Page 76 of Girl, Empty
Ella stared at her.Susan swiped her eyes again.She made the noises of a person crying, but it seemed that her well of tears had dried up.‘Up at the stars,’ Ella said.
‘Yes.Up.Where the stars are.Calvin used to go to that building all the time.He used to say there were passages, ways in and out, things like that.He’d spend a long time there.Hidden away.Do you see?’
This wasn’t the dementia talking.It wasn't a quote.It wasn't the ramblings of a sick old woman.
It was a key; a final, desperate clue from a mother protecting her son, unable to say the words that would send him to prison for the rest of his life or worse.Code was the only way she could betray him.
And in that cold room, surrounded by the relics of a past life, Ella understood.
‘I need to go,’ she said.‘Do you need me to take you anywhere?You shouldn’t be here alone.’
‘If they don’t find me soon,‘ Susan hobbled over to her son’s bed and lay down.‘They won’t find me at all.Please, go.’
Ella didn’t want to leave the poor woman in this state.Once out of here, she could call her nursing home and have them pick Susan up.‘Yes, Susan.Thank you.’
‘Take care of him, will you?’
She stopped at the doorway, turned and gave Susan the nod.‘I will.’
Look up at the stars.
That was all Ella needed to know.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
The stars were coming out early tonight, or perhaps it was just January playing its tricks.Calvin Roth sad cross-legged and watched the sky darken, just as he’d done on these winter nights with his dad when he was a kid.
All those stars, Cal.Don’t let anyone tell you something’s impossible.
At the time, Calvin had never equated the existence of stars with human limitations.The stars were just a beautiful accident of physics.The lesson came later, taught to him by a locked door and a coroner’s report that said Dennis Roth had died of natural causes.
A star was just light from an impossible distance.If that cosmic journey was possible, then no human system and no locked door could ever truly be impenetrable.Everything was reachable.You just had to be patient enough to cross the dark.
And patient he’d been.He was 29 now, 15 years removed from the day he got that call during chemistry class.Your father's dead.Heart attack.No, we don't know why the door was locked from the outside.These things happen.
These things happen.
Except they didn't.Not like that.Not with security footage that showed empty hallways and a door that had no business being locked.Not with his dad's boss, Kevin Wolfe, suddenly getting promoted to fill the vacancy.Not with his mother going quiet in that way that meant she knew something but would never say it.
That's what this had always been about.Not money or business or any of the official reasons people killed each other.Just old-fashioned jealousy dressed up in a suit and tie.Calvin’s mom had chosen Dennis over Kevin back in the day, and Kevin had nursed that rejection like a tumor for twenty years.When the chance came to remove Dennis from the equation, he'd taken it.
Calvin had asked questions that nobody else seemed to care about.He'd asked until his throat was raw, asked until his mother started taking those little yellow pills, asked until the grief counselor at school told him he needed to process his anger in healthier ways.
So he'd stopped asking out loud and started asking in other ways.
The Elan building was still here.The same building his dad had died in, and Calvin had only ever seen the inside once.He’d imagined the interior many times though, imagined his father’s last moments.The realization that the door wouldn't open.The panic setting in.The heart giving out because sometimes the body knows when it's trapped.
Everyone knew it was murder.You could see it in the detectives' eyes, the way they'd looked at each other when they thought no one was watching.But knowing and proving were different animals, and they'd chosen the easier path.Natural causes.
So Calvin was proving it for them.
Not right away.First came the years of learning, of understanding how systems worked and how they could be made to fail.How a door could lock itself.How cameras could lie.
Michael Rankin had been exhibit A.Rankin had reminded Calvin of his own dad, and that had been his biggest mistake.When he’d seen that pentagram tattoo on Rankin’s social media, he couldn’t help but leave behind a middle finger to the poor cops saddled with investigating his death.Rankin had been something of an experiment, but the task had been easier than expected.Break into the building’s network, cause a distraction, lock the doors, distract the security guard.Broken down, it was fairly straightforward.
Thomas Grayson had been refinement.Calvin had pushed the boundaries with that one, to see how far he could reach through fiber optics and wireless signals.The only issue with that was that Calvin had to be present to lock the vault door.
But the whole thing had been a real statement that said: look what I can do.Look what someonecouldhave done.
