Chapter 3 - What Maya Knew
The hidden staircase climbed between concrete walls with no handrail and no floor numbers.
That bothered me almost as much as the gunshots below.
Stairs inside high-rise buildings are supposed to be obvious.
They are supposed to be repetitive, predictable, impossible to misunderstand in an emergency.
This one had been designed to disappear.
Lily climbed ahead of me, one hand trailing along the wall.
Every few landings, she touched another faded purple arrow.
Her arrows.
Or Maya’s instructions drawn in Lily’s color.
I still did not know which.
Ben came last, listening for Marcus.
Priya stayed between us and Lily.
Nobody spoke for the first five minutes.
The silence was broken only by our breathing and the metallic echo of our shoes.
At the fourth landing, the stairs ended at a narrow service tunnel behind the freight-elevator shafts.
A steel cage lift stood in front of us.
No manufacturer plate.
No inspection sticker.
No buttons except a key switch and a blank metal square.
Ben stared at it.
“Let me guess. Not on the plans.”
“No.”
“Shocking.”
I examined the frame.
“This is older than the renovation. Maybe original construction modified later.”
Priya asked, “Can we use it?”
“Not without a key.”
Lily reached into her yellow raincoat.
For one ridiculous second, all three adults stared hopefully.
She pulled out a purple crayon.
Ben nodded.
“Close.”
Lily almost smiled.
That tiny almost-smile kept me moving.
We followed the tunnel until it reconnected with a maintenance stair near the twelfth floor.
When I pushed open the wall panel, we emerged into an empty residential corridor.
A red light glowed above the normal stairwell door.
Locked.
The public elevators were dead.
The building announcement repeated overhead.
“Due to a hazardous materials incident, remain inside your residence.”
A woman shouted from behind apartment 1207.
“Is somebody out there?”
I approached the door.
“Yes.”
“Security says not to open.”
“Don’t. Stay inside for now.”
“What is happening?”
I looked at Lily.
How did I explain that a fake pregnancy full of narcotics had turned our luxury tower into a hostage site?
“Security has been compromised,” I said. “Keep away from the hallway and windows.”
The woman began asking questions.
We had no time.
We moved upward.
At the eighteenth floor, Ben stopped.
“My wife.”
Of course.
Carol.
I had met her in the elevator dozens of times.
She always carried peppermints in her purse and gave Lily one without asking me because, according to Carol, “parents already control too much.”
“Go,” I said.
Ben hesitated.
“We need you,” Priya told him. “And she needs you more.”
He knocked on his apartment door in a pattern.
Three quick.
Two slow.
Carol opened immediately.
The moment she saw his shoulder, she pulled him inside.
“What happened?”
“Long story.”
She looked at Lily, then at me, then down the hall.
“Then tell the short version.”
Ben said, “The building has been taken over by the people security is supposed to protect us from.”
Carol nodded once.
“Come in.”
No scream.
No argument.
Thirty years married to a firefighter had apparently trained her to save questions until after doors were locked.
Inside, local news played on television.
Nothing about the Meridian.
Traffic.
Rain.
A ferry delay.
A mayoral press conference scheduled for six.
Outside our walls, Seattle had no idea what was happening.
Carol brought water.
Priya cleaned the stone cut on Ben’s shoulder.
Lily sat at the dining table with her crayon and began drawing.
I opened Maya’s notebook again.
Now that we had a few minutes, I looked beyond the obvious names and dates.
Maya had created categories.
BLUE marks indicated deliveries.
GREEN marks indicated money.
RED marks indicated altered building systems.
Purple marks were different.
Purple belonged to Lily.
Several pages had tiny childlike symbols at the bottom.
A sun.
A staircase.
A square with a diagonal line.
Maya had been teaching Lily the route.
Not because she expected a seven-year-old to expose a criminal operation two years later.
Because she needed Lily to know where to hide that night.
My stomach twisted.
Then I found my name.
ADAM DOESN’T KNOW.
Below it:
THE RENOVATION DRAWINGS ARE HIS, BUT THE REVISION CLOUDS ARE NOT.
I knew exactly what that meant.
Architectural changes are often marked with cloud-like outlines on drawings.
Somebody had inserted illegal modifications into legitimate project sets.
My drawings became camouflage.
I turned the page.
A sketch of my professional seal appeared.
Beside it Maya had written:
THEY ARE USING HIS NAME.
Carol leaned over my shoulder.
“Your wife wrote that?”
“Yes.”
“Before she died?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t know?”
“No.”
Carol gave me the look of someone who had decided pity would be insulting.
“Then find out who did.”
Lily slid her drawing toward me.
