The Langley Case: A Nathan Roeder Mystery

The Tiers, The Office, The Puzzle

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t bring a gun with me, not even to the elevator. But I did promise myself that, if need be, I would beat the elevator operator to within an inch of his life if he did not immediately let us pass.

“Can I help you?” His voice even sneered.

I handed him the disc with the two passes. He scanned them. “Right this way, sir,” he said. Saving himself from a thorough ass beating, he ushered us into the elevator and took us immediately up to the Tiers.

More to the point, the trip was slow and casual, none of the gravity pressing us against the floor. Things were easier this time, more enjoyable. Felicia had the time to enjoy the view. Which she did. Tremendously.

I admit, even I indulged a little. Looking out the glass elevator, I could see Town and the Sprawl coming gradually more and more together the higher up we went. It started to click in my head how someone up in the Tiers could see everyone below them as being one group, one common denominator.

As being one single inferior group. A separate species that could be exterminated without pause or moral quandary. That was something Oliver mentioned, something these crossed scythe people believed in.

Looking down, it all looked the same. The streets of Town were a bit more orderly, a bit more central, and bit more automated. There was a bit of a visible economic difference. And the Sprawl, obviously, spread out a lot farther. They don’t call it a Sprawl for nothing.

The ride up was slow and gentle. When we reached the top, there was someone waiting for us. She was smartly dressed, with glasses, a clipboard, and a pen that all marked her as a personal assistant. Her heels were viscously high, forming her lower body into that perfect shape that women other than Felicia had to suffer for.

As we stepped off the elevator, the woman smiled at us, a warm, competent smile. I felt a tingle on my skin as we passed through the field. Maybe no one else would have felt it. Maybe everyone feels it. I don’t know. But I noticed it enough to notice that they’re non-invasive searching methods were a hell of lot better than anything I’d seen anywhere else. I knew they’d just checked for a lot more than just metal.

“Mr. Roeder, I presume?” She held out a manicured hand, one that did not have a wedding ring on it. I read somewhere that PA’s don’t wear wedding rings, regardless, to symbolize that they are most committed to their jobs.

I shook her hand. She had a firm, friendly, competent handshake. Everything about her was competent. “That’s me,” I said.

She smiled and turned to Felicia. “And you would be—?” It was a question that could have come off rudely, but the PA said it with all the grace of a diplomat.

“Felicia Serano,” Felicia took the hand and shook it as business like as she could.

“A pleasure to meet you both,” the PA said. “My name Jessica Roberts. Miss Langley asked me to show you around while you were up here with us.”

Felicia smiled. “Terrific,” she said. “What shall we see first?”

Jessica smiled, the smile of putting up with something distasteful without showing your distaste. “I was under the impression that we were going to look at Oliver Langley’s office and estates.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s right. Felicia just wanted to know where we were going first.”

Jessica smiled at me, a different smile than before. The woman had hundreds of smiles it seemed, one for every occasion. They all made her angular face look a bit warmer in a different way. “I see,” she said. Then she turned to Felicia and put one hand on her shoulder, as a doting aunt would. “Is this your first time up in the Tiers?” She asked.

I could see Felicia debating the lie, wondering whether it was safe to admit the truth, and figuring out how much truth she could safely mention. Finally, she nodded, blushing ever so slightly. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”

Jessica’s newest smile was the warm smile of someone showing a tourist around town. “I’m sure there’ll be some time for sight seeing,” she said. “But you must want to take care of business first, yes?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Then we’ll be off,” Jessica said. “I’ve taken the liberty of arranging transportation through the Tiers. It will waste a lot of time to walk.” She gestured, we followed.

Soon we were sitting in the most comfortable chair I’ve never seen. It wasn’t really a chair so much as it was an empty cushion of air. But it wasn’t air. It was just, I don’t know. It took all the pressure off my bones, the way I’d expect a seat to. But I couldn’t see anything.

I was not the only one confused and intrigued. Felicia, after just a few seconds, asked, “What are we sitting on?”

“Nothing,” Jessica said. “Quite literally. There’s nothing there. No gravity, no nothing. You’re held in stasis, almost.”

“How does that work?”

Jessica smiled, the smile that says she doesn’t know everything. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Something to do with magnetic fields.” She wriggled a little bit. “Comfortable though, isn’t it?”

It was the most comfortable seat I’d ever been in. I wondered briefly how much these things cost, then remembered where I was. I couldn’t afford anything up in the Tiers. Nothing. It was one of those things. If you had to ask how much it was, you didn’t work for someone who earned enough to buy it. Something like that.

I laid back and enjoyed it while I could. It wasn’t long before Jessica was ushering us out into an office building, down a hallway, up an escalator, down another hallway, and into a large office. This, it seemed, was where Oliver Langley spent the majority of his later adult life.

It was an inner sanctum.

Before letting us in, Jessica pointed her pen at the room and pressed a button. For half a second, I saw gridlines appear on all the walls, floor, and ceiling. “Just cataloguing where things are,” she said. “That way we can put them back when we are finished.”

