by Eric Beetner
“I’m shot, but it’s in the meat. Hurts like a leg cramp. I’m not bleeding too much. I’ll be fine.”
Didn’t sound fine to Lauren, but she didn’t like the idea of volunteering to go first. Plus, she needed to stay behind to help Dale who would surely not describe his toe pain as a cramp. As she looked at him, he still contorted his face in a closed-eyes grimace.
She speculated. “No one has a flashlight, I guess?”
Elton shook his head. “Gotta just go for it.” He reached out and found he couldn’t get to the cables from where he sat. He needed another eight inches, maybe. Steadying himself against the side of the doorway, he pushed to his feet. He hopped on one foot when he stood.
Lauren squirmed. “Be careful.”
He turned to look at her. “Thanks.” He looked at the cables in front of him, then back to her. “And thanks for getting me out. I needed the kick in the ass to do it.”
“I wouldn’t thank us just yet.”
Elton smiled. “Yeah, I guess it’s kind of a messed up way to quit your job.”
“This is the most messed up day of my life.”
The pain was evident in Dale’s mocking voice. “Yeah, yeah, everything’s real messed up. Can we get going here?”
Elton turned back to the shaft, leaned as far as he could with one hand still on the doorframe, then let go and hopped out the last few inches to the cable. There were three of them grouped together. Steel cords the thickness of a garden hose. The thing he hadn’t anticipated was that they were greased up, lubricated to keep the elevator cruising along nicely.
Elton dropped, sliding down a full body length before he wrapped his legs around the bundle of cables and slowed his progress. His calf with the bullet in it rubbed against the cables, the pressure of his tangled legs keeping him from plummeting into the black. He let out a scream.
Lauren rushed to the opening. “You okay?” She left Dale leaning against the wall next to the blown-out call buttons.
It took a few moments for Elton to regain his speaking voice. “I’m all right.” The cables rattled up the shaft, the long cords echoing a high-tension note. Fifteen story-high wind chimes in a breeze.
As Lauren gazed into the hole, the blackness seemed deeper now. Before, she could calculate the distance from the seventh floor to the bottom, but now it seemed as if it went to the center of the earth. Dale’s voice broke her trance.
“My turn, I guess.”
Dale hobbled forward and got his first direct look down the shaft. Elton clung to the group of cables in the center of the void like a child refusing to climb down a tree. That moment when he’s realized he got in way over his head here and it was time for Dad to come with the ladder.
“I think I’m going to take the side walls. Looks like there are enough footholds to make it.”
Lauren examined the walls, skeptical, but no more so than of Elton’s plan. “From what we can see, but what about down there?”
“It’s going to be the same in a repeating pattern all the way down. Didn’t you study this building?”
“Not the elevator shafts. I’m a reporter, not a building inspector.”
As if anticipating the pain to come, Dale shut his eyes and grimaced once more before turning his body and starting his descent along the inner wall of the shaft. He knew there was no way he could support his whole body weight on his damaged foot, so he hung that leg out over the opening and eased himself down on the power of his good leg and his hands gripped onto the doorframe.
Lauren moved in to help him, but he protested. “No. I have to know how much of my own weight I’m holding up. If I need you, I’ll let you know.” She stayed close by.
In the shaft, Elton began slow slips down. He’d loosen his grip on the cables, slide down a few inches, then tense up again and stop. Black grease coated his cheek as he hugged the cables. His hands already burned from the effort and his leg felt like the bullet had entered his calf anew, but he kept his face turned away from Dale and Lauren. All they could see was his slow progress downward, not the agony on his face.
Dale knew this next part was going to suck. He couldn’t tell if he was quite as scared as when he was waiting for Lauren to blast his toe off, but for this he had to have his eyes open and all his senses aware, so he thought it might end up sucking more. One way to find out.
He started feeling along the cinder-block wall of the shaft with his bad foot. Wrapped in a makeshift bandage and missing a toe and a bit, even the slightest touch against anything but air sent a new electric shock of pain shooting from his foot to every corner of his body. He tried to keep his pinky toe turned to the wall so he wasn’t hitting the open wound on every hard surface he could.
