The Man in the Elevator E-Book

Roxana Nastase

• Herausgeber: Roxana Nastase
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Dan is an easy-going fellow with a penchant for women. His motto is simple enough: the more, the better. Life is a game for him, and he grabs everything he can without remorse or excuses. Imagine his surprise when he becomes a body on the floor of an elevator.

Leseprobe

THE

MAN

IN THE ELEVATOR

ROXANA NASTASE

Scarlet Leaf

2018

© 2018 by ROXANA NASTASE

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, with the exception of a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

All characters in this book are fictive, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Scarlet Leaf Publishing House has allowed this work to remain exactly as the author intended.

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PUBLISHED BY SCARLET LEAF

Toronto, Canada

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

The Man in the Elevator

CHAPTER ZERO

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL A SUITABLE EPITAPH

EXCERPT FROM THE NOVEL AN IMMIGRANT

BOOKS BY ROXANA NASTASE

TO MIRCEA, A FUNNY, JOLLY MAN

CHAPTER ZERO

His hands stuffed in the pants pockets, Dan entered the elevator, whistling softly. The man felt good. He had just picked up the new girl who started working on the fourth floor a week ago. Now, he already had a date lined up.

'Great rack,' the man thought and arched his left eyebrow admiringly. 'And those pouting lips,' he shook his head and swallowed hard.

The young woman embodied everything he enjoyed most in a female, and he couldn't wait to score.

He didn't do that just to add a new notch over his bed. He genuinely loved women, regardless the color of their hair or eyes. His standards were high only when it came to the size of their bust and lips.

The doors slid silently and closed. Then, the elevator started the slow trip up to the seventh floor.

'You can count on just a few things in this lifetime,' the man shook his head in dismay and brushed his fingers through his dark hair with anxious gestures. 'Taxes, death and slow elevators. Damn, I'll be late again, and they'll have my head soon enough if I keep coming late from my break,' he reflected with a frown and shoved his hands into the pockets again.

His last meeting with the supervisor hadn't gone to well. He had him sign a formal notice. If he was late again, Dan would have lost an hour from his pay, and every penny counted when he had to wine and dine beautiful women.

The elevator slowed down when it reached the third floor, and the doors slid open with a quiet woof. Dan grimaced for a second, but then the man plastered a smile on his lips.

'You never know who you might encounter,' he thought sagely. It wouldn't do to get on someone's wrong side merely because the elevator annoyed him.

A few seconds later, Dan's smile froze on his lips, and his hands clenched in tight fists.

CHAPTER ONE

"Come on, Liza, you must be joking, girl," Ana-Maria replied loudly, bursting into laughter, and eyeing her friend askance. "I can't believe that Dan really did that. What the heck? Is he out of his mind?"

Ana-Maria balanced the paper coffee cup and the sandwich she was holding in one hand and pushed the elevator button with the other. A lock of light-brown hair teased her face, and she brushed it nervously behind her ears. Her hazel eyes sparkled with curiosity and measured Liza again. Her colleague was well-known for her talent to embellish things, after all.

"I'm serious, really," Liza nodded. "I mean I wasn't there or anything like that, but Dana was, and she swears that she spoke the truth," the redhead said in earnest, and her green eyes glanced at the elevator lights again.

Exhausted from carrying all those snacks in her hand, Liza leaned on the wall by the elevator. 'What the heck made me offer to go and buy snacks for five other people?' the young woman scolded herself.

"I can't believe it," Ana-Maria shook her head in bewilderment. "I knew that he was a bit crazy, but that's way over the top. Really? Did he actually take off his clothes in the middle of the club?"

"Yep, he did. Of course, he was dancing on a table right then," Liza nodded and looked at the elevators around to see if any would come.

'If I counted the minutes I’ve spent before these closed elevator doors, I would probably discover that at least ten percent of my life has been wasted just looking at these blasted lights,' she sighed inwardly.

"But I can't believe that the club enforcers didn't react to something like that at all," Ana-Maria shook her head, laughing.

"They did, all right," Liza replied. "You see, this time, Dan went way too far, and they banned him from the club. For good."

"That's the fourth one by now, I think," Ana-Maria tilted her head inquiringly.

"I can’t say I have kept count," Liza shrugged. "It's not like I care too much about what happens to him, you know," she said in a hard tone of voice.

'You care all right,' Ana-Maria thought with malice.

She knew that Liza had been in love with Dan for quite a while. The two of them dated for some time, but the man didn't seem to think about her anymore.

In fact, Dan liked diversity. Ana-Maria had been working together with him in the same place for about three years now. Until then, she had seen him with another woman at least every other month.

Liza had made a mistake getting involved with him. But then, she had nurtured the hope that the man would change.

'Frequent mistake among women, from what I could see,' Ana-Maria reflected with an inward shrug. She had done it herself in the past and hoped to have learned her lesson.

"Finally, it's coming," Liza noticed with a sigh of relief when the light of the elevator blinked.

The doors opened, and the young woman started forward. Her eyes fell on the body on the floor and practically popped out of their sockets. An ear-splitting scream burst out of her throat, and Ana-Maria stepped back, scared of her friend's behavior. Still, she tilted her head to look past Liza. A second later, she leaned on the wall. Her legs shook, and the blood left her face.

The young woman watched her coffee cup spill on the hallway floor, followed by the sandwich. She hadn't even realized that she had dropped everything she had in her hands. But then, she didn't feel her fingers anymore.

