Death Dance (41 page)

An early April thunderstorm ripped through the Boston suburbs
south of Logan Airport and kept the plane on the tarmac for close to
three hours on Sunday evening. It gave me even more time to reflect on
Joan's remark, as I had done throughout the lazy weekend we spent
together after leaving the beach. Police, prosecutors, pathol-ogists,
and serologists—all of us whose professional lives were
absorbed with understanding the secrets of the dead—seemed to
be surrounded with more than our share of violent happenings.

Instead of reaching LaGuardia in time for the dinner I had
planned to enjoy with a couple of my law school friends, I watched Joan
race off to catch the last shuttle to Washington and waited on line at
the taxi stand to get a cab back into the city.

"Welcome home, Ms. Cooper," Benito said, stepping out to the
curb to open the car door for me. "I have your mail and some dry
cleaning in back."

I followed the doorman inside, waiting while he went into the
storage area to get the bundle of magazines and plastic-wrapped dresses
that had been delivered over the weekend.

It was ten thirty by the time I sorted through the bills, a
postcard from Nina Baum, and the flood of invitations to charity
luncheons that heralded the spring season. I started a tub running with
steaming-hot water and sprinkled some bath salts in it, watching them
foam up as the tub began to fill.

I was standing at the bar, pouring myself a shot of my new
single-malt scotch and smiling at the remembrance of Mike's gesture,
when the apartment suddenly went black.

Feeling my way back to the bathroom, I turned off the faucet
and then slowly guided myself around familiar pieces of furniture, into
the kitchen to find a flashlight and the fuse box.

I yanked at the heavy metal door of the box, standing on
tiptoe to see what had blown so that I could flip it back on. All of
the switches were aligned, and I played with a few of them to see
whether anything made a difference, but no lights came on around me.

With the same baby steps that got me from room to room, I went
to the foyer of the large apartment and pressed against the peephole in
the front door. I was reassured to see that the overhead hall fixtures
were still working, which meant that the entire building didn't have
the problem that I did.

I grabbed my pocketbook and dug out my cell phone, taking it
into the living room, where the great expanse of windows caught
whatever light reflected from the street lamps many floors below. I
dialed the concierge desk to ask whether the two doormen could find the
superintendent or a handyman, but the number was busy.

On the fourth try, I connected with Benito. "No problem, Ms.
Cooper. Don't worry about anything."

"What do you mean, no problem? I've lost all my power. No
lights, the refrigerator is off, the clock radio. What is it, Benito?
Do you know?"

"It's all the apartments in the A line. You and everybody else
in A."

"Up and down the whole building?"

"First floor to the penthouse. They're all yelling at me, like
I had something to do with it."

"Are they working to restore it?"

"You could call me back in half an hour. The super says he's
gonna have somebody here to check it out very soon. A crew from Con Ed
is coming. Maybe we'll know something by then. Maybe you'll already
have it back on. Or you could just go to sleep, Ms. Cooper. He gonna
have it back on before the morning."

My hallway neighbors, David and Renee Mitchell, usually didn't
come back to the city from their country house until Monday morning. I
had a spare key for their apartment, for the times I occasionally
walked their dog, Prozac. But I decided it was foolish to try to get
inside in case they were home and already asleep.

I stretched out on my sofa in the den, nursing my drink, ready
to nap against the background of routine city noises twenty floors
below—cars honking at one another, the distant sound of an
ambulance siren, and the rumblings of the private carting services that
lurched through the streets at odd hours of the night. There was no
point undressing in case I had to leave the apartment or let a workman
in to check the system.

I dozed for half an hour, awakened—I
thought—by scuffling sounds outside my door.

I walked to the foyer again and looked out through the
peephole, but saw no one.

"Benito?" I asked, calling the desk again.

"Yeah, Ms. Cooper?"

"Any progress?"

"They got a guy working on it in the basement now, Ms. Cooper.
You wanna come down to the lobby and wait here?"

"Why?"

"I dunno. You know Mrs. Melsher? The old lady with the walker?
She got scared alone in the dark. She's down here keeping us company."

"Thanks, Benito. I'm fine."

"I'm going off at midnight. Want me to leave a wake-up call
with Willie for you?" he said with a laugh. "It's not enough we gotta
be the weathermen for you guys, deliver messages to each other, sign
for your deliveries. Now I gotta play hearts with Mrs. Melsher and
leave wake-up calls for the guy on sixteen who has to catch an early
flight and the lady on twelve who's having root canal at eight a.m."

"See you tomorrow."

I went into the bedroom and laid down on top of the covers,
pulling the throw over me. The lights flickered and the illuminated
dial of the clock radio glowed for several seconds, but the room went
black again and I closed my eyes to try to sleep.

It was one o'clock when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Sorry to disturb you, Ms. Cooper. It's me, Benito. The super
aksed me could you come downstairs, please?"

"Why?"

"Look, I'm only doing what he told me. I'm calling all the A
apartments. He has me working a double shift here," Benito said,
pausing before he brought up the deadly reference. "He don't want me to
be saying this to everyone, Ms. Cooper, 'cause we don't want no kind of
panic. But—like—think of nine-eleven. We don't want
people stuck upstairs if there's some kind of electrical fire."

I was bolt upright. "Fire? He thinks it's a fire?"

