The Escape Room

by Megan Goldin

  ‘You left her like that,’ Vincent said.

  ‘I washed out the glass to remove any traces of the drug I’d given her, and then broke it and dumped the shards in the trash. I broke a couple more glasses and messed up her cupboards, too. I figured it would look as if she was caught in some sort of mania before she died. After that I climbed down the emergency stairs on the side of the building. I was half way down the street when I turned around and saw her entire floor had gone dark. The power was out. That’s when I knew that Lucy was dead.’

  Vincent looked at him in disgust. ‘You stupid bastard,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you realise that by killing Lucy you were endangering The Circle? Lucy was our golden goose. We’ve barely made any serious money since she died. If anything, we’re worth less now than when she was alive. You should have come to me. I would have talked sense into her. She always listened to me.’

  ‘You were in London. I couldn’t get hold of you, and anyway we certainly couldn’t discuss the details on the phone. I did it to save us Vincent. I did it to save The Circle’s money. I had no choice. I was cleaning up the mess left by Jules and Sylvie. It would never have come to that point if they hadn’t helped Eric Miles torment Lucy. You should blame them before you blame me,’ he whined.

  ‘Don’t pin Lucy’s murder on us, Sam,’ snapped Sylvie. ‘You just admitted to it. We didn’t kill anyone. You’re lucky that nobody ever suspected it was murder.’

  ‘Oh, someone suspected it alright,’ Sam answered, almost to himself. ‘Lucy’s mother found documents when she was packing up to move to Baltimore, and she could tell there was something off about them. She called the office to speak with Vincent, but he was abroad again and his PA put her through to me. Cathy said the papers she’d found had something to do with a company called The Circle. Her tone was suspicious – she was testing me.’ Sam paused to let the implications of his words sink in. ‘I thought we were safe when we took Lucy’s laptop, but it turned out that she’d left information behind somewhere else. Well, I had to do something. Cathy would have gone to the cops.’

  ‘You killed Lucy’s mother too?’ said Jules.

  ‘What choice did I have?’ Sam pled for their understanding. ‘I met with her first and gave her a convoluted explanation for the notes she’d found. I thought it sounded legitimate, but I could tell that she didn’t buy it. I hired a guy; Marty. An ex-broker who was fired for screwing up trades while on a cocaine binge. You knew him Vincent, you threw him work on occasion. He was seriously down on his luck. Two ex-wives, killer alimony, no regular work. I offered him ten grand to break into Lucy’s mother’s apartment and find those papers. He broke in twice but found nothing. In the end, I paid him forty grand to run her over. I told him to make it look like an accident. He did the job and went to Thailand to cool his heels. An all-expenses trip, paid by me. He died in a Bangkok brothel from an overdose or heart attack. It was never clear.’

  Vincent ran his palm down his face as if hoping to wipe away these revelations.

  ‘It was never supposed to come to this,’ he said. ‘The Circle was our retirement fund. No one was meant to die.’

  Finding Lucy’s information on The Circle snapped me out of my stupor. It gave me hope when I had none. That’s all I really needed to get out of the medicated haze, out of the listlessness and self-hatred that had allowed me to surrender life’s possibilities.

  Lucy’s information gave me the opportunity to destroy the lives of those who had destroyed mine. I considered my options carefully. If I leaked the information to the authorities, Vincent and the others would come under investigation. With the evidence I had, they’d lose their jobs and go to jail. That’s if their high-priced lawyers couldn’t get them off the hook, and if they didn’t catch wind of what was happening and fled the country before they were arrested. But there was another option. One that I liked better.

  I stopped taking sleeping pills that night. I woke early the next morning and went to a local gym to work out for the first time in months. I ran on the treadmill for thirty minutes solid and spent the rest of the time doing free weights. While I worked out, I planned my revenge. I would no longer be passive. I would no longer accept the fate they’d given me. I would get my life back. On my terms.

  It’s harder to kill yourself than you might imagine, especially when you don’t actually intend to die. But for my plan to work, Sara Hall had to be dead and buried.

