At 2:00 PM on Saturday, I went back into the Halden through the loading dock.
Manny let me in.
He didn't ask why.
He'd been waiting on his milk crate since one-thirty.
The back office sits behind the front desk, past the cash safe and the lost-and-found shelf.
It has no window.
It has two computers, one printer and a gray box the size of a toaster.
The encoder.
Every key card in the building is born there.
Priya Shah sat at the far desk in yesterday's blazer.
Priya does the night audit.
She'd stayed on for the party paperwork and hadn't slept.
Denise stood behind her with her arms crossed.
"Tell her what you told me," Denise said.
I put my hand on the gray box.
It was warm.
"Denise prints our keys."
"It stamps who made them."
Priya frowned at me.
"Every key?"
"Every key."
"Ours say DCARVER."
"Five years of Monday sheets."
"DCARVER, all the way down."
Denise nodded once.
"I've signed every one of those sheets," she said.
"Doug says the logs are with the vendor," Priya said.
"The door logs are."
"This isn't the door."
"This is the machine that made the card."
Priya's fingers started moving.
She clicked into a screen I'd seen over Denise's shoulder a thousand times.
ENCODER HISTORY — 11/11–11/12
"Print the whole night," I said.
"Not just 1814."
"So nobody says we picked a line."
She hit print.
The printer under the desk woke up and began to hum.
The door opened behind us.
Doug filled it.
He wore his event suit, the one with the pocket square.
He looked at the four of us.
Then at the screen.
"Lock it, Priya."
"Legal hold."
"Nobody touches that workstation."
"Vendor's Monday."
Priya kept her hand on the mouse.
"I'm closing out the audit, Mr. Brandt."
"Close it Monday."
The printer kept humming.
Doug heard it.
He crossed the office in three steps.
He bent behind the desk and yanked the cord out of the wall.
The clock over the door said 2:11.
The printer died with a click.
The output tray was empty.
Doug stared at it.
"What was that?"
Priya didn't blink.
"It jammed."
"It jams every Saturday."
He looked at the empty tray one more second.
Then at me.
"You're not an employee, Josie."
"You're trespassing."
"Manny, walk her out."
"Yes, sir," Manny said.
Doug smiled at that.
He smiled at the empty tray.
He left smiling.
Manny didn't walk me anywhere.
He stood in the doorway with his back to the hall and his arms folded.
Priya reached under the tray.
One page had fed out before the cord, into the slot under the paper drawer.
It was still warm when she slid it free.
She held it out to me.
I didn't take it right away.
My last paycheck was in my purse, next to Mom's insulin receipt.
Three hundred twelve dollars and forty cents.
The check didn't cover two of those.
The coffee can at home was empty.
My seat at Northlake belonged to somebody else by now.
"Maybe I should've signed," I said.
Nobody answered.
Then Priya pressed the page flat against my chest.
"Read it first."
I read it.
Every line was a key.
Time, user, room, name.
I ran my eye down the users.
DCARVER
DCARVER
DCARVER
That was Wednesday's evening shift, made by Denise at 2:45 PM, like every day.
Then nothing after midnight.
Nothing, until one line.
01:31 · DBRANDT · 1814 · KOWALSKI J / HSKP 0417
Denise read it over my shoulder.
She said a word I'd never heard her say.
Priya read it and stood up so fast her chair hit the wall.
"It's Doug's login!"
Manny shushed her from the door.
She clapped a hand over her mouth.
Then she took it away and kept typing.
"The badge readers," she whispered.
"Different system."
"Not the vendor."
"Ours."
She plugged the printer back in low, where the cord couldn't be seen from the door.
It took a minute to warm up.
One more page came out.
FRONT OFFICE · BRANDT D · 01:29 · 11/12
At 1:29 AM, the GM's badge opened this room.
At 1:31, the GM's login made a key in my name.
At 1:49, a hoodie used it.
Priya locked the workstation, exactly the way Doug had told her to.
"There," she said.
"Legal hold."
At four o'clock, Mom sat at our kitchen table with her mouth full of pins.
Her navy dress lay across the table.
She'd worn it to my cousin's wedding in 2019.
She'd been a size bigger then.
"Arms up," she said around the pins.
I put my arms up.
She pinned the waist in two places and frowned at it.
"You're going to that party."
"I'm going to that party."
"With the hotel man?"
"With a piece of paper."
She took the pins out of her mouth.
"Read me the paper."
I laid the page between the sugar bowl and her tomato pincushion.
The pincushion sat on the end of the line.
I read her the part it didn't cover.
01:31 · DBRANDT · 1814 · KOWALSKI J