Liza continued screaming the building down, and both of the security men from the front desk ran toward them to see what the matter was. The older one passed by Ana-Maria, and his eyes swept over her in a split second. The younger followed him, on the edge, ready to react. First, their eyes fell on Liza, who continued screaming like a banshee.

‘She’s got good lungs on her, this one,’ the older security guard thought and shook his head.

When he looked past her, and his eyes fell on the man on the floor, his jaw twitched, and his eyes turned hard. ‘Yep, this workday isn’t getting any better,’ he thought morosely.

“Come with me,” the man said gently, grabbing Liza’s arm and steering her out of the elevator. “Call the police,” he threw over the shoulder toward his younger colleague. “I’ll take the ladies to the lounge. Block this elevator and don’t let anyone get too close for a look,” he warned the man in a confident tone of voice.

‘As if I had had more experience than he does,’ the old man scoffed inwardly and shook his head again.

He had been working as a security guard for over fifteen years. That was true. But then, that was his first encounter with a crime scene. He sincerely hoped it would be the last.

‘’Thank God for all those crime show series,” he reflected, showing the two shocked young women toward the lounge.

CHAPTER TWO

Alex Pop strode into the building with long steps. He had shoved his hands into the coat pockets, and a grey hat covered his forehead and his eyes. The man stopped in the middle of the lobby, and his eyebrows shot up his forehead in bewilderment.

The front desk appeared to be deserted, although the annoying ringing of a phone pierced the silence. The man looked around for a few moments and then tilted his head to the right. He had the feeling that he had seen some movement somewhere above the four steps leading to the turnstiles.

Pop wasn't wrong. Three security men stood in the area of the elevators, talking quietly among themselves and gesticulating.

Suddenly, the door of an elevator on the right opened, and a group of five people exited the cabin. Curiosity took the best of them, and they tried to see beyond the three men who blocked the way to the elevator in the back.

"Move along, people," the older security guy waved them ahead. "Nothing to see here," he pointed out, bad-mugging them.

Hesitantly, the people moseyed toward the turnstile, whispering among themselves. Afterward, they passed by Pop and measured him with light bafflement.

A grin tugged at Pop's mouth. He knew that his presence in the building would raise eyebrows. Most of the people in such companies dressed in blue jeans and sneakers, while he usually sported black trousers, a coat and overcoat. Besides, his soft hat would always make people comment, but he didn't really care.

Pop was a non-conformist. It had been quite a while since he paid attention to people's opinions. He preferred feeling comfortable in his own skin and projecting a certain image. If the others didn't appreciate the way he dressed and behaved, that wasn't his concern.

He dressed either like that or in his leather suit if he rode his motorcycle. This time, he had to come directly from the courthouse, and judges didn't really appreciate detectives who looked like a gang leader. They used to frown upon such appearances.

Pop stepped aside to let the group of people go out and then strode toward the turnstiles.

"I understand you're in need of the police," he said to the security guards in a dry tone of voice.

The people turned to him at once and measured him with various expressions on their faces. Pop merely arched his right eyebrow and tilted his head questioningly, inviting them to confirm or deny his words.

"And you are?" the older security guard replied after measuring openly the man with the funny hat.

"The police," Pop replied very matter-of-factly. "Or part of it," he corrected himself. "The others are on their way," the man added, glancing at his watch.

As a matter of fact, he had a head start because the others had been retained. The forensic experts had been called to another case earlier, and the coroner had let him know that he was just in the middle of a post-mortem and could come only after about thirty or forty minutes later.

"I see," the security guard murmured, although he didn't seem very convinced of Pop's words. "Do you have an ID or something?" the man inquired, unwilling to allow any nosy guy to take a look at the crime scene. He even wondered if the guy with the hat wasn't actually a reporter. 'Nowadays, you never know what else they will make up just to grab a subject," the man reflected.

Pop glanced at him sideways but then took his ID out of his coat pocket and showed it to the man, who took care to verify it minutely.

"Yes, you're the police," the old man acknowledged, and not without bewilderment. "Geo, go and let the man pass," he waved to one of the younger guards. "Go there, sir," he indicated to Pop, pointing toward the front desk where Geo had already run and lifted a bar to allow the policeman to come into the secured area of the building.

Pop took his sweet time to get to the front desk. The man didn't see any reason to hurry right then. Anyway, he couldn't do anything before the coroner and the forensic experts came. He had enough time to take a look at the body.

He passed by the young security guard and read the man's name on his badge tag. 'Another Popescu,' he reflected. 'This city is overpopulated with Popescus, Ionescus, Pops and Georgescus,' he concluded.

He would have liked not to get lost in the sea of anonymity of the popular Pop, but fate had dictated things differently.

Pop nodded toward the young Popescu gravely. 'One must keep a certain dignity on the job,' he thought, although he didn't give a fig about such things.

However, he still remembered the Police Chief-Commissioner's admonishment about his lack of professionalism in certain situations. 'Apparently, smiles aren't allowed on the job, man, so I'm sorry, but I can't get too friendly with you,' Pop addressed the young guard in his mind.

The policeman wasn't a very talkative man - outwardly. Yet, he had full conversations with himself and the people around in his mind.

Pop strode slowly toward the other two security guards who hadn't left the area with the elevators.

"Considering your position here, I think that the body is in one of the elevators," he said.

"Yes, sir, right there," the old man pointed out the elevator in question to him.

Pop nodded and his eyes stole to the man's badge. The detective in him didn't allow him to deal with unknown people.

'I was right again,' he mused. 'This is another Georgescu,' he co [...]