Unknown Means (37 page)

Or a key.

The doors began to slide open.

Jack stood, a silhouette against the bright machine room lights.

“I didn’t particularly want to kill you, Evelyn. I thought maybe you’d understand, having a child of your own.”

She pushed her voice out, a wavering squeak. “I know why you’re doing this.”

“Of course you do. You know because you went to the home they’ve got my boy locked up in. You went to see my son!” He leaned into the dark space, and she automatically shrank back, nearly stepping into the counterweight shaft again. Her foot slipped off the car top, but she grabbed a rail—now she could see it.

“You really should have left him out of it,” he added.

“Why Marissa?”

“She let that bitch go.”

“She reported the facts, which weren’t under her control. How can you hold that against her?”

“It wasn’t true! Kelly Alexander’s daddy paid for those results.

He could afford anything to keep the salt mine out of the papers.”

“Then why didn’t you kill him?”

He stepped onto the car top, stopped. “What?”

“I notice your hit list of justifiable homicides doesn’t seem to have any men on it. What about the cop that said the accident was your son’s fault? What about Kelly’s defense attorney, who got her off? What about the judge who let her go without punishment? You haven’t been riding the elevators in their apartment buildings, have you? Strapping them into chairs so they look like they’re sitting in a car?”

She didn’t speak to save her life or even to postpone her death, since antagonizing him would hardly help. But she’d be damned if she didn’t shatter the vigilante-for-justice persona.

“Why use the safety harness for a murder weapon? Using your own equipment turned you on?”

“We always have to wear the harness when we’re working in the shaft. It’s a safety thing,” he added primly. He stepped over the

crossbeam and grabbed the front of her shirt with one hand, nearly lifting her off her feet. With the other, he blocked the kicks she aimed at his groin. She swung a little wider, remembering his damaged thigh, but faster than thought he moved to the other side of the beam so that it protected him instead of her.

He pulled. She made a fist and socked him on the jaw as hard as she could. She thought the impact broke one of her knuckles, but it didn’t seem to faze him, so she stretched out her fingers for his eyes instead. But he jerked his head back so she couldn’t reach them.

The doors were almost closed, shutting off the light.

Her thighs hit the crossbeam, and she bent her knees, curling her body around it like a gymnast around a parallel bar. She grabbed for a handhold with her left hand, catching the oily cables. With her right, she continued to scratch and punch at him.

He stopped the door with one foot, pushing it back a foot or so.

Then he yanked her so hard that the beam across her midriff forced the breath out of her, and she sagged for a moment, scraping her face on the large buttons on the front side of the crossbeam.

Three days before, she and Jack had reversed positions; she’d stood in the machine room while he stood on the car top to collect oil samples for her—samples he knew wouldn’t match the oil found on Grace, the oil used specifically for the cables. The buttons on the crossbeam had clear labels—the red one said Stop, and two black ones read Up and Down.

Jack reached under the crossbeam and grabbed her legs out from under her. Now only one elbow hooked around the crossbeam kept her on top of the elevator.

Her body stretched in midair, horizontally, as a man with twice her weight and strength did his best to drag her onto his killing ground. Her right arm screamed under the pressure. Her left hand found the buttons. She pressed Up.

The car began to move, slowly.

Jack’s force flagged. “What are you doing?”

Her finger slipped off the button, and the elevator stopped. She pressed again, held it.

Jack’s grip slid down her body to her ankles, so that he now stood safely outside the elevator. Her calves spanned the threshold.

If the elevator continued to move, she would amputate both feet.

“You’re a rapist, Jack,” she gasped out. “Not some kind of loving father or rebellious citizen. You’re a sick corruption of organic molecules.”

He lunged, got the top of her pants in his grip, and pulled. But then he went slack, his legs without leverage, dangling beneath them in the open elevator doorway. His grasp slid to her knees.

She flexed her legs and drew her feet out of the doorway, to bring Jack farther in with her. In the next moment, the top of the car approaching the top of the door opening like a guillotine to its lunette, he let go.

And she held on.

C H A P T E R

38

SHE RELEASED THE UP BUTTON TO GRASP HIS SANDY

blond hair. Then she hitched her right shoulder closer to the crossbeam so she could wrap her arm around it and reach the button with her fingers.

Unfortunately she pushed the first button her index finger could find, the Down one. The motion pointed out her error.

Jack pulled against her hand. His foot banged against the now-closing door.

Her middle finger found the Up button. The car reversed direction.

Jack wiggled, striking at her arm with both fists, but with his lower body dangling, he had no leverage. He could not see the approaching threshold, but he worked with these machines every day.

He had to know what would happen.

He changed tactics and began to climb onto the car top. Now she locked her left elbow and held her arm stiff, trying to keep him out. All he had to do was get to the Stop button and she would die.

Both his hands grasped her shirtsleeve, his legs flailing, trying to pull himself into the safe space.

“You bitch!”

In the next instant, the top of the door opening met his back, just above his waist. The car kept moving upward.

His scream filled the shaft, filled her head, filled every brain cell down to the nucleus until her chromosomes vibrated with the awful thunder of it. She let go of the button, let go of his hair to clasp her hands over her ears. Stop, why wouldn’t he stop?

Slowly it dawned on her that he had stopped, as soon as the doorjamb cut off the lower half of his body. After that, the screams were all hers.

She could still feel his fingers on her arm . . . In horror she realized that they were still on her arm, and she shook them off, her hand and arm thrashing against metal and concrete until spots of pain convinced her to stop.

She curled into a ball and stayed there, the cement ceiling of the elevator shaft pressing against the back of her neck, the metallic smell of blood already penetrating past her knees to her face. She had to move, she had to face it, she had to get out of there.

In a minute.

