Just Between Us

“Well, that’s a surprise,” Julie said, rubbing a corner between her gloved fingers as if she could actually tell the thread count through latex.

It took me a minute of glancing around before I spotted the computer, a large desktop set up on a table in an alcove. “Bingo,” I said, powering it on and not surprised when a page with a password box popped up. “Let’s see if we can find a birth certificate or any other personal documents. I need his birth date or his mother’s maiden name or something like that to try.”

Most people aren’t that careful with their passwords; they think about something easy to remember for quick access, not realizing that this means quick access for other people, too.

Julie and I started opening drawers. The nightstand held a lifetime supply of condoms, ribbed and regular, thin and “stimulating,” natural sheepskin, and some that were supposedly flavored. “Good to know he believes in safe sex,” I said, slamming the drawer closed and moving on to the closet. A few boxes on a top shelf looked promising, but they turned out to hold childhood mementos—an old Nerf football, a small Steelers jersey, some family photos that had dates but no names to identify the smiling faces.

“Check this out,” Julie called from across the room. She was kneeling in front of an old-fashioned trunk, and before I reached her side I could see that it was full of sex toys. “Now we know how he spends his free time,” she said, giggling, waggling a pair of leather-covered handcuffs at me.

“Fifty Shades of Cliché,” I said, wondering if this was a serious interest or just something he used to woo the people he managed to bring up here. I looked around again, frustrated. “He’s got to keep papers somewhere.”

“Maybe it’s all online.”

“Let’s hope not.” Heart sinking, I started at the front of the apartment and examined everything. The kitchen was small, but had a table next to a window that overlooked the backyard and some shared parking. I opened the refrigerator: several different types of craft beer, condiments like RedHot, a loaf of something labeled “Pepperoni Bread,” and the only nods to healthy eating, a bag of moldering carrots and a perfectly round head of iceberg lettuce. The freezer held Hot Pockets and pizza snacks.

The cupboards were equally sparse: Pop-Tarts, a bag of Doritos, and a huge plastic jug of something called Fuel XXX, which looked like one of those protein powders you bought at muscle-bound health stores.

There were only DVDs and video games in the entertainment center and there was nothing hidden behind the couch. The small bathroom had a medicine cabinet stuffed full of prescription pill bottles—oxycodone, Zoloft, diazepam—all mixed in with the mundane toothpaste, razors, and shaving cream. I went back to the table with the computer, checked the single center drawer a second time, and slammed it shut in frustration.

“This is taking too long,” Julie said. “Can’t you figure out how to get in without a password?”

“Not easily.” Finally, in desperation, I ran my hand under the bed and felt something hard. Using my iPhone flashlight, I spotted a gray box and pulled it out. A fire safe, but it was locked.

A third time through the apartment failed to reveal a key small enough to fit in the lock. Julie had a go with the screwdrivers, but this keyhole was too tiny even for them. Trying to pry it open with a knife was equally futile. “Aargh, this is so frustrating!” I said. “Maybe if we drop it out a window it’ll break open.”

“And maybe the neighbors would come running,” Julie said. “Here, let me try again.” She went at it with the knife, but only succeeded in snapping off the blade. “Shoot! Now what are we going to do?”

I tilted the safe and the broken metal tip dropped from the keyhole. “We’ll just throw out the knife or put it back in the drawer. If we hide it in plain sight—” I stopped short.

“What is it?” Julie said.

Without stopping to answer, I ran back to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator again. The perfect head of lettuce. I reached into the vegetable drawer and knew the minute I touched its waxy leaves that I was right. Julie had followed me into the kitchen and she watched, perplexed, as I took the lettuce from the fridge.

“Isn’t there anything else to eat?” she said as I set it on the counter.

“It’s not edible,” I said, tapping the plastic surface. On the bottom was a round rubber stopper like the kind in a piggy bank, but held on with a small knob. Julie’s mouth dropped as I twisted it open and out spilled two tiny bags of white powder, a roll of bills bound with a rubber band, and a tiny key.

The fire safe opened easily with the key and I riffled quickly through the files inside, grabbing one that seemed to have personal documents and running with it to the computer. My hands shook a little as I typed in his birth date. No luck. His mother’s maiden name. No luck. Maiden name and her birth year. No luck. His year and initials and her year and initials. The password screen slid aside, revealing his files, and I cried out in triumph.

“Shh,” Julie cautioned, stepping past me to look out the window and then checking the ones on the other side of the apartment. “It’s been over thirty minutes, we need to hurry.”

Before I erased anything, I wanted to see what he’d been holding over our heads. I opened Photos and scrolled through them as fast as I could, a rapid blur of color, until I found the dark, grainy shot that he’d sent to us. There were other photos, over a dozen in all, of the three of us and the road and the cars, the headlights a smear of light illuminating first my face, then Sarah’s. Julie stepping into the frame of another one. Heather on the side of several shots, head turned or looking as catatonic as I remembered. All four of us had been caught on camera, clearly visible. Viktor’s leg dangled out of the car in one photo, and although someone else might not have realized what they were seeing, no one could miss that bottle-green Mercedes.

Something was odd. It took me a minute to realize that the close-ups were too close and too in-focus to have been taken with a smartphone. I clicked on one and opened the EXIF data, which revealed that the shot had been taken with a Canon. I quickly checked the others. All taken with the same camera, not a smartphone.

“This is really weird,” I said to Julie, who was sitting on the bed sifting more carefully through the fire safe. “He took the photos of us with a regular camera.”

“So?” She sounded distracted.

“So what was he doing out at two A.M. with a camera? He’s a bartender, not a professional photographer.”

“Maybe it’s a hobby,” she said. “People leave stuff in their cars all the time. Who cares? Just get rid of them.”

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