The Key by Jennifer Sturman

smushed up against me made it impossible to move in any direction, much less lose my balance. I shut my eyes—I didn’t want to be able to identify what might be pressing into me from every side.
    It took only five or six minutes to get to the 51st Street stop, but it took me nearly as long again to emerge from the station, which served not only the 6 train but other lines from the various New York boroughs. By the disgruntled looks on the faces I passed and the Metropolitan Transit officials hurrying about, funneling people along, I guessed that maybe one of the lines was out of service, further exacerbating the everyday gridlock of the morning commute. Up on the street, I trudged the remaining blocks to my office, skirting piles of soot-darkened snow and murky puddles as best I could and wondering again why I hadn’t called in sick.
    A half hour later, I was really wishing I had.
     
    The floor was strangely deserted when I arrived. I checked my watch—it was well after nine, and the place should be humming with activity. Instead it was eerily quiet.
    I started toward my office, but then I saw that all of the people who weren’t out on the floor were gathered in one of the glass-walled conference rooms. Had somebody called an impromptu staff meeting? Perhaps to discuss Gallagher’s murder? Why was it that the one day in the last year when I wasn’t the first to arrive in the office would be the one day that the partners decided it was time for an impromptu all-department chat?
    But when I got to the conference room, the first thing I noticed was that none of the partners seemed to be there—in fact, it was mostly support staff and a handful of junior bankers. Since many of the partners did the bulk of their work while golfing in Palm Beach, skiing in Aspen, or steaming at the University Club, it was not unusual for our floor to be a partner-free zone in the mornings. At least their absence assured me I hadn’t missed an important meeting.
    The second thing I noticed was that everyone’s attention was focused on the TV, which was tuned to New York 1, the local news cable channel.
    “What’s going on?” I whispered to the guy on my left, rising on tiptoe to get a better look at the screen. He shushed me. He must have been new, because I didn’t know his name, but I glared at him—I was in no mood to be shushed—and turned my attention back to the TV.
    A perky-looking reporter was holding forth, attempting gravitas. “—just a few minutes ago, at the scene of this shocking crime.”
    “What crime?” I asked the guy on the other side of me. I didn’t know his name, either, but he wore the navy polo shirt and khakis that were the standard uniform of Winslow, Brown’s mail-room clerks.
    “The dead dude’s assistant.”
    “Dahlia?”
    “Yeah. You know, the one with the—”
    The guy on my left shushed us both, which was probably a good thing, given where the guy on my right seemed to be going and my likely reaction.
    The camera switched from the perky reporter to a shot of her surroundings. “—Below Citicorp Center,” she was saying. I realized she was standing in front of the entrance to the subway station I’d just come from.
    “Oh my God,” I said. “I was just there.” The guy on my left shushed me again, and I ignored him. “What happened?” I asked the other guy.
    “Somebody pushed her in front of a subway car. But it didn’t run her over. It stopped in time.”
    “Is she all right? And how do we know it’s her? Dahlia, I mean?”
    “They found her Winslow, Brown security pass and called. And they’re not saying if she’s all right.”
    “That’s why we’re trying to listen to the TV, here,” the guy on my left pointed out.
    “Oh.”
    The reporter was now interviewing a commuter, a witness, I guessed. Her microphone was pointed at his face, and he was speaking into it excitedly. “Like, I was waiting for the train, you know? And this one woman was talking to this other woman,