At least she’d have a moment of darkness before she had to face what she’d done. Gingerly, she lifted her head—or rather, lowered her knees, her head couldn’t go any farther—and turned it away from the body, toward the controls. The Down button. That was all she needed.

She went to push it, but her right arm was stuck. She had forgotten, from her last trip to the top of the shaft, that the crossbeam ended flush with the ceiling. Another inch and she would have crushed her shoulder.

She pushed the Down button with her left hand and snaked her right arm back over to rest against her body. If it hurt, she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel much of anything except a desire to get out of the machine room without seeing the thing that used to be a man.

But that would not be possible.

A peek at the light told her that the door remained stationary with

about a foot clearance. His lower body must have blocked it. She did not level the car but stopped a foot above the machine room floor, having no desire to further mutilate the dead flesh that lay there.

Some sort of dark object lay on the car top, and it had flooded the area with some sort of dark liquid.

She would have to move if she didn’t want to stay there permanently.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about what your mind is seeing—the open, red gore, the splash of blood on your pants, the wetness soaking into your shoes. Stand up. Turn. Push the door open farther. Step to the edge. Jump.

Her Reeboks made a squishing sound when she landed on the gray concrete floor.

Leave.

The shoeprints faded out after four flights.

You’re spreading a crime scene, leaving a trail of biohazard throughout a residential building.

Yes.

You need to get your camera, start documenting.

Yes, I know.

Your arm hurts. Your shoulders hurt. You’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and not be able to move.

Yes.

You need to call David. But the Nextel is still up there on the car top and you’re not going to get it.

No.

She entered the ground-floor hallway, turned to the left, and went out into the alley.

It’s still raining.

Isn’t that great?

She lifted her face to the pelting drops and let them soak her clothes, soak the blood and the tissue and the flecks of bone from the fabric. High up, between the buildings, lightning stretched

across the sky with its accompanying thunder. The alleyway, though, became illuminated by red and blue lights.

“Evelyn!”

David’s arms encircled her. “Are you all right? Is he here? I got your message. Officer Seraviso said you called but never made it up to the apartment. Are you all right?”

“I’m great,” she said, just as her knees went out entirely and she sagged against him.

Clio Helms materialized in front of her, for once not looking perfect as the rain plastered her hair into an unflattering mat. Her face, however, glowed with excitement. “What’s going on? We heard you on the police scanner, and your boyfriend here sounded panicked. Did you get the guy? Evelyn? You okay?”

“Peachy.”

“Get out of the way,” David ordered. “She needs to sit down.”

“She is okay, isn’t she?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“I’m peachy,” Evelyn repeated. She was still alive, after all, and so was Marissa. “And I’m never getting in an elevator again.”

“Glad to hear it,” Clio said, looping one of Evelyn’s arms around her own neck. She and David supported Evelyn between them to the end of the alley, where an ambulance had just pulled up.

“Seriously. I’ll take the stairs.”

“They’re good exercise,” the reporter agreed. “There’s Channel Fifteen, and I know the Sun Star guy always has his scanner on. You remember our deal, right?”

“Yeah,” Evelyn said, collapsing on the bumper. “You’ve got your story.”

The reporter straightened, a smile of sheer triumph breaking through the worry on her face. “Cool.”

C H A P T E R

39

I T’S JUST A LITTLE SHOCK,” THE PARAMEDIC TOLD

David. “She’s coming out of it. Be sure to keep her warm.”

“Has anyone checked on Craig Sinclair?” Evelyn asked. “If Jack thought his plan was falling apart—”

David wrapped a fresh blanket around her shivering body. “He’s fine. I got hold of the nurses right after you called me. You know, it actually crossed my mind that maybe Craig was faking his disability and sneaking out of the center at night to exact his revenge.”

“Nobody would fake living like that. Not for two years.”

“It would be the perfect alibi.”

“Jack came to work one day and saw Grace Markham. Even if she saw him, she might not have recognized him. You never look at someone in uniform; you just see the uniform and accept that they belong there, that they’re not a threat. And then he realized he was probably the only person in the world who could get to her. He told me so, the first day. He was that confident.”

“But first, a practice run,” David said. “Frances.”

“E-tech doesn’t service that building.”

“His old company did. The one that fired him over sexual ha -

rassment complaints right about the time of his divorce. He would have known that building inside and out.”

“So he killed Frances, his first job having graduated from rape to murder. Then Grace. He meant to save Kelly—the driver—for last.

He probably wanted her to make the connection, to make her think he was coming for her, believing she wouldn’t ask for protection and let the media rehash the accident.”

“It worked,” David said, wiping rain from his forehead. “I think the accident weighed on her mind, but she didn’t want the story to resurface in the middle of the mine disaster. Now we’ll never be able to ask her. You know, you’d be warmer if we sat inside the ambulance, or even inside my car.”

“I like the rain.”

“Since when?”

“Since I got covered in someone else’s blood.”

He tucked a lock of sodden hair behind her ear. “Maybe this is the wrong time for this. On the other hand, maybe it’s exactly the right time. I have something I’d like to give you.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Coffee?”

“This.” He pulled a small box from his pocket and pressed it into her hand. Raindrops immediately spotted the velvet covering, and patrol car lights reflected in the spots.

She had just gotten her heartbeat under control too.

“I bought it before I came to your house last night, but we never had a chance to talk.”

The square-cut diamond seemed impossibly big. The platinum warmed quickly, once on her hand.

“I know you said you didn’t want to get married again, but I hope you’ll change your mind.”

Clio Helms approached, holding out a foam cup. “Here, drink this, it’s hot. The medic said you— Holy shit, is that an engagement ring?”

Evelyn couldn’t speak.

“Yes,” David said.