Lock Every Door(65)

I give a solemn nod, remembering those dead servants lined up on the sidewalk, Cornelia Swanson and her slaughtered maid, Dr. Thomas Bartholomew leaping from the roof.

“I thought Erica was exaggerating.” Dylan shakes his head and lets out a quick, bitter chuckle. “That she was being overly worried about the place. Now I think she wasn’t worried enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something weird is going on at the Bartholomew,” Dylan says. “I’m sure of it.”

The groups of schoolkids have finally found their way upstairs. They ooze into the space around us, chattering and touching the diorama glass, leaving it riddled with sticky handprints. Dylan pushes away from them, moving to the other side of the room. I join him in front of another diorama.

Cheetahs stalking the tall grass.

More predators.

“Look, will you just tell me what’s going on?” I say.

“A few days after Erica disappeared, I found this.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring, which he drops into my palm. It’s a typical Jostens class ring. Gold and gaudy. Just like the ones all my high school classmates had. I never bothered to get one, because even then I thought it was a waste of money. The stone is purple, surrounded by etched letters proclaiming the owner to be a member of Danville High School’s class of 2014. Engraved on the inside of the band is a name.

Megan Pulaski.

“I found it behind a couch cushion,” Dylan says. “I thought it might have belonged to someone who lived there. Or maybe another apartment sitter. I asked Leslie, who confirmed there was an apartment sitter named Megan Pulaski in 11B. She was there last year. Sounds normal, right?”

“I’m assuming it doesn’t stay that way,” I say.

Dylan nods. “I Googled the name, hoping maybe I could locate her and mail the ring back to her. I found a Megan Pulaski who graduated from a high school in Danville, Pennsylvania, in 2014. She’s been missing since last year.”

I hand the ring back to Dylan, no longer wanting to touch it.

“I tracked down a friend of hers,” Dylan says. “She created a missing poster just like the one I made for Erica and circulated it online. She told me Megan was an orphan who hasn’t been seen or heard from in over a year. The last time they spoke, Megan was living in an apartment building in Manhattan. She never told her the name. She just mentioned it was covered in gargoyles.”

“Sounds like the Bartholomew to me,” I say.

“It gets weirder,” Dylan warns. “A few days ago, I went for a jog in the park. When I got back to the Bartholomew, I saw Ingrid in the lobby. She didn’t seem to be coming or going. She just stood at the mailboxes, watching the door. I got the feeling she was waiting for me.”

“So you were lying when you told me you didn’t really know each other.”

“That’s the thing; I wasn’t. We’d only spoken a few times before that, and one of them was to ask her if she’d heard anything from Erica, because I knew they had hung out a few times.”

“What did she say that day in the lobby?”

“She told me she might have learned what happened to Erica,” Dylan says. “She said she couldn’t talk about it right then. She wanted to go somewhere private, where no one else could hear us. I suggested we meet that night.”

“When was this?”

“Three days ago.”

My stomach clenches. That’s the same night Ingrid vanished.

“When and where were you supposed to meet?”

“A little before one. In the basement.”

“The security camera,” I say. “You’re the one who disconnected it.”

Dylan gives me a terse nod. “I thought it was a good idea, seeing how Ingrid was being so secretive. Turns out it didn’t matter because she never showed. I didn’t find out she was gone until you told me the next day.”

Now I know why Dylan had acted so surprised that afternoon. It also explains why he was in such a hurry to get away from me. No one likes to be around a messenger bearing bad news.

“And now I can’t stop thinking that Ingrid’s missing because she knew what happened to Erica,” Dylan says. “When she vanished. How she vanished. It’s too similar to Erica to be a coincidence. It’s almost like someone else learned that Ingrid knew something and silenced her before she could tell me.”

“You think they’re both . . .”

I don’t want to say aloud the word I’m thinking for fear it’ll make it be true. I did the same after Jane vanished. We all did, my family tiptoeing around her disappearance with euphemisms. She hasn’t come home. We don’t know where she is. It was finally broken by my father’s midnight pronouncement a week later.

Jane is gone.

“Dead?” Dylan says. “That’s exactly what I think.”

My legs wobble as we move to another diorama. The most brutal of the bunch. A dead zebra being swarmed by vultures. A dozen at least, with more swooping in to snatch whatever scraps are left. Close by are a hyena and a pair of jackals, sneaking into the fray to grab their share.

The frenzied violence of the scene churns my stomach. Or maybe it’s Dylan’s suggestion that someone in the Bartholomew is killing young women who agree to watch apartments there.