Murderous Obsession

The chain was still fastened. The dead bolt was turned. She had not left the apartment since returning from work, and no one had knocked. Her gaze moved to the narrow strip of shadow beneath the door.

On the other side, the hallway light flickered.

She opened the door.

The fourth-floor corridor lay empty, its carpet flattened along the center from decades of footsteps. Across from her, the door to 4A was closed. Mr. Vale’s door had three locks, all polished bright from use. A thin line of light showed beneath it.

Lina stepped into the hall.

“Mr. Vale?”

The light vanished.

She waited. The building gave back small, nervous noises: an elevator cable ticking in its shaft, water rushing through a pipe, a floorboard settling behind one of the doors.

She knocked once.

No answer.

“Did you come into my apartment today?”

The locks on 4A remained silent.

Lina looked down the stairwell. A draft moved up from below, cold against her ankles. On the landing between floors, the bulb buzzed with the same uneven rhythm it had made for months. The superintendent had promised to replace it. The superintendent promised many things and remembered none of them.

She returned inside, grabbed her coat, and took the brass key ring from the bowl beside the telephone.

The watch could have been taken by anyone who had entered while she was at work. The cleaner. The superintendent. One of the delivery men. Mr. Vale, perhaps, though she had no reason to think so beyond the light beneath his door and the fact that he watched people entering the building as if keeping count.

The storage room was in the basement. Lina had never been inside it alone.

At the top of the stairs, she stopped before the locked door marked BASEMENT. The paint had blistered around the handle. A laminated notice had been taped beneath the sign.

STORAGE ACCESS BY PERMISSION OF MANAGEMENT.

She tried her key ring anyway. The third key turned.

The door opened onto darkness and the mineral chill of the stairwell. Lina switched on the light. Two bulbs came alive, one after the other, leaving the lower flight in a gray half-glow.

Her footsteps sounded too loud.

At the second-floor landing, she heard a door open above her.

Lina looked up.

Mr. Vale stood on the fourth-floor landing, one hand resting on the banister. He was a narrow man in a brown cardigan, his silver hair combed straight back. He had been a tenant at Alder Street longer than anyone except the superintendent, and he dressed as though each day were an appointment.

“You’re going down,” he said.

It was not a question.

“I’m looking for something.”

“Tenants aren’t permitted in the basement.”

“I’m a tenant.”

“Not in that room.”

Lina tightened her fingers around the keys. “My watch is missing.”

Mr. Vale’s face did not change, but his eyes dropped to her empty wrist.

“What watch?”

“My father’s.”

“Then perhaps you should look in your apartment.”

“I have.”

“Look again.”

The stairwell light buzzed. Somewhere below, a door clicked shut.

Lina glanced toward the basement. “Did you take it?”

Mr. Vale’s hand tightened on the banister. “You should be careful with accusations.”

“Then give me a better explanation for why you’re standing there watching me.”

“I’m watching because you’re about to enter a room you were told to avoid.”

“By whom?”

He did not answer.

Lina descended another step.

“Miss Mercer.”

She stopped.

Mr. Vale leaned over the railing. His voice lowered. “Some things in this building are locked for a reason.”

“Is that a warning?”

“It’s advice.”

“From a man who won’t tell me what he knows?”

His mouth drew into a thin line. “If you find what you’re looking for, leave it where it is.”

Lina looked at him. “What does that mean?”

But he had already turned away. His door opened, then shut. Three locks slid home in quick succession.

She continued down.

The basement door groaned when she pushed it wide. The storage room lay beyond a short passage lined with exposed pipes. A single fluorescent tube flickered overhead, illuminating rows of wire cages and wooden lockers. The concrete floor was dark with old damp. A drain sat in the center, clogged with leaves that could not have come from outside.

Lina’s storage cage was near the far wall. She unlocked it and dragged out two boxes, then a suitcase. Winter blankets. Tax papers. A broken lamp. She searched every pocket and seam.

No watch.

She crouched and ran her fingers along the concrete. Dust clung to her skin. Near the back wall, a narrow trail disturbed the gray film, as if something heavy had been dragged recently.

The trail ended at a bank of old storage lockers.

Most had labels: 1B, 2C, 3A. Some were marked with names. A few had been painted over so many times that the metal doors looked swollen.

Lina stood.