Benito clucked his tongue in annoyance. "I'm not saying
there's no fire. It's a just-in-case kind of thing. Nobody told us what
it is yet. The first guy that got here, he's started at the bottom.
They're gonna check every hallway, go inside and check your electrical
panels."

"I really don't want to leave the apartment. I'd rather be
here," I said, thinking of the valuables I had around the place.

"Don't worry, Ms. Cooper. The super's coming with him. The guy
won't be in there alone. It just could be a really dangerous thing."

The thought of getting zapped like Joe Berk or asphyxiated in
a fire smoldering behind the apartment walls was enough to move me. I
didn't need the reference to the unspeakable tragedies of 9/11.

"And you can't be using the elevator, Ms. Cooper. They had to
shut that down."

"Why?"

"You're axing a lot of questions I can't answer. I guess
that's how come you're a lawyer. Somebody smelled that kind of
electrical-like, rubber-burning smell. We don't want to panic nobody,
but they says you should come downstairs."

I threw my purse in the bottom of my linen closet, put my keys
and cell phone in my pocket, and tossed on a leather jacket in case I
decided to leave the lobby for a friend's house as events developed
closer to morning. The last thing I brought was the flashlight.

The twentieth-floor hallway was quiet, and as I passed the
elevator bank I paused to sniff the air to see whether I smelled
anything unusual. If there was something on fire, that odor was
overwhelmed by the remains of a neighbor's curried takeout, in
containers still sitting next to the trash compactor.

I opened the door to the stairwell and was surprised to find
that it was pitch black. I backtracked into the hallway and flipped
open the phone to call the concierge desk again, but the number was
busy.

After three more attempts and growing impatience, I pushed
open the heavy fire door and shined the long, narrow beam of the
flashlight into the deep tower of stairs and grabbed the steel
handrailing to begin my descent.

The supposed fireproofing of the emergency staircase served as
a sound barrier as well. The only noise was the clicking of my loafers
against the cement steps. I picked up speed as I rounded the landing on
nineteen, becoming more sure-footed as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

When I reached eighteen, I stopped in my tracks. Someone was
breathing heavily, not far away from me, perhaps winded from going up
or down the stairs. I tried to stay calm, assuming that it was a
neighbor in some sort of distress.

"Hello?" I swiveled in place and turned the beam above me, in
the direction from which I had just come, but saw nothing, and no one
answered.

I grabbed the door handle to get back into the well-lit
landing of the eighteenth floor, but it was locked. I flashed the beam
below me and seeing no one, I went as fast as I could down the stairs
to seventeen. Again, I tried the door for reentry, throwing my body
against it as I pushed, but with no success.

Now the sound of my own deep breaths and loud heartbeats made
it impossible for me to tell whether there were other noises.

I gripped the rail and dashed down farther, to sixteen, and
now I could hear the footsteps racing from behind me, rubber-soled
sneakers or shoes squeaking as they quickened coming toward me.

"Who's there?" I screamed out, sounding as panicked as I felt,
knowing that my shouts couldn't penetrate the thick walls to alert
adjacent tenants.

I leaned forward and slid my arm along the metal railing,
trying to take two steps at a time but fearful of falling. As I turned
on the next landing, I swung the light upward. Someone taller than I,
dressed completely in black, with only the slits for eyes showing out
of a ski mask, was trying to overtake me.

I let go of the support to reach into my pocket, bracing
against the wall with my right arm to keep my balance, the friction of
the leather jacket slowing my descent. Still clambering down and still
shining the beam ahead of me, I felt for the redial button on the cell
phone and pressed on it.

A gloved hand clamped around my neck, squeezing it with
tremendous force, while the other hand locked on my shoulder. The
person powering them knocked me to the ground as I tumbled to the next
landing and rolled to a stop with my back wedged into the corner,
wheezing to catch my breath.

"Benito!" I screamed as the shiny silver cell phone dropped
out of my pocket and slid across the floor.

I could hear a faint voice calling out from the little device,
"Hello? Hello? Who is it?"

The figure was standing over me now, pulling on my legs,
twisting me onto my stomach and trying to grab the hair at the nape of
my neck to hold my head still.

I thrashed and kicked at him, screaming again to Benito. "It's
Alex Cooper. I'm in the stairwell, Benito.
Fire
!
Benito.
Fire
!"

I was yelling as loud as I could, knowing from years of
professional experience that someone was more likely to come to my aid
if I screamed "fire" and not "rape."

The man had one knee on the floor and the other planted in the
middle of my back as he reached for one of my arms, stretching at the
same time to try to grab for the phone. He made a weird, grating
sound—like the tip of his tongue hissing against his front
teeth— as his chin grazed the top of my head.

"In the stairwell, Benito," I screamed again, unable to
remember exactly which floor of the building I had reached. "I'm
on—I'm not sure, Benito. I'm think I'm on sixteen. Help me!
Help
me
!"

My assailant couldn't have it both ways. He had to release my
arm to snatch the phone from the floor. As he did, we both heard Benito
giving commands in Spanish to one of the handymen, directing him to run
up the stairs to find me.

The attacker dropped the phone and I heard it clatter down the
steps. Then he kicked me once in the side so that I remained writhing
on the floor, doubled up in pain. He took off into the darkness above
me, and thirty seconds later, somewhere on a high floor between the
landing and the penthouse on thirty-five, I heard one of the heavy
emergency doors open and slam shut behind him.