Unknown Means (36 page)

No blows came, and he made a huffing sound, as if bent over.

She couldn’t have hurt him.

Suddenly she remembered Kelly Alexander’s office, the red liquid on her community service award. Kelly had drawn blood—probably in the thigh. Not enough to incapacitate, obviously, but enough to hurt, enough to make him pause.

Kick, a martial arts enthusiast had told her once. Pound for pound, a woman’s legs are as strong as a man’s. Kick.

She kicked.

He had been bent slightly forward, so that her foot caught him on the chin—or at least something high and solid—and she heard a loud snap and a thud as he went down.

Please, she prayed, tell me I’ve broken the bastard’s neck.

Silence. He did not move.

She knew she should feel for his neck, find a pulse, see if he remained conscious, but she could not bring herself to touch him. Her mind had not yet accepted that he had come into the elevator—only her animal instincts knew how to respond. Sometimes boxing up all your feelings could be helpful.

He might be unconscious, he might be waiting for her to come closer. After all, he had plenty of time. She had nowhere to go.

Except up through the hatch. With a whimper of fear—it meant giving up the darkness, and she was pretty damn sure she didn’t want to see what was in the elevator with her—she opened her Nextel. The glow of the screen showed a dark form on the floor, which did not move. Then she aimed it upward. The hatch was still open, a darker square in a dark square, right over his body.

She put the flipped-open top of the phone in her mouth, aimed upward to illuminate her goal. Then she put the foot under her good knee on the man’s turned hip and pushed off him as hard as she could, stretching her arms up to the hole in the ceiling.

The fingers of her right hand caught the edge of the hatch opening, the metal biting into her skin as her left hand knocked against the ceiling of the elevator, trying to find the opposite side of the frame. The backlight from the Nextel screen reached its ten-second mark and automatically turned off, plunging her back into pitch.

Her sweaty fingers also reached their limit, and she fell to the floor, landing partially on the still-unmoving man. She stumbled, rolled onto her side, and pushed up with her arms, moving with the lightning speed of panic. She had dropped the Nextel.

He was going to wake up. He was going to wake up any split second now, and when he did, she had no defenses. She should tie his arms, but she had nothing to tie them with, no belt, no purse strap. Removing her shoelaces would take too long, time she would rather spend getting out of the damn elevator.

Her hands swept over the floor in her search, touching his pants, his jacket, even his hair, and each contact made her shudder with revulsion. Just as she considered giving up, she touched the little black plastic brick.

She stood up, used her foot to make sure the man’s body still lay on its side, felt for the hip bones— Was that a spasm? Was he alive?

Was he about to move, get up? She opened the Nextel, clenched the open lid between her teeth, located the hatch in the ceiling. Then she took a bounding step and used her good knee to push off. She pushed the man, the tight space, the memory of his victims out of her mind and focused on that small, dark square in the ceiling.

Over her own breathing, she heard a grunt from the floor. It didn’t mean he was conscious. She’d probably compressed his lungs a bit in her launch.

Her fingers caught the frame neatly on both sides. Now she just had to pull herself through it.

Yeah, right.

Her legs, swinging in the air, had never felt heavier, pulling her damp fingers off the smooth metal and back into the pit. But she could reach the wall and plant the sole of one foot there long enough to sta-bilize herself, to pull hard enough with one hand to thrust the other one into the darkness above the elevator. Unfortunately, no handholds presented themselves, and her hand swung wildly in the void.

The fingers of her other hand began to slip. Her feet again swung loose.

Then her right hand brushed a metal bar and she clutched at it.

Not meant to be a handle, the flat, perforated piece dug into her fingers, but at least it didn’t move. She pulled her arms up with muscles she didn’t know she had, and hoped she’d never have to use again.

She moved her shoulders into the hatch, her legs still deadweight and flailing uselessly. Once she’d raised herself enough that her arms could push down instead of pull up, she knew she had it. She’d

make it. With one last burst, she moved her hips into the roof space and rammed her forehead into something very big and very hard.

She chipped a tooth on her Nextel, its screen now dark, and it clat-tered to the roof.

Sitting on the hatch frame, she could let go of the braces. One hand to her head felt wet warmth while the other hand traced the obstacle—the crossbeam across the center of the elevator top.

The handle of the bucket, to which the cables attached.

Forgot about that.

Something touched her left foot, just the merest wisp of contact.

Before she could even snatch it away, two hands closed over her ankle and pulled.

She grabbed for anything she could find, which happened to be the same uncomfortable piece of metal, and one of the cables stretching up from the center of the crossbeam. Its diameter fit comfortably in her hand. Unfortunately, it had been covered with oil.

She kicked at his hands with her right foot, banging her knee on the hatch frame as she tried for leverage. His fingers loosened for a minute, then renewed. He must have been bending his knees and hanging his entire body weight on her foot, wrenching the knee until pain shot up past her hip.

Her fingers on the cable began to slide. The cables hung in the center of the elevator roof. Anytime one moved around on top of the car and needed to steady oneself, say, if the car were moving, the cables would be a natural handhold. Perhaps right before dropping through the hatch to surprise Grace Markham in her own apartment.

She kicked again, hitting his wrist. Then she gave up and pulled her right leg out of the hatch. With her foot braced on the car roof and both arms anchored, she got her left leg, with Jack’s entire body swinging from it, to clear the hatch. She screamed a bit at the pain in her left knee.

With both feet on the car roof, she released one hand and

grabbed the hatch cover. Jack had already freed one hand to close on the hatch frame. In another instant he’d shoot himself through the hole, onto the car top. He did this all the time.

She slammed the cover shut.

He gave a strangled yell as the cover hit the wrist of one hand and the fingers of the other. With her free foot, Evelyn stomped on the heavy cover.

