No pictures on the walls. No stash of panties belonging to the female residents. No notes.
It was just the man’s kind of sad, dark, little office.
That didn’t mean, of course, that he was innocent.
He could have just been smart enough not to leave any traces out where anyone could see them.
Scooting his chair back, I sat down to open the drawers of his desk, rifling through the mixed contents. Rubber bands, pens, about a dozen different Alan wrenches which were probably from furniture assembly jobs some of the residents had talked him into, old sticky notes with the font completely faded, some pennies, a couple cans of WD-40.
But there, way at the back of the second drawer, I found it.
The little credit card key that matched the one Cam had given to me to use to get into Miranda’s apartment.
The thing was, it was quite literally covered in dust, so much so that I left fingerprints on it when I picked it up.
There was no way it had been used recently.
Sighing, I tucked it into my pocket.
Guilty or not, Miranda thought he was a creep, and creeps didn’t deserve access to her apartment.
Swirling in my chair, I let out a deep sigh.
If it wasn’t the super, then who?
The doorman?
It was an avenue worth looking into.
He did, clearly, use his key. Often. Bringing her dry cleaning and packages up.
But he was an older guy. Married, judging by the ring on his finger. A man who’d worked at the building for years.
He saw Miranda daily.
Why would he just… all of a sudden decide to attack her?
Especially when there seemed to be no other motive aside from the attempted murder.
If there had been a sexual assault component to it, I guess I could maybe understand it. The guy who saw her daily, pining over her, wanting her, mistaking her cordiality for interest. Then one day, something just triggers him and he attacks.
I could make that scenario work in my mind.
But without that, it just didn’t make any sense.
Sighing, I climbed out of the chair, and made my way back outside, but went ahead and walked down the alley, squeezing past the dumpster, and making my way down the block, just far enough that the doorman wasn’t looking at me as I watched him.
Outwardly, he seemed to be everything that a doorman at a fancy-ass place should be.
Friendly, efficient, anticipating of needs.
“Yeah?” Sawyer asked, leaving me to try to work with that one syllable, to see if Clarke had spilled the beans to Barrett, who had in turn told Sawyer.
That said, Sawyer wasn’t the type to wait for me to call. If he was pissed at me, he’d have reached out to let me know that.
Clarke, for whatever reason, was keeping my secret.
“The super seems clean. He had her keycard, but it was so dusty that there’s no way he used it recently.”