THE PLATE ON THE FLOOR

Chapter 6 —   The Room Victor Kept Locked

CHAPTER 6 —  The Room Victor Kept Locked

Thursday came, and I told my agency I had a doctor's appointment, and I parked two blocks from the building at eleven forty-five so that my car would not be sitting in front of the address.

I walked up the stairs instead of using the elevator, because I did not want to see anyone.

I did not want anyone to see me.

Carla had left the apartment unlocked the way she told me she would, and I stepped inside and I stood in that quiet kitchen for a minute and listened, just listened, the way I do after a patient falls asleep and I need to make sure they are really asleep.

The apartment was empty.

I walked past the table where Marcus used to sit and past the empty spot on the floor where Lily used to eat, and I went to the small door off the kitchen, the one Carla said had water damage.

The key fit, and it turned, and the door opened into a room about the size of a closet.

It smelled like dust and old paper.

There was a desk, and a shelf, and a file box, and a single window painted shut.

On the desk there was a photograph in a dollar-store frame, and I picked it up with my gloves on, and I looked at it for a long time, because I did not trust my eyes.

It was Danny.

Danny at a picnic, Danny in his twenties, Danny with his arm around a woman I had never seen before, and on Danny's lap there was a baby in a white shirt, a girl with a round face and dark eyes.

Lily.

Lily at six months or a year old, before I knew she existed, before he disappeared, before any of this.

I sat down in the desk chair because my legs did not want to hold me up.

I have spent five years telling myself that Danny was either dead or gone, that he had done something terrible or something foolish, and that whichever it was, he had chosen to leave us, and I had a whole set of feelings built around that.

And then here he was, in a photograph, smiling, with a baby on his lap, in a locked room that belonged to the man who called 911 about a burglary and told his own brother's widow to keep her mouth shut.

I went through the file box.

Inside there were hospital records and insurance papers and one envelope, sealed, with a name written on it in Danny's handwriting.

The envelope had my name on it.

Nina Reyes.

I opened it because I had to.

Inside was a birth certificate, and the father's name on that certificate was Daniel Reyes, and the mother's name was Angela Ortiz, date of birth February 14th, seven years ago.

The baby was Lily, and the address on the certificate was this address, this building, this apartment.

So Lily had been born here.

So my brother had a daughter, and he had never told us, and maybe he had never told us because of whatever was happening in his life, and maybe he had gone to Carla five years ago because he needed help, and maybe he had gotten something worse than help.

I put the envelope inside my jacket.

I took a picture of the photo with my phone, and a picture of the birth certificate, and I stood up and I was about to leave when I heard the front door open.

I froze.

It was twelve forty.

Victor was supposed to be at the gym for another two and a half hours.

I heard his shoes on the kitchen floor, and I heard him say something to someone on his phone, and then I heard the phone call end, and then I heard silence.

He was standing on the other side of the door.

"Carla?" he called out.

I did not move.

"Carla, you back?"

Then the door to that little room opened, and Victor was standing in it, and he was looking right at me, and his face did the thing where it goes very still before anything else happens.

He was wearing a black suit jacket over a T-shirt, and he had his keys in his hand, and one of the keys on the ring was the key to that room.

"The aide," he said.

"Hello, Victor," I said.

"What the hell are you doing in my house?"

"Carla let me in," I said.

"She was worried about the water damage."

He looked at me for a long second, and then he looked at the desk, and then he looked at the file box, and then he looked at my jacket, at the shape of the envelope under the fabric.

"You're going to give that back to me," he said.

"I'm not going to do that," I said.

He turned around and reached into the drawer by the door, and when he turned back, he had a small black handgun, and he was not pointing it at the ceiling.

"I asked you a question," he said.

"I'm not going to ask it again.

You are going to give me the envelope, and then you are going to walk out that door and never come back to this building, and you are going to forget that this apartment exists."

I did not answer him right away.

I stood there in that closet-sized room, with a photograph of my brother on the desk behind me and a gun in front of me, and I thought about that little girl eating rice on the floor, and I thought about the phone in my hand, the phone that was still in my hand, held down low, against my leg, out of sight.

I had done the one thing I have learned to do in fifteen years of home health care, the one thing I do when a patient is confused and dangerous and there is no help coming.

I kept my voice quiet, and I bought myself time.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay, Victor.

I'll give it to you."

And I reached into my jacket, slowly, with my left hand, while my right thumb found the record button on my phone and pressed it, and I said a name out loud, loud enough to be on the recording.

"This is Nina Reyes," I said.

"Thursday, in apartment 4C.

Victor, say your full name for me, please, so I know who I'm talking to."

He laughed, once, the way people laugh when they think they have won.

"Victor Alan Reese," he said.

"Now give me the envelope."

That laugh is the last thing I remember clearly from that room, because the next thing that happened was the sound of the front door opening again, and a woman's voice calling out Victor's name from the kitchen, and Victor turning his head just for one second.