The locker at the end of the row was sealed with a new brass padlock. Its door bore no apartment number, only a strip of masking tape gone brown at the edges.

She moved closer.

A sound came from the passage.

Lina turned off the fluorescent light.

Darkness folded over the room. She pressed herself between two cages and listened. Footsteps entered the basement, slow and measured. A key scraped against metal.

The person stopped just outside the storage room.

Lina covered her mouth.

The light in the passage remained off. Whoever had come down knew enough not to switch it on.

After several seconds, the footsteps retreated.

A door opened above. Closed.

Lina waited until the silence settled again. Then she turned on her phone’s flashlight and returned to the locker.

The padlock had a narrow keyhole, unlike the heavy locks on the other units. She crouched and examined it. A faint smear of oil darkened the metal.

Her key ring hung from her fingers.

One key was not hers.

It had been tucked between the brass key to her apartment and the small silver key for the mailbox. She did not remember seeing it before. It was old, its teeth worn smooth, its bow stamped with four letters.

M. RUSK.

Lina’s thumb passed over the name.

The dead tenant.

She knew the name from the framed photographs in the lobby, from the superintendent’s muttered references to “the Rusk matter,” from the notice that had appeared on the mailboxes two years earlier after Miriam Rusk was found dead in her apartment. Natural causes, people had said. A fall, perhaps. The story changed depending on who told it.

Lina had never met her.

The key fit the lock.

For one moment, Lina held it there, listening to the pipes tick overhead.

Then she turned it.

The padlock opened with a soft, intimate click.

Inside the locker sat a wooden box wrapped in a gray wool coat. The coat carried the stale scent of dust and old rain. Lina pulled it free and set it on the floor. Beneath it, something gleamed.

Her watch.

She reached for it, then stopped.

The watch lay on top of a ledger, its cracked leather strap curled like a sleeping animal. The hands had stopped at 2:17. Lina knew that was wrong. She had wound it the night before.

She lifted it carefully. The metal was cold enough to sting her fingertips.

A folded scrap of paper rested beneath the watch.

Lina opened it.

The handwriting was small and sharply slanted.

DON’T GIVE IT BACK TO HIM.

Her pulse stumbled.

She read the line again. No name. No explanation. Only the warning, written in black ink that had bled slightly into the paper.

A floorboard creaked in the passage.

Lina folded the note and shoved it into her coat pocket. She slipped the watch around her wrist, though the strap hung loose. The ledger remained in the box.

Another creak.

Closer.

She closed the locker and snapped the padlock shut. The key was still in her hand. She should have returned it. She should have left the watch and walked upstairs, told herself the note was old, the key misplaced, the whole thing a misunderstanding.

Instead, she pocketed the key.

The passage darkened as someone stepped between the basement light and the doorway.

Lina backed toward the row of cages.

“Miss Mercer?”

Mr. Vale’s voice.

She said nothing.

His shoes appeared beneath the doorway, polished black and still. He did not enter. He stood there as if he knew exactly where she was.

“You found it,” he said.

Lina’s hand closed around the watch.

“How did you know?”

A pause.

“Because it was never yours to find.”

“Did you put it here?”

“No.”

“Then who did?”

Mr. Vale stepped into the room. His eyes went immediately to her wrist, then to the locker behind her. The color drained from his face.

“You opened that.”

Lina held up the key. “This was in my apartment.”

He stared at the stamped metal.

“M. Rusk,” she said. “Why does a dead woman have a key to my father’s watch?”

Mr. Vale’s expression broke - not with surprise, but recognition.

He crossed the room in two quick steps and seized her wrist. His fingers dug into the old strap.

“Take it off.”

Lina jerked free. The watch struck the metal cage with a sharp crack.

“Don’t touch me.”

“You don’t understand what you’ve done.”

“I found my property.”

“No.” His gaze shifted toward the passage. “You found evidence.”

The word settled between them.

Lina looked down at the watch. The stopped hands pointed to 2:17. On the underside of the case, beneath the strap, a dark reddish mark had dried in the hinge.

Mr. Vale saw her notice it.

His face went utterly still.

From somewhere above them came the slow sound of a door unlocking.

Mr. Vale turned toward the stairs.

Lina closed her fist around the stamped key.

The ledger remained in the open locker behind her, and the name on the key belonged to a woman who had been dead for two years.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters in the full book.