Security(18)

“Can’t wait to see a luxury suite,” Brian says as Tessa takes a card key from her breast pocket. “A luxury suite in this hotel could fit two of my house.”

Tessa says, “Your house is three thousand square f—” And she stops. And she slides the card key in. The lock blinks red.

Brian is very still beside her.

“Damn it,” Tessa says. She shoves the card key in harder.

“Let me.”

“I’ve got it.” Her face is masklike and rigid. She will not hand over that card key for anything. It’s a matter of pride now. Tessa is, in her backward way, nothing if not proud.

“Plee plee plee,” Franklin says, like the sibilance at the end of the word is too much a task for his mouth. His jaw is broken. An educated estimate would claim twenty--two of his bones are broken. Certain tortures are conceived specifically to be bloodless. “Plee plee,” he says, and the Killer looks down at him.

The Killer leaves the housekeeping storage area and enters the employee break room. Franklin attempts, once, to crawl. Two wet pops. The fractures feel like hot, broken glass trying to push through the skin. It’s transcendent, the pain. It makes a man believe in God, but makes the man dislike Him. Franklin’s holler reaches all the way, one guesses, to the seventh floor. There is no one there to hear it. There is no one until the fifteenth floor, where Tessa still has not succeeded in unlocking Room 1516. Brian has offered twice more to try his luck; Tessa has twice more refused. Despondent, she tries knocking. “Vivica?” she says.

The Killer picks up his coveralls bag, goes into Delores’s office, and removes the piece of paper taped over the small television with motion--activated closed circuit surveillance. He watches the screen switch from Tessa and Brian at the door to 1516, to Henri conducting sous--chefs in the kitchen, to the ballroom, where Delores furiously dusts as Jules sits at a dining table and plays Words with Friends on her prohibited cell phone. To Justin, on the stairs, walking past the landing to the seventeenth floor and continuing down. He looks around as if terrified of being caught. He could almost be mistaken for an inept, inexperienced hoodlum seeking the perfect surface to deface with spray paint—“could be” because Justin has the same frosted tips, single earring, and loose clothes he’s been sporting for almost a decade; “almost” because these features have begun their descent into ridiculousness, existing as they do beside Justin’s burgeoning crow’s--feet, a tiny but growing bald spot he’s still able to comb over, and knees that pop when he’s been sitting too long.

The Killer watches the television for a full minute, while Franklin begins to yell for help. It must hurt him, because three of his broken bones are broken ribs. The Killer turns off the TV and replaces the piece of paper taped over the screen. He takes a paperweight off Delores’s desk—a bright red heart, tinted quartz, the size of a grapefruit—and the bag with his bloody coveralls, and walks out of the office, out of the break room, into the hall.

“Tess, for real?” Brian says.

“I can get it, Brian. Okay?” She has tried swiping the card key slowly, swiping the card key quickly, with extra strength, with no strength at all. The lock blinks red, red. “I’ve handled a lot of crap without you to help me, okay? I’ve gotten through so much crap, you wouldn’t believe it. I’ve managed without you just fine. All right?” She slaps the door, hard, with her bandaged hand and tries swiping the card key quickly some more. Brian reaches for the card key, but she says, “No, I know how this works. You’re going to ask how I’m doing and wait for me to say I’m fine, and then you’re going to leave, and that’s fine. That’s totally fine. You thought you’d come visit. Great, Bri, f*cking fantastic!” She slaps the door with every other syllable, saying, “What the f*cking f*ck is wrong with this thing!”

Brian grabs her. He pins her arms to her body and holds her. One’s past experience may dictate that pinning Tessa is exceedingly dangerous, as at first, she’ll merely use a hidden talent for contortion and escape. But if one catches her, she’ll employ a knee to the groin and shout, as one writhes on the pillowy carpet, What part of the word “casual” is confusing to you?

She never once buried her head in the front of my jacket and said muffled words.

Franklin bellows “No” as if his jaw weren’t broken. He screams like it’s his only hope, and it is, and it’s inordinately loud, and the sound reaches—probably—to the tenth floor or so, before the Killer’s arm arcs downward with the paperweight in his right hand (he’s holding his knife in his left hand, with his laundry convenience bag of bloody coveralls) and hits Franklin’s skull on the left side. It is not a deathblow. The Killer can hit harder than that. Franklin is unconscious, but it’s unlikely he’s dead. The wound does not bleed much. The Killer puts the paperweight on the table where maids fold sheets, picks up Franklin in a fireman’s carry, and goes to the industrial dryers. There are four of them in a rectangular alcove off the housekeeping storage area. Delores is only supposed to use the first dryer until Manderley officially opens. The Killer places Franklin in the fourth. Franklin’s broken bones sound like a rock drummer’s sticks counting down a fast song. The Killer shuts the dryer door and presses buttons. The dryer chirps. Whirs. And commences the sound of a too--heavy weight turning over and over and over.