Burn Our Bodies Down(40)
I follow her around to the front and wait on the curb while Tess peers through the door to see who’s on duty. The station looks just as imposing today as it did yesterday when I got out of Anderson’s cruiser. The windows across the front of the lobby are dark, the blinds drawn, and through the door, over Tess’s head, I can see the receptionist’s desk, protected by a sheet of what must be bulletproof glass.
“Perfect,” Tess says. “It’s Judy. She’s easy.”
We head in, Tess shoving twice to get the door to open all the way when it sticks in the frame. A woman with bottle-even brown hair and perfectly painted red fingernails is sitting primly behind the counter, frowning as she fusses with the collar of her starched flowered blouse. She looks up as Tess approaches, leaving me just inside the door, under the blast of the air-conditioning. I ignore the goose bumps rising on my skin and focus as Tess settles into one hip and swings her hair over her shoulder.
“Hey, Judy,” she says. “Hardly working?”
Judy’s laugh is nervous. “Working hard,” she says, but I catch an insistence in her voice, like she wants Tess to understand that she really is. She could be about Mrs. Miller’s age, or maybe a little older. It’s hard to tell from here.
“Listen, I know this is a pain,” Tess says. It doesn’t escape me that she’s positioned herself between me and Judy, keeping our sight line from ever fully connecting. “But I left something in the bullpen yesterday when I was talking to Officer Connors. Can I go back and look for it?”
Judy’s face twists, like she wants to frown but is too nervous. “I don’t know, honey,” she says. “I don’t think I’m supposed to let you back there alone.”
“No, it’s okay.” I can’t see Tess’s face, but it’s not hard to imagine the winning smile she’s giving Judy. “He said I could just duck in and out and it wouldn’t be a bother.” And then she knocks it over the top. “He said for you to call if you want to double-check.”
“No,” Judy says immediately. “No, of course. Go on back, and just give me a shout when you’re done.”
“Great.” Tess looks over her shoulder at me and nods. I step up next to her as Judy presses a button under her desk and the door to the bullpen clicks open. Nobody had to let us through like that when Anderson brought me in from the fire. It must be just when nobody’s on duty inside. And that bodes well for us.
“Oh,” Judy says when she sees me. “Who’s your friend?” But then her eyes go wide, and I know she recognizes me, just like everyone in this town does. “You must be—”
“She’s here for the summer,” Tess cuts in. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” She takes hold of my arm and pulls me through the doorway before Judy can say anything else. “Thank you!”
I give Judy my best approximation of a Tess smile as we pass. Judging from her stare, it wasn’t very good.
“Okay,” Tess says once we’re in the bullpen and the door is shut behind us. “You wanted information, right?”
Nobody’s in the conference room. Just a few scattered paper cups of coffee left over from a meeting and a whiteboard positioned at the front, my last name written across it in red marker. I look away.
“Yeah.”
“We need the records, then, but I don’t think they’ll be up here,” Tess says.
We check anyway, opening what turns out to be a supply closet and rifling through the desks in the bullpen. Anderson’s got a file folder with Nielsen misspelled and crossed out, and there’s my name again, on that Post-it I saw on the file cabinet. But the folder’s empty and the cabinet’s locked.
“Now what?” I say to Tess. She nods to the corner of the bullpen, where a door leads to some stairs.
“The basement.”
I follow her into the stairwell, down and down under flickering lights, one hand trailing against the wall. It’s only two flights but it feels like more, feels like the summer has disappeared, leaving the air heavy with cold and shadow. Our footsteps echo as we reach the basement door, and for a moment I panic, afraid that Judy will hear us somehow. Afraid that Connors is waiting on the other side of the door to catch us.
I brace myself, but the stairwell door opens to no one. Just a hallway that runs barely a few yards before it corners sharply. The linoleum floor is water-stained and peeling, checkered in an unappealing teal and a gray that was probably white to begin with. Off the corridor is a handful of doors, all closed.
“One of these should be what we’re looking for,” Tess says.
She takes one side and I take the other, and soon enough we’ve found the door marked RECORDS and tried the handle. It’s locked, because of course it is, but I stop Tess before she pulls out that goddamn safety pin again and lever my body against the handle. A door this old, this forgotten—it’ll pop right out.
“You’ll break it,” Tess says.
I should care. But too many things have stood in my way, and this is something I can do, something I can take into my own hands. Tess talked us in, and she got me here, and I’m glad, but I have to do some of this myself. And so what if Connors and Anderson know it was me? I look guilty enough already. At least this time I’ll have done something to earn their suspicion.