. “Don’t try anything.”

“Okaaay,” Ivy said from beside me. “Creepy guy manning the security station.”

“I like him,” J.C. said.

“Of course you do.”

The guard slowly lifted a flash drive. “Footage is on here.”

I took it. “You’re certain the security system was on that night?”

The man nodded. His hand made a fist, as if me even asking something so stupid was an offense worthy of a pounding.

“Uh,” I said, watching that fist, “Liza says you leave it on during the day now, too?”

“I’m going to catch him,” the guard said. “Nobody breaks into my building.”

“Twice,” I said.

The guard eyed me.

“Nobody breaks into your building twice,” I said. “Since they did it once already. Actually . . . they might have done it twice already, since the first time they placed the tape on the door—but you might call that more of an infiltration than a break-in.”

“Don’t give me lip,” the man said, pointing at me, “and don’t make trouble. Otherwise I’ll thump you so hard, it’ll knock some of your personalities into the next state.”

“Ouch,” Audrey said, flipping through a magazine she’d found on his desk. “Ask him why, if he’s so amazingly observant, he hasn’t noticed that his fly is down.”