A woman in a blue scarf.
Maya.
A smaller figure in a red raincoat.
Lily.
A black car.
Near the car stood a man with a square badge on his chest.
Marcus.
Behind the windshield was another figure.
Glasses.
Lily circled the face.
My pulse slowed.
“Who is that?”
Her crayon shook.
She wrote:
ELLIOT.
My business partner.
My best friend for fifteen years.
The man who sat beside me at Maya’s funeral.
The man who helped me move after Lily stopped sleeping in our old house.
The man who negotiated Reed & Crane’s renovation contract with Voss Urban Holdings.
I stared at the name until Carol spoke.
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
Ben said, “How well?”
“Well enough to hate that question.”
My old work phone vibrated inside my messenger bag.
I had forgotten it was there.
It was a cheap device used for site tests, with no active cellular plan.
Yet the screen glowed.
PRIVATE MESSAGE.
ADAM, STOP MOVING.
Then another.
THE CHILD DOES NOT NEED TO SEE ANY MORE.
Priya looked over my shoulder.
“Marcus?”
“Maybe.”
The next message appeared.
DON’T TRUST THE DRAWING.
My skin prickled.
Then:
LILY DOESN’T REMEMBER THE NIGHT THE WAY YOU THINK.
I powered the phone off.
A second later, it turned itself back on.
Ben whispered, “That’s not good.”
“No.”
This was not simply Marcus watching cameras.
Somebody had control of the building network strong enough to wake devices connected to it.
Somebody who knew Lily.
Somebody who knew what she had drawn.
A tiny camera lens stared from the hallway ceiling outside Carol’s apartment.
I covered it with tape.
The building speaker clicked.
A new voice replaced Marcus’s.
“Mr. Reed.”
I recognized it immediately.
Graham Voss.
I had heard that voice at charity dinners and development conferences.
Polished.
Patient.
Designed to sound reasonable even when saying nothing.
“You have created a serious situation,” he said.
I laughed once.
“My daughter punctured a fake pregnancy full of drugs and your security guard pulled a gun. I’m not the cause.”
“Children misunderstand what they see.”
“She understood perfectly.”
A pause.
Then Voss said, “Maya always said Lily noticed things.”
The room went still.
“You knew my wife.”
“I knew of her.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“Words become imprecise under stress.”
“No. Cowards become imprecise under stress.”
Ben gave me a look that suggested insulting the billionaire controlling the building might not be strategic.
I did not care.
“What happened to Maya?”
Voss’s voice cooled.
“You are asking the same questions she asked.”
“And?”
“And she was warned.”
Lily gripped my sleeve.
I looked down.
Her face had gone blank in the way I had learned meant she was terrified.
I forced my voice steady.
“Did you kill her?”
Voss waited.
“No.”
“Did Marcus?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“You are climbing toward the wrong question.”
The speaker clicked off.
Ben exhaled slowly.
“I’ve dealt with arsonists who were less creepy.”
Carol looked toward the door.
“If he knows you’re here, you need to leave.”
She was right.
We gathered our things.
Before we stepped into the corridor, the freight elevator chimed.
Nobody had called it.
The doors opened.
A man in a dark raincoat stepped out.
Forty-two.
Narrow face.
Expensive glasses.
A small cut above one eyebrow.
Elliot Crane.
My partner.
Lily stopped breathing.
I opened Carol’s door and stepped into the hallway before Elliot could move.
He raised both hands.
“Adam.”
I crossed the distance and slammed him against the wall.
“Were you there when Maya died?”
His face changed.
Not surprise.
Pain.
Lily stood behind me holding her drawing.
Elliot looked at her.
“You remember.”
That answer nearly made me hit him.
Ben caught my arm.
“Adam.”
Elliot swallowed.
“I was there.”
The hallway seemed to narrow.
“You drove the car?”
“No.”
“Were you in it?”
“No.”
“Then start talking.”
His eyes shifted toward the covered camera.
“Not here.”
“You don’t get to negotiate.”
“Marcus controls the residential cameras. Voss controls the building network.”
He reached slowly into his coat.
Ben tensed.
Elliot pulled out a brass key.
“The hidden elevator will take us to forty-one.”
I stared at the key.
Then I remembered the message on the monitor below.
DO NOT TRUST THE PERSON WHO BRINGS YOU TO FORTY-ONE.
Elliot held out the key.
“I can get you upstairs.”
Lily moved closer to me.
I looked at my oldest friend.
May you like
Then at my daughter’s drawing of him beside the car that killed Maya.
For the first time in fifteen years, I realized I had no idea who Elliot Crane really was.
