Lana’s Story Part 43: Thirteen Open Doors

Just finding Lana’s story? Read Part 42 here to catch up on the letter my mother left me and the girl who tied the red string on her key.

Last time, I read my mother’s letter out loud in the gravel by the old grain elevator, with my granddaddy down on one knee beside me.

She knew he’d be there. Twenty-five years ago, she wrote his name before anybody else’s.

Cole told us he’s going to the district attorney with Wade’s tally book. But not tonight.

Nadine told us she was the seventeen-year-old girl who gave my mother Box 14, and never wrote it in the ledger.

Vera gave me Clay’s old iron ring of keys, every one tied with faded red string.

But the back door of the old Kettering office had a brand-new brass lock. Abel Haskins’ work.

And there was a light on in the vault room at four-thirty in the morning. Then it clicked off.

The Front Door

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. The only sound in that alley was the streetlight humming out on the corner.

Cole put one finger to his lips. Then he pointed at the key ring in my hand, and then at the far end of the building.

The front door. Whoever changed the back lock might not have bothered with the front.

We went around the side in a line, close to the brick. Royce’s hand stayed on my shoulder the whole way.

The front of the building faced the courthouse. If anybody in town was awake, they’d see us.

Deke walked last, watching the alley behind us. Nadine kept glancing back at him like he was still ten years old.

“Nobody’s awake,” Vera whispered. “Nobody in this town has been awake at this hour since Daddy died.”

I found the key marked FRONT. Nadine’s handwriting again, a little neater this time, like she’d been trying harder.

It slid right in. Like it had been waiting twenty-five years for somebody to try it.

The lock turned with a sound like an old man clearing his throat.

Cole went in first, flashlight low. Then me. Then everybody else, one at a time, the way you’d walk into a church.

Thirteen Open Doors

It smelled like dust and old paper and something else. Coffee. Fresh coffee.

Cole’s light crossed a front desk. A rotary phone. A dried-up pen cup. A calendar on the wall with a year on it I was too young to remember.

Nadine stopped at that desk. She put her hand flat on the wood, right in the middle, where a girl’s elbows would rest.

“Twenty-five years,” she whispered. “Nobody even moved my chair.”

Deke touched her arm. She nodded and kept going. But she looked back at that desk twice.

The vault-room door was at the end of a short hall. Heavy wood, with a steel plate around the lock.

There was no light under it now. Just dark.

Vera’s iron ring had one key bigger than all the rest. The red string on it was tied in a double knot.

“That one,” Nadine said. “He made me tie that one twice.”

It fit. I turned it. And Cole pushed the door open with the toe of his boot.

His flashlight went across the back wall, and I heard Royce make a sound I’d never heard a grown man make.

The wall was exactly the way Nadine said. Little steel boxes, floor to ceiling, rows and rows of them.

But some of the little doors were hanging open.

One, two, three… I counted out loud without meaning to. Thirteen.

Box one through box thirteen. Every one of them open. Every lock drilled clean.

And on the long table in the middle of the room, papers were stacked in neat piles. Thirteen neat piles.

Vera picked up the top sheet of the nearest pile and held it to Cole’s light. A cattle brand certificate. Then a bank note from before I was born.

“He’s not stealing them,” she said slowly. “He’s reading them. Every page. Then stacking them back up nice and neat.”

“Looking for something,” Royce said.

“Looking for somebody,” Nadine said.

There was a green desk lamp on that table. A thermos sat beside it, with the cap off.

Cole put the back of his hand on the lamp’s metal shade. “Still warm,” he said.

Then his light slid one row over, to the next little door. Number fourteen.

It was still shut. A small brass face, tarnished brown. A tiny keyhole.

And right below it, sitting on the floor, was a cordless drill with the bit already in.

The Man in the Dark

“Don’t shine that thing in my eyes, Cole,” said a voice from the corner. “I’ve had a long night.”

Cole’s light swung so fast it made my stomach drop.

There was a man sitting on a wooden crate in the corner, by an old safe. Gray work jacket. Reading glasses pushed up on his head.

Abel Haskins.

He didn’t get up. He didn’t look scared. He mostly looked tired, like a man who’d been waiting for this a long time.

“Abel,” Cole said. Just the name. But the way he said it, it was a whole sentence.

“I know,” Abel said. “I know what it looks like.”

“It looks like you drilled thirteen boxes in a dead man’s office,” Cole said. “Behind a lock you put in yourself.”

“That’s what it is,” Abel said. “But that’s not all it is.”

He looked past Cole, at me. Then at the key ring in my hand. Then at the faded red string on the key I’d been carrying all night.

His shoulders came down about an inch. “Well,” he said. “I’ll be. You found it before he did.”

“Before who?” Royce said.

Abel rubbed his face with both hands.

“Twelve weeks ago, a man came into my shop,” he said. “Paid cash. Had a letter from some law office in Oklahoma. Said he was handling the old man’s estate.”

“He wanted the back lock changed and the only key. Fine. I change locks for lawyers all the time.”