  I disappeared one night when Fiona was out with her friends. I left a note saying that I was going away for a few days to visit family. I enclosed a cheque for the next rent payment so that she’d have no reason to chase me down.

  I took a few sentimental items that wouldn’t be missed and a small selection of clothes and shoes. Enough to fill a backpack. Other than that, I left behind everything I owned in the world.

  A few days earlier I’d bought an old sedan for cash at a dodgy second-hand car yard. The salesman allowed me to keep the papers unchanged after I slipped him an extra $500.

  The night I left, I drove for hours. I stopped at an all-night pancake joint in Des Moines for free refill coffees and a short stack. When I was done, I removed the sim card from my phone, crushed it and threw it down a drain. I climbed back into my car and drove through the night, heading south.

  In the following days, I stuck to cities rather than small towns, losing myself in faceless crowds of strangers. I paid for everything in cash. I didn’t use my credit cards and didn’t risk touching the meagre savings in my bank account. Dead people don’t withdraw money. At night, I slept in a sleeping bag in the back seat of my beaten-up car.

  A week after leaving, I went to an internet café and sent Fiona an email from an account that I set up in the name of a fictional aunt, explaining that Sara Hall had been killed in a car accident. I told her that she could donate Sara’s things to charity, even though I knew that she’d probably keep what she liked and sell the rest for booze or drugs. I’d left my best suits behind, but the sacrifice was worth it if it helped me cover my tracks.

  I sent a similar email to my employer, Rudi the loan shark. I was touched when he wrote back asking where he could send flowers. I gave him the address of the cemetery in Woodland, Iowa, where I interred an urn containing the ashes of Sara Hall. I’d actually filled that urn with cigarette ashes from Fiona’s all-night parties, which I’d taken with me in a ziplock bag.

  I only ever stayed in one place for a few weeks at a time. I found waitressing jobs at restaurants with high staff turnover, where I worked for tips to pay for food and gas. When I felt like indulging myself, I stayed in strip motels. I’d stand under the hot shower for ages, wash my laundry in the bathroom sink and then collapse on the bed for the rare treat of a night of undisturbed sleep on a proper mattress.

  A month after Sara Hall died, I bought a cheap laptop at Walmart. Using a VPN, I submitted the necessary documents to get Sara Hall’s Facebook account changed to a memorial page. They wanted proof of death. I gave them a receipt from the cemetery where Sara Hall’s ashes were interred.

  Within hours of the memorial page going live, a tumult of comments from old friends filled the feed, expressing sorrow at the tragic death of Sara Hall, who was hit by a truck in Des Moines and died immediately. ‘For those who loved her, it may be some consolation to know that she did not suffer,’ I posted in the guise of my fictional aunt.

  I was surprised at the number of likes and heartfelt comments on the Facebook memorial site from people at Stanhope, as well as old friends with whom I’d lost touch. Nobody could deny that Sara Hall was dead after reading my memorial page. The way I figured it, if Facebook said I was dead then I was dead.

  Driving through Utah, I received a job alert matching the filters I’d set up. ‘Atomic Lounge Bar, Las Vegas. Waitress wanted. Immediate start. Great tips. Must have experience making cocktails. Sense of humour essential.’

  I stopped to get gas and called the listed phone number. The guy who answered pretty much indicated that the job
was mine provided I got there in time for that night’s graveyard shift, beginning at 10 p.m. One of his regular waitresses had done a runner on him, he said. I told him I’d be there.

  I drove for five hours straight to get there in time. As I steered my clunky car through heavy traffic on the Strip, blinded by bright fluorescent lights against a midnight blue desert sky, I knew I’d found the right place to disappear.

  I parked in a car lot two blocks from the bar. The interior was red and black, dimly lit. There were dancers writhing on a dance floor. Strobe lights revealed them in split-second flashes. In the shadows along the sides were red fake-leather table booths. The music was EDM. Loud. Hypnotic. The beat reverberated as I made my way towards the bar where a guy with dyed white-blond hair and a piercing in his lip was pouring drinks.

