I don’t stick around to hear what he has to say in reply to that. I’ve grabbed the first aid kit from the desk and am racing back down the stairs…only to encounter Pete, looking pale, making his way slowly back up them.
“I couldn’t find the key,” I say. “Someone’s got it. He’s going to have to force the doors open…”
But Pete is shaking his head.
“He already did,” Pete says, taking my arm. “Come on back upstairs.”
“But I’ve got the kit,” I say, waving the red plastic case. “Is—”
“She’s gone,” Pete says. Now he’s pulling on me. “Come on. And don’t look. You don’t want to look.”
I believe him.
I let him steer me up the stairs. As we enter the lobby, I see that the president is still there, standing around with some basketball players and the same administrators in their gray suits. Beside them, Magda, who has emerged from behind her cash register to see what’s going on, makes a bright splash of color in her pink smock and fuchsia hot pants.
Magda takes one look at my expression, and her face crumples. “Oh no! Not another of my movie stars!”
Pete ignores her, goes to the phone by the security desk, and holding up a key chain, on which is attached a student ID card—and a little rubber replica of the cartoon character Ziggy—begins reading the information from the ID card to his superiors at the security office.
“Roberta Pace,” he reads tonelessly. “Fischer Hall resident. First year. ID number five five seven, three nine—”
I stand a little ways from both the security and the reception desks, feeling myself begin to shake. I don’t know the name. I don’t ask to see the photo on the ID. I don’t want to know if I knew the face.
It’s right then that Rachel rounds the corner from the ladies’ room.
“What’s going on?” she asks, her gaze going from my face to Pete’s to President Allington’s.
It’s Tina, behind the desk, who speaks.
“Another one fell off the top of the elevator,” she says, in a small voice. “She’s dead.”
Rachel’s face drains of all its color beneath her carefully applied MAC foundation.
But when she speaks a few seconds later, there is no tremor in her voice. “I assume the authorities have been notified? Good. Do we have an ID? Oh, thank you, Pete. Tina, beep Maintenance, and have them turn off all the elevators. Heather, can you call Dr. Jessup’s office, and let them know what’s going on? President Allington, I am so sorry about this. Please, go back to your breakfast…”
Aware that I’m shaking and that my heart is beating a million times a minute, I slip back to my office to start making calls.
Only this time, instead of calling Dr. Jessup’s office first, I call Cooper.
“Cartwright Investigations,” he says, because I’ve called him on his office line, hoping he’d be there.
“It’s me,” I say. I keep my voice down, because Sarah is in Rachel’s office next door, calling each of the resident assistants on their cell phones and telling them what’s happened, then asking them to come back to their floors as soon as possible. “There’s been another one.”
“Another what?” Cooper asks. “And why are you whispering?”
“Another death by elevator,” I whisper.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Dead?”
I think about Pete’s face.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Jesus, Heather. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” I say, for the third and final time. “Listen…could you come over?”
“Come over? What for?”
The firemen from Ladder #9 come striding past our office door just then, in their helmets and coats. One of them is carrying an axe. Obviously, no one told New York’s bravest what the nature of the emergency was when they called.
“Downstairs,” I say to them, pointing to the stairs to the basement. “Another, um, elevator incident.”
The captain looks surprised, but nods and leads what has suddenly turned into a very grim procession past the reception desk and down the stairs.
To Cooper, I whisper, “I want to get to the bottom of what is going on over here, and I could use the help of a professional investigator, Cooper.”
“Whoa,” Cooper says. “Slow down there, slugger. Are the police there? Aren’t they professional investigators?”
“The police are just going to say the same thing about this one that they did about the last one,” I say. “That she was elevator surfing, and slipped.”
“Because that’s probably what happened, Heather.”
“No,” I say. “No, not this time. Definitely not this time.”
“Why? Is this latest one preppie too?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But that’s not funny.”
“I didn’t mean it to be funny. I just—”
“She liked Ziggy, Coop.” My voice cracks a little, but I don’t care.
“She liked what?”
“Ziggy. That cartoon character.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Because it’s like the uncoolest cartoon character ever. No one who likes Ziggy is going to elevator surf, Coop. No one.”
“Heather—”