“Then a month later he came back. He wanted the boxes opened. One at a time. Looking for anything with one name on it.”

He didn’t have to say the name. I already knew. Everybody in that room knew.

“Caroline,” Abel said anyway.

“What did he look like?” Cole asked.

“Never got a good look,” Abel said. “Hat pulled low. Sunglasses in my shop, on a cloudy day. Older than he sounds on the phone.”

“Oklahoma plates on his truck,” he added. “I noticed that much. I always notice the truck.”

Nadine sat down hard on the edge of the long table. Deke stood in front of her like a fence.

“Thirteen boxes,” Cole said. “In twelve weeks.”

Abel almost smiled. “Cole. I’ve cut every key in this county for thirty years. You think it takes me a week to drill a box?”

Nobody said anything for a second.

“I was stalling,” Abel said. “One a week. Told him the old steel was hard. Told him my drill bits kept breaking. He believed me.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the last time somebody asked me to open a drawer in this county, I said yes,” he said. “And I’ve been sorry every single day since.”

He looked at Cole. Cole looked back. Something passed between them that I didn’t understand yet.

Box 14

“Then what are you doing here at four-thirty in the morning?” Royce asked.

Abel nodded at the wall. “He counted the doors,” he said. “Thirty-six on the wall. Thirty-five in the ledger.”

“He figured out there’s one box nobody wrote down. He called me last night and said he’d be here at six. Said fourteen gets opened by then, or he’ll find somebody who’ll do it.”

“So I came early,” Abel said. “To get it open before he did. And to hand whatever was inside to the sheriff. I was going to call you at five, Cole.”

“Were you?” Cole asked.

“I was,” Abel said. “Then I heard somebody at the back door and killed the lamp. I figured it was him, early.”

Cole looked at Abel for a long time. Then he turned his flashlight away from his face. That was his answer.

Abel looked at me. “Your box, young lady. Not mine. I never wanted to drill that one.”

I stepped up to the wall. My knees didn’t feel like they belonged to me.

I held up the little brass key. The red string, almost pink now, swung in the flashlight beam.

Nadine came and stood beside me. She didn’t touch the key. She just stood there, close enough that I could feel her breathing.

The key went in. All the way. And it turned so easily it felt like my mother had oiled it yesterday.

The little door swung open.

For a second, nobody looked inside. We all just looked at that open door, like it might close again if we blinked.

Inside was a bundle of papers, folded in thirds and tied with red string. Nadine’s knot. Even I could see it now.

On top was a small white envelope. One word on the front. The same round, quick handwriting. “Lana.”

Royce made a sound behind me. I didn’t look back. If I looked at him, I’d never get through it.

There was only one line inside the envelope.

“Baby, start with the paper on the bottom. Show it to somebody you trust. The rest only proves why.”

I untied the red string. My fingers were shaking so badly that Nadine reached over and helped me with the knot.

The top papers were old land papers. I saw the name Whitaker. June’s land.

I saw the year 1998, and a page of signatures, and notes in the margins in an old man’s sharp, slanted hand.

“Those are Wade’s,” Nadine whispered. “Those are the papers he put on June’s land. I’d know his writing too.”

Cole leaned over my shoulder. He read one margin note, and his jaw went tight.

“The old man wrote instructions,” he said quietly. “On the papers. In his own hand. He never once thought anybody would see them.”

And under those, I could feel it. One more paper, thicker than the rest. Stiff, like a document that had been to a courthouse.

The one on the bottom. The one my mother wanted me to see first.

I started to slide it out.

Brights in the Alley

That’s when the whole room went white.

Light poured in through the little back window above the old safe. Bright, hard light. The kind that makes your eyes water.

Somebody had pulled into the alley. With their high beams on.

Cole snapped off his flashlight. Abel was already on his feet.

“That’s him,” Abel said. “He’s early.”

“It’s not even five-thirty,” Vera whispered.

I looked at Royce. His face had gone gray in that terrible white light.

“He drives with his brights on,” Royce said slowly. “So nobody ever sees the man behind them.”

That was what Clay wrote about Wade. Twenty-five years ago.

“Wade’s been dead twelve years,” Cole said.

Nadine was staring at that window like she was seventeen again.

“Wade didn’t come up with that on his own,” she said. “Somebody taught him to drive that way.”

Out in the alley, an engine shut off. The lights stayed on.

A truck door opened. Boots hit the gravel. Slow. Not in any hurry at all.

Then a key scraped into the brand-new brass lock on the back door. The one Abel made. The only other key in the world.

I pressed my mother’s papers flat against my chest. The one on the bottom was still tucked underneath the rest.

And the back door started to open.

So now I’m asking you. Did you think Abel Haskins was the one behind that light? Do you believe him now?

What do you think is on the paper at the very bottom of Box 14, the one my mother wanted me to read first?

And who do you think just walked in that back door, with his brights still burning in the alley?

Next Part: Lana’s Story Part 44 is coming soon. Follow Reiterin on Facebook so you don’t miss it.