  ‘You the new girl?’ he asked as he worked the beer tap. I could barely hear him over the throbbing music.

  ‘How’d you know?’ I yelled back at him.

  ‘Look around you.’ I turned back to the dance floor and strained to get a proper look at the people in the manic light. I realised every one was wearing some type of tight black leather costume. Some were holding whips and chains. I stuck out in my jeans and a button-down shirt.

  ‘Friday night is S&M night,’ he said, indicating a couple approaching the bar, handcuffed together. ‘We get swingers, couples, bachelor parties. You name it. But this is the biggest night of the week for us. Which is good for you, little lady, because the tips are sweeeet.’

  He looked me up and down. ‘But not half as sweet as you,’ he said. ‘Your shift starts in ten minutes. Get ready.’

  ‘Don’t you need to interview me? Check my references?’

  ‘Darling, I know everything I need to know. You need money, but not so bad that you’re out on the street. More importantly, you’re a size six, bust 38 inches, and you’ll look smoking hot in the number I have in mind for you.’

  He asked a girl with pink cropped hair to take over at the bar. He escorted me down a dark corridor, also painted red and black. There was only one working light, its bulb flashing on and off, about to die. He opened a door at the end of the corridor and I entered the storeroom with him, unnerved by being in such an isolated place with a total stranger.

  In the corner was a rack of clothes and a chipped mirror with a fluorescent light above it. Under the mirror was a wobbly table with an assortment of makeup thrown about.

  ‘Try this on,’ he said, handing me a black leather dress that went just below my crotch, fishnet stockings and a black and red masquerade mask, which I soon discovered was the same as the masks worn by all the waitresses that night. The dress was tight on me and it showed more cleavage than was decent. I was dubious about wearing it and had to hold back the urge to walk out. I didn’t have that luxury. I barely had enough money to cover one night’s accommodation and a breakfast special.

  ‘That dress is a tip-making machine,’ the bartender muttered when I emerged from the room. Once he’d shown me which tables to serve, I quickly realised he was right. The tips were phenomenal. When I left at dawn I shoved a wad of notes into my purse – $780 worth.

  I found myself a spare bunk bed at a crummy hostel, sharing a dormitory room with seven other girls who’d come to Vegas to work in bars and casinos and needed a cheap place to lay their head between shifts.

  I worked every graveyard shift for three months. I waited tables in costumes that ranged from that black dominatrix number from my first night and a cowgirl get-up to a French parlourmaid costume, which was backless save for a giant white bow that covered my butt, for Saturday’s fetish night.

  I hated every second of that job; the touching, the lascivious comments. But I put up with it because it was a means to an end. The tips were unlike any I’d ever earned before as a waitress. I needed the money to move to the next part of my plan and so I swallowed my bile, swatting patrons’ hands off my ass or politely rejecting explicit requests for sexual favours.

  I got to recognise the regular clientele, including two heavy-set men with tattooed necks who conducted some sort of business from a back-corner booth. I had a pretty good idea that whatever they were doing wasn’t exactly legal. They both had beards and wore black biker T-shirts and jeans. Those two scared the hell out of me. Their eyes were hard, like they’d seen it all and didn’t give a damn. One of the bartenders confirmed my suspicions, telling me to mind myself around them. They were, he whispered, lieutenants in a motorcycle gang that ran drugs all over town.

  One night I was serving them kamikazes in their regular booth. They were talking about something or other connected to their business. I wasn’t listening. I was anxiously trying to figure out how to broach a subject I’d been wanting to ask them about for weeks.

  ‘I’m looking to get some fresh IDs,’ I blurted out as breezily as I could. I collected their empty beer glasses, my hands trembling slightly. It had taken me weeks to work up the courage to ask them that question, but despite my intention to sound brash and experienced in such matters, I came off as nervous and uncertain. ‘I mean, I don’t suppose you have any idea where I can find someone who can do good quality papers? You know, a driver’s licence. Social security card. That sort of thing?’

