THE OPEN DOOR

The second folder contained a still photograph of the corridor outside my bedroom.

Luke waited while I looked at it.

"The lock opened before Emma got there."

I raised my head.

"I didn't lock it."

"It had latched after the nurse's visit. Normal overnight setting. Someone used an override at one forty-eight. Emma arrived a minute later."

"Who?"

"The log identifies the overnight nursing account. The nurse was in the staff lounge on camera."

I put the photograph on the desk.

"Could she have opened it remotely?"

"She says she didn't. We can confirm the terminal wasn't used. Someone may have copied an old credential. The system needs auditing."

The conversation changed the room. My concern about an exhausted employee suddenly existed beside the possibility that someone had entered while I slept.

I had enemies who would happily kill me. I had spent two years refusing to let them see how little distance I could cover without help. My bedroom was the last place I was willing to make a mistake.

"Shut down the old access accounts."

"The technician is coming. Meanwhile, we're posting guards at both service doors."

"And Emma?"

"Doesn't have an override. Doesn't need one to clean the corridor."

I studied her figure in the photograph. She stood outside the door with her head slightly tilted, listening.

"Did she hear something?"

"Ask her."

"You haven't?"

"I asked whether anyone approached her. She said no. I thought you should have the rest of the conversation without four armed men standing behind you."

I disliked the implication. I knew it was deserved.

Emma returned that night with a plastic grocery bag and a tired face that looked slightly less pale.

I was in the library when she came in.

"You're back."

"I said I'd try."

"How are you feeling?"

She paused with her hand on the cart.

"Better. Thank you for the car."

"You don't have to thank me."

"I can manage to say it once."

I almost smiled. She noticed, and for a moment we were where we had been before the photograph.

Then I asked about the bedroom door.

Her hand stopped above the cloth.

"It was open when I got there."

"Did you see someone leave?"

"No."

"Hear someone?"

She considered.

"There was a metal sound. Like something dragging. Near the staircase, I think. Then I heard the bell."

"Why didn't you mention it?"

"Because I found you shivering in bed. That seemed more important."

"Anything else?"

"The door wasn't damaged."

"We know."

"Then you know as much as I do."

She resumed dusting. I could see her expression reflected in the glass cabinet, guarded now.

"I'm trying to find out what happened."

"All right."

"You sound annoyed."

"You sound like you've decided I have an answer you're going to get if you keep asking."

I took a breath. Asking questions was what I did. People answered them because failing to answer tended to be expensive.

I hadn't realized until then that Emma heard the same pressure even when I didn't mean to use it.

"I haven't decided anything."

She nodded, though she didn't look persuaded.

Her grocery bag sat beneath the table. A paper pharmacy sack protruded from it.

"For your mother?"

Emma followed my gaze.

"Yes."

"Mrs. Alvarez said yesterday was difficult."

"It was."

"Is she better?"

"She was calmer when I left."

I reached for the telephone.

"We can have the pharmacy deliver those. Save you another stop."

"They do deliver. I wasn't there when they called."

"Then have them sent here."

"No, thank you."

"There's someone at reception all day."

"I said no."

I lowered the receiver without making the call.

"Why make this more difficult?"

Her shoulders tightened.

"Because I don't want my mother's bills coming through your house."

"I didn't offer to pay them."

"You were going to."

She was right. That irritated me.

"It would take one phone call."

"For you."

"For either of us."

"Then let me make it when I need to."

I looked at her hands. The plaster had been changed, but the skin around it was still raw. She had almost fainted two nights earlier and was already back in a uniform, worried about appearing ungrateful.

"I already know you're desperate," I said.

Her face changed.

I heard the words properly only after they had landed.

"That's not what I meant."

"It's what you said."

"I meant you don't have to pretend this is manageable."

"I'm not pretending for your benefit."

She bent to pick up the bag and placed it out of sight on the cart's lower shelf.

"Emma."

"I'll finish the library."

She did. For forty minutes she worked in the same room without giving me anything except the answers her job required.

I wanted to apologize. Every opening sentence sounded either like an excuse or another attempt to make her listen. I let the time pass, which was worse.

At three forty-five, she folded the last cloth.

"There was blue paint," she said.

I looked up.

"Where?"

"Inside the bedroom frame. A little streak beneath the lock plate. I noticed when I wiped the door yesterday."

"Fresh?"

"A fresh scrape, I think. The paint itself looked old."

"You saw it before?"

"On the third-floor service landing. Behind the railing, near the cabinet panel. Same faded blue."

I glanced toward the corridor.

"Show me."

She hesitated, then led me out.

Under the service stair railing, barely visible from my height, a blue mark crossed the edge of an old maintenance panel.

Emma crouched and pointed without touching it.

"Here."

"Could be from construction."

"Maybe. But the dust was disturbed when I cleaned it last week."

"Why didn't you report that?"

She stood slowly.

"People work here. Maintenance opens things. I'm not usually asked to investigate dust."

I deserved that too.

"Thank you," I said.

She looked at me, surprised enough that I wished I'd said it sooner.

"You're welcome."

I watched her leave with the grocery bag. It would have been easier if she had withheld the clue out of anger. Then I could have justified mine.

Instead, she had told me something useful while wanting nothing from me.

I called Luke.

The next morning, a security technician confirmed that the access software retained an obsolete contractor profile beneath the nursing account. The visible username had concealed the underlying credential. That explained the first misleading log, though not who used it.

The original security equipment predated the shooting. Later upgrades had replaced the bedroom lock but retained part of the old controller. Northstar Security had supplied and maintained that older system.

"Who owned Northstar?" I asked.

Luke opened a thin folder.

"Daniel Carter. Founded it, ran it for years. Sold out about eight years ago after a financial investigation."

I stared at him.

"Carter."

"Common name."

"And Emma's father?"

"We haven't established the relationship."

He didn't ask whether I wanted him to do so. He already knew.

I looked again at the photograph of her outside my door.

The woman who had refused my money had been alone beside my bed after someone used a credential belonging to a man with her surname.

I hated how quickly suspicion arrived.

I hated more that I let it stay.