The Office Is Empty

Lois poked her head in. Plush blue carpet, dark wood paneling. A massive slab of a desk, the slim gray monolith of a laptop on it. Black leather-upholstered chairs and couch, a small bar topped with black marble. On the wall, an erotic print of Goya's Sabbat. There was a door behind the desk, but no other exit or entrance. The office was empty.

The reporter slipped inside, quiet as a church mouse. She entered professional snooping mode, zeroing in on the desk. Five drawers, one of them locked. The open drawers were nothing much - stationary, rubber bands, pens, a surprising number of bottles of little blue erectile dysfunction pills. Lois turned to the locked drawer: for all the age and cost that had gone into carving the desk, the lock itself was nothing heavy. Lois slid her picks out from their hiding place in the sleeve of her jacket and had the tumblers set in two minutes.

The drawer opened, but the results were disappointing: old pages, sealed in mylar. Lois thumbed through them quickly: some kind of sexually-explicit occult diagrams, non-English text. Lois frowned at the combination of pentacles and eclipse signs, naked women being penetrated by a demonic figure, some kind of gemstone...too much to decipher. Definitely ancient and probably valuable, but nothing that she could really use. She took out her phone and snapped photographs of each page, just in case.

Investigative instinct had Lois take the drawers all the way out...and found an envelope taped to the back of one of them. The reporter opened it curiously: a heavy brass key fell into her palm. The reporter slipped it into a pocket and replaced the envelope and closed and re-locked the drawer.

The laptop sat there on the desk, and Lois didn't want to touch it unless she had to. Whether or not it was password protected, going through it would take time she might not have...and there was still the rest of the room to search.

Five minutes of vigorous activity had turned up no unusual lumps in the carpet that might conceal a floor-safe, nothing in the cushions of the couches or chairs, and opening the door behind the desk—revealing a small private bathroom with toilet, bidet, sink, and shower—showed nothing under the sink or in the toilet tank.

Lois took a moment, closed her eyes, and relaxed. **** herself to breathe. Opened her eyes to look at the room again. There had to be something...

She found her eyes drawn to the Goya print. The giant black goat surrounded by the willing witches. The reporter strode forward, looking at the edges...there were very faint scuff marks on the wall. Taking hold of the frame, Lois lifted it up and set it down on the couch.

Revealing the safe set into the cement black behind the wooden paneling.

A safe with a keyhole just right for the key in Lois Lane's pocket.

One eye toward the door, Lois slid the key in. Twisted, turned...and found herself holding her breath as she opened it.