Dissimulants

Parks emerged from the stairwell. Having retrieved his skateboard from his room, his mood was cheerful. It changed. Geli was giving him hand signals, warning him to keep quiet. The people who were after him had arrived. They were in the lobby.

Geli pressed her ear against the door. Several minutes passed. Then, slowly, she pulled the door open. Her body language told Parks that the lobby wasn't empty; she didn't look surprised at this. In fact, Parks thought she appeared satisfied, as if what she saw confirmed what she had expected. That's how it looked to him anyway.

"Okay," she said. "Now we head down to the basement."

It was where the garbage chutes emptied. That fact, and that someplace down there were a coin-operated washer and dryer, was all Parks knew about the basement. He'd never been down.

"Can we get out from there?" He asked.

"Yeah," she said. "Don't worry about it. I've got a plan."

Where Parks tried to be as quiet as possible getting down the stairs, Geli seemed less concerned about noise. As they reached the bottom, above their heads the door to the lobby opened.

"Someone's coming," Parks said.

"Just keep moving," Geli ordered.

Footsteps echoed in the stairwell, for about a second. Then came a yell, followed by a scream, and whoever it was on the stairs came crashing down in a series of pounding thuds. It was over quickly - then silence.

Geli grabbed the horrified Parks by the hand, and dragged him back up the stairs. On the landing between the basement and the lobby floor, was a broken heap. It was a woman, almost certainly dead. The largest handgun Parks had ever seen was a few feet from her head. Geli stepped over the body and Parks followed. As they reached the lobby floor landing, Parks saw the cause of the woman's fall. Geli's suitcase was on its side, several steps down; the woman must have tripped on it in the dark.

Parks looked hard into Geli's face. She had said she had a plan. Was this it? If she noticed the questioning look he was giving her, she didn't acknowledge it. There was nothing in her expression to suggest that this death had been anything other than an accident; that Geli had just forgotten to bring the suitcase with her. He wanted to believe that. Killing this way, it wasn't something Geli would do. Besides, she couldn't anticipate the woman tripping, not like that. It had to be an accident - just coincidence; but lucky, that was for sure.

They ran out of the stairwell, through the lobby, and over to the Slot's front entrance. The others would have heard the woman's fall down the stairs; it could be only minutes before they rushed to the lobby. Geli opened the front door, and they both stepped out onto the porch.

The porch had a single bulb lighting it. It was enough that anyone looking at the building should have seen the two of them standing there. But one of the posts flanking the steps partially blocked them from the sight of the two people seated inside a Green Crown Vic, parked across the street.