Page 59 of The Vacancy In Room 10

An explosion of thunder cracks through the air, and the rain beats down on the rooftop so loudly we almost have to yell. Cass closes the front door I left open as the rain floods in. She tosses a couple of swim towels on top of the puddles to dry them. It’s quieter now, and we look at one another.

“I don’t know you, you’re right, but you knew Henry. So I’m here, in front of you, begging you to tell me what you really know. What happened to him? Who killed him? It was someone here. I know it. You know it. Nobody skulks around like you do without a big secret, and you’re not good at hiding it, so just...please. What happened to him?”

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“You know what I’m asking,” I say.

“Nobody kil—What? He committed suicide. You asked who killed him? You’re telling me that somebody killed him? That’s not what anyone was told... That’s not... That can’t be true.” And again, as she speaks, just like in the car, there is something authentic about her reaction that doesn’t feel manufactured. There still has to be something here—something that makes her act the way she does. I just feel it. I can’t explain it, but it’s a gut thing.

“You don’t have anything for me?” I ask, feeling defeated and so, so tired all of a sudden.

Cass sits in her office chair with her mouth hanging open and blinks a few times. She stares at the floor and then shakes it off and looks at me. “You’re telling me you’re sure someone killed him. Not a hunch. The police said this? This is for real?” she asks, and her words are careful, like she’s putting something together in her mind—connecting some dots. Like maybe she does know something, but with this news, she’s trying to figure it out for herself.

“Yeah. And don’t tell Tweedledee and Tweedledum out there, please, because I don’t want that news all over just yet.” I don’t even need to gesture to Crystal and Jackie smoking cigarettes under the awning in front of the pool for her to know who I mean.

“I’m so sorry. I had no idea. I thought...we all thought he was so depressed. Everyone said... It made sense, but...” She stops and looks gutted and also sort of shocked, but there’s something else, too, that I can’t put my finger on. “Jesus. I really am sorry to hear that.”

“You’re sure you can’t think of anything you might have heard?” I try one last time.

“Maybe,” Cass says.

“What?” I snap. It’s the absolute last thing I expected her to say.

“Just... I don’t know anything for sure, but there might be something. No promises. Just maybe.”

“Whoa, whoa, what? Tell me what you mean. What the hell does that mean?” I plead.

“I gotta go. I have something I need to figure out first. I’ll find you. You’ll just have to trust me,” she says, pulling her rain hood over her head and opening the door.

“Why would I trust you!?” I call to her back, an angry last attempt at getting an answer of any kind now before I totally lose my mind.

“You wouldn’t, but do you have any other people helping? Any other choice?”

“I don’t know if you’re helping or not,” I say, arms folded, completely unsure what to make of this woman.

“Just give me a little time.” And then she’s gone.

I think about running after her, shaking her, forcing her to the ground, choking the words out of her so she tells me what she knows. But I can’t do that, of course. She might have an answer, and maybe she’s being honest about that, so what can I do but wait?

I walk through the pouring rain, letting myself get drenched as I hurry across to my unit. The cold air inside the apartment stings as I enter. I pull Henry’s terry cloth robe from a hook, and his keys fall to the floor with a clink. I step over them, and I curl up inside his robe on the ugly plaid recliner and just sit a moment, asking myself the same questions with no answers—what video? What is Cass going to do now—what does she think she might know? Who was after Henry? How the hell was he aware he was in danger and not tell anyone? The more I know, the less sense it makes.

I stare across the floor at Henry’s dropped keys. His key chain, the one with a tiny rubber duck wearing a scarf, looks broken from here. The little duck looks like it’s been strangled because it’s bent slightly to the right. I tense. I stand up. Holy crap. I remember now, that I gave it to him because it wasn’t really just a duck. The head pops off, and it’s a thumb drive.

Oh, my God. It’s his thumb drive. I never even thought about this before or remembered it was anything but the key chain I saw every day...until this minute.

I scurry across the floor to pick it. I pop off the duck’s head to make sure I didn’t remember it wrong like everything else in my life. And there it is, the little metal flash drive. I rush to the table, flip open my laptop, and push in the drive.

It pops up—the 2012 tax file I know houses all of his passwords, and at first I’m beside myself because I know I can scour through every inch of his life, and that answers must be there. At first, this is the biggest break I’ve had until I see another file, and I realize that I don’t even need to look through his emails or Instagram messages. The answer is right in front of me.

A file labeled love blinks at me, and I click on it with nervous fingers. Her face blooms onto the screen, and there she is.

I lose my breath for a moment. Then I stand up, a surreal weightlessness, an electricity, runs through me upon seeing her face. I feel myself shaking as I sit back down and stare at the screen—at photo after photo after photo of Henry’s paintings. He always kept photos of them for his records and safekeeping, and so the mystery is solved.

The woman he was in love with lies naked in the first few. Many paintings are just her face; smiling, eating a croissant, sticking out her tongue playfully, or even crying in one. There is one painting of their hands intertwined, and another with her hand over her face and her head hung in sorrow. Many are sensual, some are light and whimsical. All are of the same mystery woman. Dozens and dozens of paintings of one dark-haired beauty.

Okay, I know who you are now. And I’m even starting to understand it, but who’s hiding a hundred paintings? Where are the actual goddamn paintings?

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