Jack unlocked the doors and let them both in. Then he shut and locked the doors behind them. They waited for a moment as their eyes adjusted to the light.
“What are we looking for?” Annabelle asked.
“Filing cabinets.”
Annabelle spied the tall towers of cabinets along one wall just as Jack did, because he moved toward them before she could say anything. She followed him, being careful not to bump her hip against the desks or tumble over a stray metal trash can.
Jack shined a small pen light on the letters marking the front of the cabinets, moving down until he came across an unmarked drawer toward the bottom.
“Don’t you wanna go through the ‘B’s?” Annabelle asked, gesturing toward the A through F drawer.
“If Brandt did have a file in there,” Jack said, “it wouldn’t be worth reading.” Then he smiled when the drawer he’d chosen wouldn’t open. He nodded. “This is it.”
She moved closer, watching as he found a small cabinet key on Beckman’s key ring and used it to unlock the drawer. He slid it open to reveal a small selection of manila folders; a dozen at most.
Brandt’s was in front. Even when he filed things covertly, Dr. Beckman did it in alphabetical order. Annabelle shook her head, smiling. She supposed that once you got used to something, it was hard to stop doing it.
Jack pulled the folder out and popped it open, placing it on the desk. Inside were Craig Brandt’s application, letters of recommendation, MCAT results, notes on his interview, a copy of his acceptance letter, scholarship information, and copies of his schedule for this first two years, along with grades received.
Out of curiosity, Annabelle reached for the grades. Mostly A’s. She read the scholarship letter. It required that he maintain a 3.75 GPA.
“What was it, exactly, that Beckman believed Brandt was mixed up in?” she asked as she flipped through his schedules next. The sheets listed what students were in each class, who the professors were, and what lab hours were assigned to each study group. Apparently, lab time had to be split up due to space constraints.
“Ecstasy,” Jack answered.
When she looked up at him with a quizzical expression, he supplied, “The drug, not the emotion.”
“Ah.” She said, nodding once.
“Supposedly, Brandt was making it in his apartment and got himself blown up.”
Annabelle’s brow raised skeptically. “With these grades?” She shook her head, disbelieving. “There’s no way. He was here on the good graces of…” She read the name on the scholarship grant. “Mrs. Nadine Armitage and her late-alumni-husband, Doctor Armitage.” She put the paper back down. “He wouldn’t have done anything to lose that scholarship. Especially not as close as he was to graduating.”
Jack’s smile said that he already knew as much, but liked to hear it from her.
She sighed. “So what can we hope to glean from all of this?” She gestured to the strewn papers.
This time, Jack’s expression was a little less confident. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.
Annabelle was about to give him a hard time, just for the sheer fun of it, when her eye caught something on two of the schedule sheets. She leaned in for a closer look, moving the schedules so that they were side by side.
“Look at this,” she said, pointing out Brandt’s name on one of the study group lists.
Jack leaned in, his gaze narrowed. “At what, luv?”
“This woman here – Virginia Meredith – she’s the only female constant in all of his study groups.”
“What are you getting at?”
Annabelle chewed on her lip for a moment. “Cassie said that study group partners in med school usually grow really close.” Annabelle and Cassie had little to do while they worked on graphic design projects at DesignMax but gossip to one another. By now, they each had quite thorough run-downs on each others’ pasts. “They’re together constantly, so they have no choice. She said that it’s not unusual for partners to date – even get married.” Annabelle turned away from the papers on the desk and moved back to the second filing cabinet along the wall.
She scanned the letters on the front, her eyes now having fully adjusted to the darkness. When she came to the cabinet marked “M through R”, she opened it up and searched for Virginia Meredith’s file. It wasn’t there.
Of course it isn’t here, she thought, mentally kicking herself. Virginia Meredith went to school at Columbia six years ago. It would be with past files.
She looked up, immediately feeling stupid and blushing hard, but Jack wasn’t watching her. She experienced a mixture of relief and trepidation to find that, in fact, he wasn’t in the room at all.
“Jack?” she called softly, scanning the dark shadows of the room for his tall form.
“In here,” he called back from beyond a thick wood door that she had assumed led to a copy or break room.
She didn’t have to ask when she walked into the room to find him bent over a separate filing drawer, pulling out a manila folder. She knew he’d found the files for past students.
“Got it?” she asked.
“Got it.”
She spared a furtive glanced over her shoulder, toward the double doors at the far end of the room. She was growing uneasy. “Should we just take the folder with us and get out of here?”
“No, luv,” he told her as he popped open the folder, searched for something on the first page, and then closed it again, re-filing it where he’d pulled it out. “Never different. That’s the rule.” He closed the drawer and turned toward her, his blue gaze finding hers and holding it, even in this darkness.
He didn’t have to specify any further. She was smart enough to glean the general idea. “Never different” meant “leave it the same.” Never leave a room different from how it looked when you walked in. Nothing out of place.
Like Kaiser Soze. Leave without a trace.
“Poof,” she teased, blowing air through her fingers.
Jack’s smile was a lop-sided grin that caught her off guard. “I saw that film,” he said softly.
“Yeah?” she asked. It was one of her favorite films. “What’d you think?”
He didn’t answer, but his smile broadened. She shivered. He chuckled and moved past her toward the folder on Craig Brandt that was still laying out on the table. She watched him put it away and close and lock the drawer.
“Let’s go.”
He didn’t have to tell her twice. She was at his side and moving with him toward the door with almost the same kind of silent speed that he, himself, was infamous for. They peeked out the glass windows before opening the door and stepping through, making sure to lock it behind them. Then they made their way past the elevators to the stairs on the other side.
Just as Jack pushed open the door to enter the stairwell one of the elevators behind them dinged loudly to signal that its doors were about to open.
There was no good reason for her and Jack to be on that level. The only offices up here were locked and most of the lights were off. Being caught lingering on the restricted level would most likely garner ill consequences.
Jack hurriedly pulled Annabelle into the stairwell and attempted to swing the door shut behind them. But it was one of those god-forsaken spring-hinge doors that wouldn’t close quickly and resisted direct pressure.
Jack let go of Annabelle’s arm and put his weight into it, just managing to secure the door a split second before a janitor stepped off of the elevator and into the hallway.
Annabelle took the moment to sigh in relief, but her breath once more caught in her throat and her eyes widened into golf-balls when the door emitted a loud clicking-into-place sound that could surely be heard by the man in the hallway beyond.
Jack swore under his breath and once more grabbed Annabelle, rushing her down the stairs as fast as she could travel.