I gave Felicia a look, one that was meant to suggest that she distract Jessica while I did some digging. One that might have told her that I suspected Jessica was serving a double purpose. Or even one that might have told Felicia that it was dangerous to have Jessica find what we were looking for.

Felicia winked at me and moved into the office. She didn’t seem to have gotten any of my messages.

Oliver’s desk was in perfect order, the way you would expect the desk of an executive to be. His chair was comfortable, high backed, leanable, and very tall. There were two other chairs in the room, on the other side of the desk. That in itself is rare these days, but at least those other chairs were uncomfortable and much shorter than his chair. The power play would still be there.

Inside the drawers were files, some of them paper, most of them electronic. I didn’t expect to find much of anything there. Whatever he had left behind would be hidden, something that he wouldn’t expect the average person to find.

I moved close to Felicia. “Get Jessica out of here,” I whispered. “I don’t care how you do it, but I need to look for things she shouldn’t see.”

Felicia winked at me and turned back to searching. I was starting to wonder if she’d even heard me when she stopped, walked over to Jessica, and asked her about the ladies room.

Jessica started giving her complex directions, and Felicia did something I hadn’t been expecting: she played dumb. “I would really feel more comfortable if you showed me,” she said. Then she leaned in closer, said something I barely heard. “I’m worried I won’t know how to work it,” she said.

Jessica smiled, all encouragement. “It’s not hard,” she said.

Felicia gestured towards me and asked for help again. I didn’t understand why, but that did it. Jessica nodded a knowing nod and took Felicia by the arm. In a few seconds, I was alone in the room.

I stood up and took a deep breath. I had to think like Oliver. I had to figure out what he would place as clues for his daughter. Would he expect there to be an outsider? He might. He might have expected her to hire a detective. So that was one way to look. How would a detective, like me, look that a normal person wouldn’t?

But there was an inherent problem with that. If the opposition caught on, if the people he was working to expose figured out that there was a clue, or worse, evidence, somewhere in the room, they would stop at nothing to find it. They would hire their own detectives. So looking like a detective wouldn’t work.

That left one option. Either Oliver figured Theresa would solve it herself, or he figured the detective would look and be unable to find it the right way, and ask Theresa for help. Either way, it had to be something that a daughter would look for but a detective would not.

It had to be somewhere a family member might look, but a professional wouldn’t.

On the bookshelf behind the desk were several books, each no doubt with about a hundred volumes in their drives. There was also a paperweight, a golf trophy, and what looked like a clay ashtray that a child might have made. The kind of thing that a young kid will make for their parent, who doesn’t smoke, and their parent will hold dear and precious for the rest of their lives.

That was it. That was something that a kid would notice and a detective would ignore. I grabbed the phone off the desk and dialed Theresa’s number.

The caller ID must have told her secretary something, because I got right through to Theresa. “Hello?” She sounded confused, then relaxed a bit when she saw me. “Mr. Roeder. Nathan. What can I do for you?”

“When you were a kid, did you ever make anything for your father? Something artistic?”

“I don’t remember,” she said. “That was a long time ago.”

I held up the ashtray. “Does this look familiar?”

She recoiled. “Good lord, no,” she said. “What the hell is that?”

I smiled. “It’s the missing piece to the puzzle,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

It occurred to me that this was something I should be certain of. “Do you have any siblings,” I asked.

“No,” she said. “I’m an only child. Why? What is going on?”

“I’ll explain later. Right now I have to figure out a way to sneak this thing out past Jessica Roberts.”

Then Theresa, in a single word, said one of the most frightening things I’d ever heard. “Who?”

I felt my heart start to beat faster. “Jessica Roberts. The Personal Assistant you asked to guide us around.”

“Why would I have someone guide you around?” She asked. “That’s insane. You’re searching for things no one is supposed to know exist.” She had a point. There was no reason for her to send a guide. But that meant that—

Oh, fuck. “I have to go. I’ll be in touch,” I said.

I hung up the phone and ran out of the office, trying to remember the directions Jessica had started off giving Felicia. Maybe Jessica was killing Felicia. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she was keeping her cover until she could get me alone. That would explain why she was reluctant to go with Felicia.

But she did go with Felicia. So maybe she was killing Felicia, then coming back for me.

I slipped the ashtray into a pocket as I ran down this hallway, took my second left, then my first right, my fourth left, and pretty soon, I was completely lost in a maze of corridors. A maze without a PDA, so no way to call anyone and tell them where I was, or to try to find help.

I could only hope that either Felicia struggled enough for me to hear her, which would require the bathroom to not have a privacy shield, unlikely; or that Jessica would come looking for me when she and Felicia got back, unharmed.

I decided that waiting was a bad idea. I needed to keep moving, in the hopes that I’d find either the restroom or someone who could give me directions to the restroom.

I found the latter first. A secretary who probably made more money in a week than I made in a year. I asked him where the bathroom was, and he started giving me directions. After noticing how confused I was, he programmed something into a wall, and lights started leading me where I needed to go.

I thanked him, then started running off, figuring he would excuse it as an urgent need. But really, I was running because of what those lights were telling me.

If Jessica could have lit the way for Felicia, there was no reason, no excuse, for her to go along. Unless she meant to do something while they were alone.

