The Little Death by Andrea Speed

card.
    I had only one potential lead: the Roosevelt. Yeah, the place was supposedly closed, but how had Sander been able to film there so close to closing? Maybe it was closed at the time, which begged the question how it happened. So I was going to find out. That’s what detectives are supposed to do, or at least that’s what those Murder, She Wrote reruns taught me.
    A couple blocks from the scene, I flagged down a cab and had it take me to Victoria Avenue, where the Roosevelt was located. I figured if the cabbie didn’t know exactly where I was headed, he couldn’t tell anyone trying to trace me exactly where I’d gone. I wasn’t sure who I was trying to evade exactly, but it seemed like a good idea.
    The Roosevelt looked dark and abandoned, looming over the end of the street like a drunk who had somehow passed out while sitting up at the end of the bar. It was closed up and dark, looking like a perfect place to film a low-budget horror movie on the cheap. There were a few upscale shops in the neighborhood, as well as a few empty suites where businesses used to be, but all were closed now, as it was pure night here, save for the light from some needlessly ornate streetlamps. The rich are different—even their streetlights are pretentious.
    I stood in front of the locked, tinted glass doors of the hotel and looked for any sign of a break-in or recent occupation. I tried peering through the window as best I could, but there just wasn’t enough light.
    I was going to walk around the hotel, see if I could find an entrance or exit that wasn’t locked as well as the others, when I heard music in the distance. I figured it for the bass thud of one of those obnoxious car stereos everyone seemed to have nowadays, but the music wasn’t growing louder or fading; it stayed at one single level. A parked car?
    I pressed my ear to the window and strained to listen. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but it almost sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep inside the hotel.
    Was that even possible? I looked up, toward the higher stories, but they seemed as blacked out and dark as the lower levels. But wasn’t that what blackout curtains were for?
    I walked around the building, finally discovering a rear exit door that wasn’t locked as well as it should have been, and after loosening the lock with my handy picks, I was inside.
    After a moment, where I let my eyes adjust to the dark, I realized the music was indeed coming from somewhere far above me, although it remained faint. Mainly what I could pick up was a repetitive pulsing bass beat, dance music. The hotel had squatters, but ones more careful than your average homeless person.
    The door had brought me into the kitchen, where it smelled like dust and abandonment. So whoever had been using the hotel, they hadn’t been bothering with the kitchen. I moved carefully so I didn’t kill myself or knock over something noisy, and I managed to make my way out into the empty dining room.
    I could barely see—it was dark and gloomy enough that I felt like I was at the bottom of a algae choked pond—but I could make out enough of the empty tables and snowy tablecloths to feel like a ghost haunting this dead hotel. I wondered if this would happen when I was actually dead, then decided, even if I did believe in this shit, I’d haunt a better place. Maybe Lau’s, or a casino. I could fuck with the slots, make them pay out all the time.
    The hotel lobby was even eerier, which I hadn’t thought was possible. But that music, taunting, a faraway oddity that demanded explanation, was no louder here. Suddenly there was a hum, mechanical and seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at once, and I realized it was the elevator. Someone was headed down to me.
    There was nowhere for me to go except behind the front desk, so I did, jumping over the polished but dusty thing and ducking down behind it, grabbing the weapon in my pocket. I didn’t bring my shotgun, because it wasn’t the most