She took another step. Something metal went ringing across the floor tiles and clinked into the far wall. It was a key. Iris picked it up. Black crust flaked off the bronze as she turned it over in her hand. There were no markings on either face. Maybe it was the door key, she thought, glancing back at the shattered frame.

A cheap white shower curtain hung over the entrance to the shower stall. It was pulled closed. Something about it felt wrong. She didn’t remember seeing shower curtains in the other bathrooms.

The creeping feeling that someone was watching her inched up her spine. She cleared her throat loudly, not taking her eyes off the curtain. It didn’t move. The stagnant air coated her mouth and throat with an acrid film. Iris ordered herself to get the hell out of there and get back to work.

Instead, she took a step toward the shower and timidly reached out her hand. The plastic crackled in her hand, and she swore she could hear a faint buzzing behind it. Squeezing her eyes half-shut, she ripped the curtain open.

A rope hung from the showerhead inches from her face. It was tied into a noose and crusted black and brown. Then she looked down. A mountain of dead flies were piled at the bottom of the stall. Little corpses stacked one on top of the other in an avalanche of shattered wings and hollow black shells. They were everywhere. Dead flies were scattered behind the toilet and along the windowsill. They littered the floor.

The rope was still hanging from the showerhead. Her eyes darted from the noose to the dead flies piled on the floor of the shower. In between the silvery-black corpses, she could now see fragments of what might have once been a gray pin-striped suit. Something resembling a black leather wing-tip shoe was peeking out at the corner.

It was a shoe. It was a suit. They were under the flies. The flies had been eating. She couldn’t breathe. Bile flooded her throat. They’d been eating. Her hand was locked in a death grip on the shower curtain. Her arm was trembling. The shower curtain fluttered in the stall, jostling the empty shells of the dead insects. They tumbled toward her feet, falling weightlessly over the toes of her work boots. Something yellow and hard emerged from underneath the layers of tiny corpses. It was a bone.

Someone was screaming; she was screaming. She tore her hand from the shower curtain violently. Dead flies fluttered into the air. Iris stumbled to the toilet to throw up. The toilet bowl was crowded with insect shells. She turned to the sink. It was littered with broken legs and wings. She staggered back. Her mouth filled with vomit.

Flies seemed to be spilling onto the floor after her. The noose swung from the showerhead. Her heel hit the curb of the shower stall, and flies crunched under her feet. She lurched toward the bathroom door.

She crumpled to her hands and knees and vomited on the carpet. Recoiling, she slammed her back to the wall outside the bathroom, seeing nothing but flies. Hungry flies.

Ramone’s voice crackled over the radio. “Iris, you there? Iris?”

The radio was on the desk over her head. She barely registered the noise. Her mouth opened and shut on its own. She couldn’t make a sound.

“Iris, I’m coming up,” the radio crackled again.

A few moments later, Ramone’s hulking shape entered the room in a slow crouch, moving toward the broken door. His gun was drawn. He straightened up when he found her propped against the wall and lowered the gun.

“Iris, what the hell’s going on? I heard all this racket.” He glared at her for a moment, waiting for an answer. Then he noticed the vomit on the floor.

All Iris could do was shake her head.

He raised his gun again and stormed into the bathroom. “Jesus!” he said under his breath, and walked back out. “You find him like that?”

Iris nodded and clamped her hands over her mouth. Ramone had called the pile of flies “him.” Her stomach lurched again, but she fought the bile back down.

“You okay?”

She shook her head violently and tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.

“Here, let’s get you off the floor.” He helped her stand up and guided her back to Linda’s chair. “I’ve got to go call the police. You stay here a minute. If you can, you might want to gather up the things you gonna need. This whole damn place is a crime scene now. Police are gonna lock it all down.”

He left Iris staring blindly at the desk while what was left of a dead person lay in the next room. The body had been there all along. Every minute she’d spent in the room, a pile of death had been rotting not ten feet away. She shuddered in her chair. The shadow of a moth flickered outside the window blinds. She stared at it blankly for what could have been hours, unable to bring her mind back.

Sirens rang out in the distance on the street below. She blinked. The police were coming. Ramone had told her to take what she needed. She numbly took an inventory of the desk. It was all company stuff she couldn’t care less about. She grabbed her schematic floor plans. She’d worked hard on those. She grabbed her field bag. She looked for her purse for several minutes, until her addled brain remembered it was down in the loading dock with her car. But where were her car keys? She needed her car keys to get home.

Her field bag was full of keys, but none were the ones she needed. Keys to the vault, keys to the building, they were all wrong. She had to get home. She couldn’t stay here—not tonight, not another minute. She had to get home.

Iris sprung up from the chair on the verge of hysterics. She smeared the tears across her face, searching the desk and floor for her car keys. It wasn’t until she felt a sore spot on her rear end that she thought to check her pockets. They were there. They clinked together as she gripped them in her hand. The metallic clink she’d heard in the bathroom rang out again in her ears. It had come from a small bronze key. She looked down at her shaking hands. It was gone.

She turned her head toward the open door.

On the far wall inside the dead man’s room, she could make out the edge of the metal grille of the air vent next to the toilet. Its iron frame cast an odd shadow against the wall tiles, as if it had been pried open ever so slightly. She inched closer to the broken door. The mounting screws for the grille were missing, leaving two empty holes along its edge. The vent was large enough to crawl through. She could hear a voice from the air shaft whisper, “Iris . . .”

Shut up. Iris tore her eyes from the vent and scanned the ground. Where did it go? A dead fly drifted into view. Oh God. She nearly threw up again. She pressed her back to the wall and slid down, burying her head in her knees, trying to breathe. Something shiny glinted from the carpet at her feet. Inches from her vomit. She squeezed her eyes shut and reached out with her hand until she felt cold metal.

She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes. It was the key.

CHAPTER 46

Monday, December 11, 1978

It was too late to go back to the bank. Beatrice had no choice but to spend the night in the hospital lobby. The seating area outside Admitting was deserted. She found a bench in the corner and slumped down under the fluorescent lights. She didn’t bother closing her eyes. She couldn’t possibly sleep after seeing Max. She gazed at the small bronze key in the palm of her hand. There was no writing on either side. It could be the key to anything—a gym locker, a small safe, a motel room. It was a secret, and Max had told her to keep it safe.

Max had dyed her hair and was wearing oversized clothes. She was hiding. She said the hospital was being watched. The signature of R. T. Halloran in the ICU register scrawled itself across Beatrice’s mind. An “uncle” had come to visit Doris the week before.