“Of course.” Although I can’t imagine the Eva I know letting any relationship with a guy she’s really attracted to remain “strictly work-related” for long.
“Anyway,” he says as he texts, “when Rashid’s father finds out the kid’s married a commoner, it’s going to be the shit storm to end all shit storms. And we’re the ones who are going to have to clean up the debris.” He points at me, then himself.
I remember Detective Canavan’s accusation that I’m a shitkicker. Now, apparently, I’m also someone who clears away debris from storms composed of—what else?—shit.
“Great,” I say with mock cheer. “And it’s all going to happen here, in Fischer Hall.” I glance over at Sarah and give her a big smile. “Did you hear that, Sarah?”
Sarah shakes her head. All her attention’s been focused on Dave. “I’m sorry, Heather, what?”
“Never mind,” I say to her. “I’m going to the desk for a few minutes to check on some things. Hold down the fort for me back here, okay?”
Sarah throws me a dazzling smile. “Of course!”
“See you later, Heather,” Dave calls sunnily, waving in my general direction.
“Not if I see you first,” I say, waving back, before realizing how completely asinine it was of me to say such a thing, since obviously I’m going to see him first, and he’s going to see me never. Fortunately he doesn’t seem to have noticed my gaffe, as he’s turned back toward Sarah, still smiling, to continue their discussion on his cat, or the problems with nuclear proliferation in undeveloped countries, or whatever it is they’re talking about.
I take myself and my handbag up to the front desk, where I’m unsurprised to find Gavin working on his screenplay instead of the mail forwarding, though he at least hastily closes his laptop and swings his slippered feet down from the desk when he sees me.
“I just needed to finish this one scene where the zombies eat my protagonist’s parents’ brains,” he says. “I got a sudden burst of inspiration. Please don’t yell at me for not doing the mail forwarding. I’m an artist, I’m fragile.”
“I don’t care about the mail forwarding right now. I need to talk to you.”
I open the door to the desk area and slip through it, placing my bag on a stack of New York Times whose owners have yet to come to the desk to ask for them.
“This looks serious,” Gavin says, spinning around on his elevated reception chair. “Please, lovely lady, have a seat. Let’s discourse. What’s troubling you?”
He gestures toward the shelf next to the backs of the mailboxes. I sit down on it, cross my legs, and say, “Remember the night of the prince’s party, the one you said you were working during?”
“Jamie and I split the shift,” he says, nodding while he strokes the few dark wisps of the goatee he’s apparently trying to grow. “But yes, I recall it. Why?”
“Who was the RA on duty that night?”
Gavin leans forward to retrieve the duty log. I require the desk attendants to record every communication of note that takes place during their shifts. Only through organization have I kept Fischer Hall from descending into madness.
“That would have been”—Gavin runs his finger down the log entries for that night—“Howard Chen. Oh, yeah, right, remember? He was still on duty the next morning, when you made me call him to go up to Jasmine’s room with Sarah. He did not like that too much.”
“So I recall your saying. You also said something about him not liking it too much when you called him for a couple of lockouts.”
Gavin nods. “Yeah. Because he was so hungover. He bitched me out. He wanted me to give the keys to the residents anyway, even though they didn’t have ID, because he didn’t want to get out of bed.” His eyebrows gather. “Wait a minute, am I in some kind of trouble? Because I didn’t give those residents their keys. I made Howard get the hell out of bed and get down here for the floor masters to let those residents in. He’s a lying little punk if he’s saying otherwise—”
“No, Gavin, you aren’t in trouble,” I assure him. “I’m only double-checking something. Can I see the sign-out log for the floor masters, please?”
He shrugs and says, “Sure,” putting away the duty binder and then walking over to the key cabinet.
Extra copies of keys to every resident’s room are kept in a large metal cabinet behind the desk, as well as master keys that fit into the lock of every room on each floor. While residents who have misplaced their room keys are allowed (three times per semester without charge, with a show of their student ID) to check out spares, only RAs are permitted to use the floor masters to escort a resident who’s forgotten his or her keys and ID.
To be escorted to one’s room by a sleepy RA on duty (who’s had to stumble all the way down to the front desk in the middle of the night to get the master key to your floor simply because you’ve lost your ID) is a serious embarrassment, and tends to happen only when students are extremely drunk or in some other way distressed, which is why we don’t allow the front desk attendants to simply hand them a spare key. We require an RA to speak with them, to make sure they don’t require medical care, and of course make sure they really are residents by forcing them to recite their student ID codes from memory. Additionally, the lockout is recorded on the student’s registration card. If such infractions become a habit, the lock to the door of the student’s room is changed as a safety precaution, and the student is billed for it.
Lockouts and lock changes seem to make up a good 25 percent of my job some days.
I run my finger down the floor master checkout log for the night of the party after which Jasmine died. Sure enough, there’s a note in Jamie’s handwriting that the master key to the fourteenth floor had been checked out at 2:45 a.m.
That’s going to be me someday, Ameera had wept. Someone’s going to sneak into my room and do that to me in my sleep one night.
The initials of the person who’d checked out the fourteenth floor master key are HC.
I feel the same chill sweep over me that I’d felt in Lisa’s office.
No, I tell myself. It’s not possible. Jasmine and Howard were friends. They went to that party together. I saw them myself in the fifteenth-floor hallway on the video monitor. They were laughing, having fun.