Guilty Minds

23

There was a uniform shop in Silver Spring I used to frequent when I worked for Stoddard Associates. This place sold everything from chefs’ toques to lab coats to security officers’ blazers to hospital scrubs. I had a good contact there named Marge something, who used to get me whatever I needed, without asking too many questions. When you’re working undercover it helps to have access to a variety of uniforms.

Luckily, they had what I needed, and Marge still worked there.

Forty-five minutes later I rang Kayla Pitts’s apartment door buzzer. She didn’t answer. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. She could still be at home. It was ten in the morning; she was likely still asleep. Last time I tried her buzzer she didn’t answer either, even though she was probably at home.

She was surely frightened. Maybe she was hunkering down in her apartment, bracing for the explosion of attention she knew was coming, if it wasn’t already here. Journalists around the world were probably hard at work Googling “Heidi L’Amour” and “Lily Schuyler” and pulling up her page on the escort service’s website. It was only a matter of time before some smart and enterprising journalist figured out that Heidi L’Amour was actually a young woman named Kayla Pitts. Maybe a friend of hers would turn up and give away her real name. A classmate from Cornelius College might want to sell an interview to the National Enquirer. Or one of her colleagues at Lily Schuyler.

But it hadn’t happened yet. No TV vans idled in the parking lot.

If she was at home, I was going to surprise her.

I hoped she wasn’t.

I waited a few minutes for someone to emerge and let me into the building. But it was a slow time of day, and no one came. So I did the old courier trick, rang a couple of random units until I found one that answered. I said, “package” and sure enough, a few seconds later the buzzer sounded, unlocking the front door.

Naturally, as soon as I passed through the front door, someone was exiting. It was a middle-aged woman with auburn hair, wearing a green business suit with a skirt. She looked at me, then looked away. Even if I didn’t have the uniform on, she’d probably not stop me. The building was too big for anyone to know all the neighbors. But I didn’t want to take a chance.

I took the elevator to the seventh floor. The hallway — worn beige wall-to-wall carpeting in an ugly pattern, a long corridor with identical doors, the overhead fluorescent lighting flickering — was empty. Most of the residents who had jobs had probably already left for work. An odor of fried eggs hung in the air.

Apartment 712 was halfway down the corridor on the right.

I rang the bell. It made a pleasant bing-bong. I turned to my side so she couldn’t see me through the security peephole, if she was at home. She wouldn’t forget my face.

I waited. Adrenaline pulsed through my veins. If she was home, and if she opened the door, I had to move quickly. I had to get into her apartment whether she invited me in or not.

No answer. I listened for any movement within but heard nothing. I rang again and listened. After a couple more minutes I was as sure as I could be that she wasn’t home.

I knew it was possible that she was sitting there in bed, headphones on, ignoring the outside world. Given what was about to happen to her, I couldn’t blame her at all for wanting to escape. Not one bit. That girl’s life was about to be pulled inside out. She was lying — of that I had no doubt — and I should have felt contempt, but I still couldn’t help feeling bad for her. Who knew what pressure she was under. Who knew what sordid life circumstances compelled her to take part in this scam.

I unzipped the small black nylon briefcase and pulled out the lock-pick set I’d borrowed from a friend who lived and worked in Old Town Alexandria, doing roughly my kind of work. He didn’t have a snap gun, which is my preferred tool for picking locks, but I hadn’t forgotten how to use a pick and a tension wrench, the old-fashioned way.

I knelt in front of the door, and in a couple of minutes I realized that I was actually a little rusty. Picking locks is all about the technique, and I found myself fumbling. It was taking me far longer than it should have. I didn’t do it all that often.

A door opened across the hall.

An older woman with gray hair cut in bangs and thick-framed black glasses was standing there, wrapped tightly in a cherry blossom kimono. “Hello?”

I turned around.

She saw my uniform. It was an all-purpose repairman’s uniform, a navy tunic with snaps over a white T-shirt, pens in a breast pocket protector, matching navy Dickies. Stitched over the left breast was “Allied HVAC.” My friend Marge at the uniform outfit had plucked it from another customer’s order. They always ordered a few extra. I didn’t have much choice — that was all she had at the moment, apart from lab coats and hospital scrubs — but I figured it would work. A uniform from a locksmith’s would have been ideal, but she didn’t happen to have any in stock.

“How ya doin’?” I said.

“Are you working on her lock?” She had a high, birdlike voice.

“Yep.”

“My lock is sticking.”

I turned back to Kayla’s door. “I’ll see what we can do when I’m done repairing hers.”

“You’re not from DC Locksmiths. I thought we could only call DC Locksmiths.”

I didn’t turn around. “Yeah, well, I got the call.”

“Why are you from Allied HVAC? I thought that was just heating and air conditioning and so on and so forth.”

“We have a locksmith division.” It was all I could think of to say.

“Allied HVAC?” she said.

Just then the tumblers lined up and the lock turned. I turned the knob and opened Kayla’s door.

I turned around and smiled. “I’ll see about your lock when I’m done here.”

The old lady just looked at me and then closed her door.

I had a bad feeling about this woman. I’d seen mistrust in her face, and a kind of determination. It was the look of someone who intended to call the police. She didn’t buy my flimsy cover.

I had to move quickly. If she called the cops — and I had to operate on the assumption that she would — I had no more than ten minutes. If that.