He let go, slipping down into the elevator. She sat on the hatch cover and heard him bellow in anger or pain.

The hatch could be opened only from the roof, not the inside of the car. Unless he had lied about that. So she planted her butt on the hatch and hoped he didn’t have a gun.

You hate the dark, a voice in the back of her head pondered. You hate heavy machinery, you hate enclosed spaces, and you have a love-hate relationship with heights. Yet you just climbed into an elevator shaft to get away from this guy.

Yeah, well. Go figure.

She felt a weak thump under her buttocks. He was jumping, trying to get the hatch open, but with it closed, there was nothing to grab on to. Her fingers explored the edge of the cover and found a latching mechanism. After the car had remained quiet for a moment or two, she lifted herself up one inch and tugged slightly. The cover didn’t budge. Jack had told the truth about it.

She was safe. He couldn’t get to her.

But she couldn’t get out.

Gingerly—her knee aching and her heart pounding hard enough to bruise her ribs, she stood up. The elevator did not move, did not bob up and down. With fingers outstretched and no desire to cave in her forehead again, she explored her cage.

If she hiked over the crossbeam, she could reach the front half of the elevator roof, which seemed relatively unobstructed. Reaching out showed her a rough concrete wall—they must have been stuck

between floors. She moved around the edge, counterclockwise. Apparently Jack had also been truthful about the lack of rung ladders in elevator shafts. There was no way up except the oil-covered cable.

At the back of the elevator, the roof had a slight lip, which caught her toe. Her hands, skimming the wall, suddenly dropped off into nothingness, a great black hole into which her body began to tilt.

She crouched and grabbed the edge of the car top, letting gravity bring her to rest. The shaft in which the counterweight rode up and down—she had nearly fallen into it.

A tap on the hatch cover reminded her that Jack had not given up.

With no way to climb out, she decided to start screaming. The tenants of the Riviere would not appreciate the early wake-up, and they wouldn’t be able to open their elevator doors to help her, but at least they could call the fire department or the elevator company.

Eventually they would get her out, while Jack remained locked up for the cops to come and arrest.

She opened her mouth.

A rumbling sound echoed down the shaft, and a whirring response came from the controls on the car top. The faintest light appeared through cracks approximately six feet above her, where a tenant must have left a lamp burning in an apartment before turning in.

The power had come back on.

The elevator began to move downward.

Being on top of an elevator in a dark shaft was bad enough. Being on top of a moving elevator in a dark shaft was enough to make her sob in terror. She wrapped both arms around the crossbeam and buried her face in her shoulder, hanging on with every usable muscle she had left.

After about two floors she realized that it really wasn’t that bad.

The car moved smoothly; so long as she didn’t get caught between the moving car and the wall, she had nothing to fear. It slid to a stop at, she assumed, the lobby. At the edge of the car top, a mechanism

moved to the side, and she could see the marble floor through the tiny crack. The doors had opened.

If Jack had any sense at all, he would leave, run now before the police arrived.

“Leroy!” she shouted, as loud as she could. “Call the police! Call the police!”

Hearing a disembodied voice might confuse the doorman, but with luck he would at least investigate. She had to pray that he would not try to stop Jack—why should he? He knew the man.

Nothing happened. No sound came from the lobby. Was Leroy there, or was he off seeing to the power failure? Perhaps the building had a generator he had started—her struggle in the dark had seemed like hours, but it couldn’t have been more than ten minutes.

She kept her eye on the lobby floor. Jack did not exit. Instead she heard the faint tinkle of keys on a ring, then a beep. The doors closed.

The elevator began to move upward.

She clutched the crossbeam more tightly. Was he heading for Marissa’s apartment? He had a job to finish, and she now believed that he could change or find out the codes for each apartment. He’d told her so the first day.

She would shout as soon as the elevator stopped. The armed police officer already expected her to show up and would be waiting.

Evelyn could warn her before Jack left the elevator car.

An ominous sound built up behind her, a demon roaring down the shaft on a collision course. Just as she opened her mouth to scream, it whooshed past, disappearing down a rabbit hole of pitch dark. The counterweight. It had passed the elevator, which meant they had gone past the approximate midpoint of the shaft. They had passed Marissa’s floor.

They just kept going up.

The shaft ended somewhere up there in the dark. Evelyn could not see it. What was at the top of an elevator shaft?

She tried to remember the machine room. The motor, with the cables looped over its heavy wheel, disappearing through the floor into the shaft. Under that, the elevator car, where the doors opened into the room.

A concrete ceiling. That was what was at the top of an elevator shaft. A flat, hard ceiling that the car top fitted up against without room for human beings, because why would a human being be there—

The end of the shaft came into view.

The dimmest of lights, sneaking between the cracks of the machine room door, removed just enough shadow for her to see her de-mise, to see the death she now hurtled toward, which would leave her body a smashed, bloody mess—

She screamed.

C H A P T E R

37

AND THE ELEVATOR ROLLED TO A SMOOTH HALT.

Her body was not smashed between two hard surfaces but had a roomy two-foot space to move around in, provided she did it on hands and knees.

The mechanism at the edge slid to the side again as the doors opened. This time Jack did get out.

I’m still safe. He still can’t get up through the hatch.

But she was sure he’d have another way to get to her.

The doors, after waiting the appropriate time, slid closed. For a moment, all was still. Then the elevator began to move down.

Go to the lobby, she prayed. Get to the lobby, and when the doors open I can jump down through the hatch and get out, after I flip the emergency stop button. I’ll use the desk phone to call the police, and in the meantime, if I see Jack, I’ll run like hell. Marissa will be all right. He can’t get to her without the elevator.

The car stopped, level with the machine room floor. A shadow crossed over the light at the doors’ edges.

Then she heard a scratching noise, like a metallic rodent finding its way through a maze.