Security(20)

“Hey, know what? These problems might seem insignificant to you—”

“No, they don’t.” He walks close to her, pries her arms uncrossed, and sets them by her sides. “They don’t. I’ll stick with you, help out if I can, and when you’ve got a few minutes, I’ll—” He exhales with huge force at the ceiling, almost as though he’s looking for someone up there. “I’ll tell you. It’ll take a few minutes. Till then, I’ll keep you company.”

“Like a guard?” She smiles. “You know how good security is in this hotel?”

“There’s nobody here. Nobody. All these empty rooms, and you in that—” He wags his arm at what must mean the main elevator and gives Tessa a withering look. “I’m just saying, for this being the safest hotel in the world, I haven’t seen one sign of security. Not one.”

Tessa’s smile deepens. “The best security is invisible security.”

“But if security’s invisible,” Brian says, “how do you know when it fails?”

Hate is a warm, welcome sensation.

Tessa mangles responses and finally says, “Whatever. Fine.” She turns to the door of Room 1516. “Vivica’s our master stain surgeon. I’ll take a look. Then we’ll pop down to the second floor. I’m betting anything Viv took a fifteen after getting the cherries out.” Tessa slides the card key. The lock blinks green. “Then we’ll do a check on the progress upstairs. I have to pick a table setting tonight. I have to. One hundred seventy--five possibilities—it’s gotten ridiculous. There, see?” She has opened the door and is pointing at carpet a half shade darker for being freshly dried. She bends and pats the fibers. “She’s a wizard,” Tessa says with no irony, while past the king--sized bed and its white duvet, past the fireplace that divides the bedroom from a sitting area, around the door to the bathroom and inside the deep claw--foot bathtub less than thirty feet from the entryway, Twombley lies in his black suit, his fair hair askew. He’s the centerpiece of a crudely pretty Rorschach. I see wings in the gouts of blood that sprayed the tiles all around him. He’s the caterpillar in the middle. He’ll wake up any minute and fly.

“Remember the time you and Mitch—”

“Lorraine’s bed.” Tessa hides an incandescent blush.

“Had to be blue Kool--Aid,” Brian says. “I said why not water, and you said, ‘It’s the Smurfs, Bri. We gotta drink blue Kool--Aid.’ I scrubbed that comforter for a half hour.”

“I did say I’d do it.” She nudges his chest, unbalancing him. “Don’t get all revisionist on me.”

“Tess, you’re many things.” He stands and offers her a hand up. She takes it, and he pulls, too hard. She knocks into him, giggling. “But a stain wizard is not one of them.”

Twombley was the only one who got away. McKeith and Rawlins were in front of him, on the twentieth floor. McKeith is facedown, the exit wound on the back of his head tacky and dark. Rawlins fell facedown, too, on McKeith’s left arm. They look like lovers sleeping in on a Saturday. Since Twombley was behind the two of them, he dropped and played dead, but the ruse worked only because of the flash grenade, which caused confusion—for the assailants, and for the five security team members on shift. Addison was on the other side of the twentieth floor, so while he took the fourth or fifth of his bullet wounds, Twombley scuttled through the chaos and into the secret elevator. He didn’t fire his weapon, or he fired it badly, or something. He must have hit “15” at random. He disgusts me a little, lying dead in a bathtub while Tessa and Brian laugh at fond memories.

The Killer flips US Weekly facedown on the table, to keep his page, when the washer’s buzzing spin cycle clicks finished. He walks to the washer, removes his coveralls, and loads them into the first dryer. He goes to the housekeeping storage shelves and selects a box of dryer sheets. He steps toward the dryers, stops, turns to the shelves, and throws the dryer sheets back. He seizes a box of hypo-allergenic, chemical--free dryer sheets. He walks to the first machine and tosses a hypoallergenic, chemical--free dryer sheet onto the lump of his wet coveralls. He shuts the door and presses a button.

Tessa and Brian are boarding the main elevator. Tessa presses the button for the second floor. She is asking Brian, “Why were we even in their room? We weren’t allowed in their room.”

“Lorraine was showing a house. She tried real estate for about six months, remember? She bitched all the time about it taking up her weekends.”

“God, yeah. I must’ve eaten enough Lucky Charms on that bed to gag a yak.”

Brian laughs, loudly. He bends with the strength of it. It looks cathartic.

The Killer has walked to the fourth dryer and opened the door. A hand flops out, limp, crimson, smoking. The Killer tucks it back in, closes the dryer door, but does not restart the machine.

“Corn Pops,” Brian says, wheezing.

“That was your poison, not mine. And Mitch and his Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

“And you always took our toys! Those toys at the bottom of the—”

“You gave them to me!” Tessa is hopping up and down. “You gave them to me of your own free will, both of you!”

“It was extortion.” He points at her. “It was larceny.”