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I stuff the file into my purse, and I look at the wall again.
“There’s something weird about this wall,” I tell Victor.
He closes the drawer and looks back at it.
“I think it’s a carving of this building,” he says, moving closer.
He could be right, but if that’s what it is, then it’s more like a carving of the building as if it were a doll’s house, with the front open to show the rooms inside.
I touch the wood. It feels warm.
I run my fingers over the pattern that’s down the sides of the middle panels.
It feels especially warm. I frown at the middle, trying to understand what it is.
“I think something’s hidden behind this … whatever this is.”
It’s too strange not to be hiding something.
I feel around, until I feel a bump that’s not just wood.
“There’s a switch here,” I tell Victor, as I press it inward.
A clunk is followed by the sounds of a motor.
Part of the middle panel moves.
“It’s an elevator,” Victors says.
It looks like an elevator cab now that I think about it.
The rectangular panel is moving from the top of the wall down to the bottom which is right before the first of Harlan’s shelves behind his desk. That top shelf is empty. Now, I guess we know why.
The elevator comes to a stop, and the doors ping open.
Bingo! We have the jar.
I grab it, taking in the tangle of ribbons and hair with glittering pieces of silver and gold inside.
“Thank God for that,” Victor says. “We should get out of here.”
The little elevator closes and moves back to the top.
I put the jar in my purse, and I press the button again.
“What are you doing?” Victor asks, as he checks his phone.
“I don’t know, but I have to do it.”
Call it instinct, call it intuition. I don’t know what it is, but I know when the elevator comes back down, there’s going to be another jar full of evidence to put into my purse.
“We have time, right?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No. Ryan says they’re letting everyone back into the building.”
“Just one second,” I tell him, waiting for the elevator to hit the bottom.
It happens and the doors open.