I’ve never understood the convention of having the men’s room and the women’s room so close together. I suppose it’s some kind of centralizing thing. To be honest, I’d never thought of it before. It was just that, on the way, my mind was racing from topic to topic so quickly that, in my panic, that line of thought somehow snuck its way in.

When I arrived at the bathroom, I put my ear to the women’s room and heard absolutely nothing. No surprise. In the Tiers, privacy screens are probably just about everywhere. People up here don’t talk to anyone they don’t want to.

I pushed open the door, expecting—I don’t know what I expected. Maybe I expected to find Jessica standing over Felicia’s corpse. Maybe I expected to find them struggling, with Jessica pulling some kind of cord around Felicia’s neck, and Felicia backing her against a wall. Maybe I expected a knife fight, or a very sexy catfight. Maybe I expected to find Felicia holding a blunt object covered with Jessica’s blood, with Jessica in a crumpled pile on the floor, blood seeping out in a pool.

What I was not expecting was and empty bathroom. Completely empty. No one anywhere inside.

Either I’d gone to the wrong bathroom, or they’d come back to the office and I’d missed them.

I walked outside and wondered how the hell I was going to get back to Oliver Langley’s office. I stepped into the men’s room, took the opportunity to use it, and tried to think. I’ve never understood it, but I tend to think better while pissing.

I figured I had three basic options. One, I could wander around until I found someone to direct me to Oliver Langley’s office. Two, I could wander around until I found an empty office, call Felicia, and have her come find me. Three, I could wait until someone else got the call of nature, and ask them for help.

I felt like such a rube. Such a bumpkin. But the truth was, up in the Tiers, I’m out of my league.

I found my way back to the office. It wasn’t without help. Jessica and Felicia were waiting for me, and both seemed a bit confused. When I walked in and told them I’d been to the bathroom, Jessica smiled in understanding.

“We must have missed each other in the halls,” she said.

“This place is like a maze,” I said.

Jessica shrugged, and smiled one of pity. “Are we all done here?” She asked.

I looked at Felicia. Felicia stared back at me with those amazing purple eyes, but didn’t say anything. “I think so,” I said.

Jessica moved to use her pen on the room again. I couldn’t have her do that.

“Actually,” I said, putting my hand on hers and lowering the pen. “I might need to come back. No point in having to do this twice.”

Jessica smiled a suspicious smile, and put the pen away. “All right,” she said. “Shall we go to the house then?”

“Absolutely.”

Now, when I hear the word house, I think of one of two things. I either think of the apartment I have in Town, a little one bedroom number with one bathroom, a general purpose room, and a kitchen annex; or I think of the houses in the Sprawl, everything from the little hovels to the big two and a half bathroom three story numbers.

What I do not think of is what qualifies as a house in the Tiers.

Oliver Langley’s house was a penthouse apartment on top of one of the corporate towers. There was a garden bigger than my apartment on the patio, complete with a waterfall. There were five bedrooms, six and a half bathrooms, a dining room, a living room, a recreation room, an exercise room, a study, a lounge, a kitchen, and a sun room. Any one of those rooms was bigger than my entire apartment. I had no idea how Oliver Langley managed to live in this space by himself. Maybe he switched bedrooms every few years to fight off the monotony.

Jessica told us that we would have the run of the house if we wanted to look for things, and it was just a question of how long we wanted to spend looking. If we wanted to go on that tour of the Tiers, we’d have to hurry up a little. After all, our passes were only good for the day. They weren’t overnight passes.

I took Felicia aside to give her directions. “Your PDA has a camera, right?”

She smiled and whipped it out. “It sure does,” she said. I can take video recordings, photographs, or holograms.”

I closed my eyes, debating whether to wish I hadn’t gotten it for her or just to be pleased with how giddy it made her. “Okay, here’s what I want. I want you to take pictures of every picture in the house. Especially if there are pictures of Oliver with anyone else. I also want you to take pictures and holograms of anything that looks like a child made it. In fact, just grab anything that looks like it was made by a kid.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like something a kid would make their parent for a gift. Something like that.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” I leaned in, wiping my hand over my mouth, afraid of what I was about to say. “I want you to find a reason to leave me alone with Jessica for a little while.”

The look in her eyes told me that she had no idea why I would want that. It also told me that our tryst had meant at least something to her. “Why the hell would I do that, Nathan?” The emphasis on my last name cemented the jealousy.

“It’s not like that,” I said. “I think she’s going to try to kill me, and I need to give her an opportunity.”

Felicia laughed, the kind of laugh you make when you don’t believe something. “Why? What is wrong with you, anyway?”

I frowned. “If I don’t give her a chance to do it here, she might arrange for the elevator to fall, or an explosion, or something that we can’t defend against and that will attack us both. If she thinks she has a shot at me, she might take it. And then, hopefully, I can stop her, and we can question her.”

“Like we questioned Karen?”

I shrugged. “To be honest, I’m getting tired of being the good guy. Maybe we won’t bluff this time.”

Felicia put her hand on my arm and then spoke my own thoughts out loud. “I really wish you’d brought a gun,” she said.