CHAPTER TEN
The corner of the lobby nearest the front window had a small built-in bookshelf along one wall.
The shelves were nearly packed with paperbacks and hardcovers that no one had touched in years, and two chairs angled toward the glass.
Rachel had commandeered one of them and pulled the side table close enough to set her phone on it.
Novak had taken the other chair and had his laptop open across his knees.
It was as close to a proper workspace as the Hargrove was going to offer them, and it suited Rachel well enough.
The tenant list was open on her phone alongside the bureau's mobile database on her laptop, which she’d taken from her bag in the car.
She was working through them in parallel, cross-referencing names against public records, prior addresses, criminal histories, civil filings, and anything else the system could pull.
It was slow, deliberate work that required attention without offering much in return — at least not right away.
Most of what came back was unremarkable.
So far, she only saw long-term residents with clean records and ordinary histories.
She moved through them methodically, name by name, floor by floor.
She'd always found this part of an investigation genuinely satisfying, which she knew was a minority opinion among agents. Novak had told her once, early in their partnership, that cross-referencing databases felt to him like reading the index of a book without knowing what the book was about. Rachel understood the complaint but didn't share it. She also hadn’t shared that when she and Jack had been partners, he’d felt the same way.
But for Rachel…she liked the accumulation of it.
She liked building a picture of a place from the inside out, resident by resident, history by history, until the building stopped being a backdrop and started being a community…
almost a suspect itself. This way, by the time something useful surfaced, you understood it in context, and that context was usually where the useful thing turned out to matter.
She was on the fifth floor when Hale's office door opened.
He came out carrying a stack of folders and crossed the lobby to the credenza near the elevator.
He set the folders down, adjusted them, and then stood with his back to Rachel and Novak for a moment longer than Rachel thought was necessary.
He picked the folders back up and went back into his office. The door closed, but not all the way.
Novak didn't look up from his screen. "He's not even trying to be subtle about it anymore."
"Doesn’t seem like it," Rachel said.
"That’s three times now."
"Four." She scrolled to the next name on the list. "He's running out of reasons to come out."
Novak made a quiet sound of amusement and went back to the security footage.
He'd been working through it in silence for the better part of an hour, scrubbing through timestamps with the same focus Rachel was applying to her list. He hadn't said much about what he was seeing, which Rachel took to mean he hadn't found anything yet.
The lobby was otherwise quiet. A resident had come through around 4:45, an older woman Rachel didn't recognize from the interviews.
She crossed from the elevator to the mailboxes without looking over.
The front door had opened twice since then, both times to let in cold air and no one in particular — someone checking the weather, someone who had come to the wrong address.
The brass gate on the elevator rattled each time it was used, a sound that had started to feel like punctuation.
She was midway through the sixth floor when she heard the door from the staff corridor open at the far end of the hallway.
Dale Pruitt came through it carrying a large stainless carafe and a stack of paper cups.
He crossed the lobby without hurry, set the carafe on the credenza, and arranged the cups beside it.
He glanced over at them. "I put on a fresh pot. Help yourselves."
"Thank you," Rachel said.
Novak looked up and smiled. "Appreciated."
Pruitt gave a small nod and didn't move to leave immediately.
He tidied the area around the carafe, straightening cups that didn't need straightening, and then stood for a moment with his hands resting on the edge of the credenza.
He wasn't performing anything in particular.
He looked like a man with something minor on his mind, deciding whether it was worth saying.
It made Rachel wonder if Hale had spoken with him and had convinced him to either spy on them or to make them feel like they were in the way.
Rachel figured he’d try to find out. She set her phone down and stood, crossing to the credenza and filling one of the paper cups. The coffee was stronger than she expected, which was a point in Pruitt's favor. Just before she turned back to her little workstation, Pruitt spoke up to stop her.
"Can I ask a question?" Pruitt said, keeping his voice low. He wasn’t being secretive, just calibrated to the lobby's quiet.
“Sure.”
“Are you looking into the residents as well as the staff?"
"We're looking at everything," Rachel said. "Why?"
He turned one of the empty cups over in his hands. "I don't know if it's relevant. I've been going back and forth on whether to say anything."
"If it's something you've been going back and forth on," Rachel said, "it's probably worth saying."
He set the cup down with a small sigh. "So…
Sylvia Marsh. A few months back, maybe three or four months, I overheard her in the hallway on the sixth floor with another resident.
A woman named Gloria Rivers. It wasn't a quiet conversation.
" He paused. "It started as a noise complaint.
Mrs. Rivers had gone to Marsh's door about music or the television, something like that.
But it escalated. I was in the hallway doing a check on the exit sign wiring and they didn't see me until it was already going.
" He looked at the carafe rather than at Rachel.
"There was real anger there. On both sides, but especially from Mrs. Rivers. "
"What were they saying?"
"Mrs. Rivers said something about Marsh not having any consideration for anyone else in the building…
and that some people used illness as an excuse to do whatever they liked.
And Marsh told her to mind her own business and went back inside.
" He lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.
"It didn't go any further that day. But I heard through the building later on that they hadn't spoken since. "
“And why are you only now mentioning it? Why not mention it to the cops?”
He looked embarrassed when he said, “I honestly didn’t even think about it again until a few hours ago, to tell you the truth. Like I said, when it happened, I didn’t really register it as that big of a deal.”
"How long ago did you say?"
"Three months, maybe four. I'm not certain. It was still damned hot outside, so maybe around June or July.”
Rachel held the cup in both hands and looked at him. He was telling it straight, with no particular agenda she could detect. There was also an undertone of embarrassment from not remembering the encounter sooner.
"Thank you," she said. "That's helpful."
He nodded and picked up the empty cups he'd been reorganizing and carried them toward the recycling bin near the mailboxes. He didn't linger. That, too, seemed characteristic of him.
Rachel went back to her chair and picked up her phone. Novak was looking at her over the top of his laptop screen. “What was that about?”
She ran through what Pruitt had told her while she eyed Gloria’s name on the resident list.
"Gloria Rivers," he said. “No flags from Purcell’s team.”
"I know. But I doubt she bothered to mention this little incident to them." Rachel pointed to her name on the list and said, “Unit 6-C. Ready to head back up?”
“Sure.” Novak tucked the laptop under his arm and stood. "Sixth floor?"
"Sixth floor." She looked over at Hale's door, still open four inches or so. She didn’t see the point in keeping him updated and, quite frankly his little sneaky ways were starting to piss her off.
He'd find out everything they knew and what they were up to soon enough, and she didn't particularly feel like managing his anxiety about it on top of everything else.
They crossed the lobby toward the elevator, their steps quiet on the marble.
The coffee was still warm in Rachel's cup and she carried it with her, unwilling to leave it behind.
Behind them, the lobby settled back into its careful quiet, the brass carafe catching a glint of light from the lamp near the front window.
Rachel pushed the button for the elevator once again, trying to ignore the fact that the now-familiar act was making her feel like this case had her running in an endless loop.
A loop she feared may never truly come to an end.