  Before I could move, the guy to my right grabbed my arm and forced me onto the seat next to him. ‘What makes you think we would? Have you been eavesdropping?’ He looked at me as if waiting for an answer. I gulped and shook my head. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘because in this town it’s plain dumb to overhear things you shouldn’t.’

  ‘Dangerous, too,’ snarled his friend.

  ‘I’m sorry, I promise I wasn’t listening,’ I said, rubbing my wrist. ‘I just … I need a new identity. To get away from my ex. I thought you might be able to help me find someone who can do it. I’ve asked people and nobody seems to know.’

  The two of them exchanged a look that I couldn’t read.

  ‘You’ve been working here for a while, haven’t you?’ said the one next to me. I nodded that I had. ‘Thought so. I don’t forget a pretty set of legs that easily,’ he said with a smirk. ‘Faces too. I never forget faces.’

  His friend leaned over the table. ‘It’s true, my buddy’s here is real good with faces. You understand what I’m saying? If you try to screw us, if you go to the cops —’

  ‘I’m after a new identity,’ I said, interrupting him. ‘The last thing I want is the cops on my case.’

  He tilted his head, weighing up the truth of what I’d said. ‘Alright,’ he said finally. ‘You want to go to a place called Mick’s Tattoos. Ask for Darryl. He’ll take care of you.’

  I thanked them and beat a hasty retreat. The next day I went to the tattoo parlour right after it opened. It was in a rundown section of Old Vegas, between a cheap strip joint and a 24-hour wedding chapel.

  When I walked in, there was only one guy, sitting by the cash register with his feet on the counter, playing a game on his phone. I told him I was looking for Darryl and he gestured towards a back room without looking at me.

  I walked into a small room through a half-open door. Inside was an old fridge that hummed loudly and an oversized aquarium filled with tropical fish. Watching the fish from a rickety chair, his feet propped up on a wall, was a great brute of a man. He was covered with tattoos from head to foot, with a beefy face crisscrossed with scars.

  ‘Are you Darryl?’ I asked. He smiled in answer, revealing gold front teeth. ‘I’m looking for new IDs. Social security card, passport. The lot.’

  He didn’t blink. ‘I can get you a Nevada driver’s licence, fake birth certificate, old high school ID, anything else you need to get a legit social security card,’ he told me. ‘But first you need to do some research.’

  ‘Research? Like what?’

  ‘Well, first you got to figure out a name,’ he said, looking at me as if I was dumb. ‘Something not too common. Not too rare. Go to the library. Check out high-school yearbooks, social media, genealogy records. The secret o
f a good identity is that you already need to exist.’ He threw a bit of fish food into the aquarium. ‘Find someone with a history, a social media fingerprint. If anyone looks you up one day, you want them to find a bunch of stuff about you online. Old high-school photos with your name tagged, college photos. When you have all that, come back and I’ll get you the documents you need. Once you’ve built up a bit of history with your new identity, you’ll be able to apply for a legit social security card and passport.’

  ‘And how much will all that cost me?’ I asked.

  ‘I like you, you’re straight to the point,’ said Darryl after a moment’s thought. ‘I’ll do it for 15k. But go do your homework first. And if you’re really serious about a new identity, you might need to get some work done.’

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Yeah, you know, plastic surgery. Facial recognition these days is a killer. Lucky for you I know a guy.’ He rooted around in a drawer and then handed me the card of a craniofacial plastic surgeon.

  When I met with the surgeon and told him I wanted to radically change my look, he suggested chin implants, lip augmentation to make them fuller and hyaluronic acid injections to slightly alter the shape of my face.

  ‘While you’re under, I can fix that nose of yours,’ he suggested. I’d never thought there was anything wrong with my nose, but after he scanned my face and showed me the suggested changes on a 3D model of my face, I had to admit that it was perfect. I wouldn’t have recognised myself in the mirror.

  ‘In for a penny in for a pound,’ I muttered. He flashed me a blindingly white smile, though I could tell he had no idea what I was talking about.