The first support slid under his foot. He tested the strength through gritted teeth. It would hold. He pressed down with his foot, feeling the narrow steel beam through the bottom of his shoe. It was only about three inches wide. Enough to support his weight, but not without a hand firmly griped on to something else. This would not be easy. Sweat already beaded on his forehead and the intensity of his heartbeat pumped a fresh flow of blood to his ear and his toe.
Dale eased his hands down the inside of the open door. The knee on his support leg bent higher and higher until it was time to let go and allow his lopsided foot to carry the burden.
Above him, Lauren watched, holding her breath. Elton continued to slide down the cables by inches. The journey down to the first floor would take hours unless they figured something else out.
Dale dropped his other leg into the shaft and he heard Lauren let out a slight gasp. His good toes found the beam and he eased off the pressure on his bad foot. The oppressive pain ebbed away to merely tolerable. His hands came off the open doorframe and found any small hold they could. Dale was fully inside the shaft and pulling himself up now seemed more impossible than scaling the rest of the way down.
He thought of Dahlia. What a crazy story this would all make when he got out; the extent to which he went to get back to her. Would she appreciate it? Would he even get to tell her before he was whisked away to a holding cell to await a working over by internal affairs?
In the middle of his questioning thoughts, he heard a scream.
Lauren kept a close eye on Dale, waiting for him to lose his grip and drop away into the dark, but it was Elton who let go. She heard the rattle of cables a split second before his yell. Her eyes darted toward the sound in time to see him vanish from sight straight down.
The strain of holding on had been too much. He loosened his grip to travel another four inches down and his body didn’t obey the command to cling on again. The bullet in his leg shut down all muscle response. His hands had enough. The sweat slicked his grip even more against the grease and it became too much to hold on. Elton’s scream faded into an echo and then cut off abruptly, the dull impact sound following the scream up the shaft to disappear overhead.
Lauren turned her eyes to Dale who stood clinging to the wall a few feet below her. He looked up at her and a thin light caught his eyes in the darkness. The desperate look seemed to say, no turning back now.
CHAPTER 22
There was blood, but she didn’t know if it was hers. Dahlia stood straight, her head woozy. She looked down and saw the blood on the front of her pants. The baby. Stinging bands of pain ran across her abdomen from where the seatbelt gripped her to the front seat.
She touched the spot and the blood came away warm. The surface was soaked through. She lifted her shirt and a cut had opened up along the waistband of her pants. Dahlia pulled the front of her pants out and waited for the flow of blood from inside. It never came.
The blood wasn’t from inside her body. Not the baby.
Tires eased to a stop on the asphalt, the last few feet a crunching of glass and metal pieces from the engine and bumpers. Dahlia looked up.
T’s familiar black car slowed to a halt. How far back had he been following?
Dahlia mut
tered to herself under her breath. “No.”
T stood, watching the driver’s seat for movement, wary of the crash. Dahlia buzzed around the edges from the impact, her balance a little off, the pain still making itself known. But time had come to stop running. She lifted Pooch’s gun and fired.
T jerked his shoulder with a grunt. She fired again. He bent in the middle and fell against his own car door, slamming it shut, then he slid to the ground. Dahlia walked toward him. Between two vacant buildings she saw a man hunched over an overstuffed shopping cart watching from a safe distance.
She reached the car, engine still running. T sat on the sidewalk, one hand holding him up and the other around a wound below his ribs. A bright spot of red grew across his left shoulder. Dahlia aimed the gun down at him.
“Where’s my husband?”
T was in shock, his eyes staring at nothing, wondering how he got there. He didn’t answer. Dahlia stuck the gun under his chin and lifted his face to hers.
“Where is my husband?”
Breath didn’t come easily, but after a few attempts T squeaked out a word. “Tat.”
She knew the name. By reputation, by stories in the papers, by Dale mentioning a case a few years back, then more recently hearing his name in overheard phone calls.
“Take me.”
Shock gave way to pain and T curled in on himself. His knees came up to his gut and he rolled over onto his side. Dahlia could see his back and saw no exit wound. The bullet was still inside him, a hot coal touching the tender flesh of organs never meant to see the outside world.
The gun was heavy in Dahlia’s hand. Her elbows ached from the impact and even the weight of Pooch’s 9mm became too much. She knelt to where T was curled, fetal, on the curb. Her knees protested and her abdomen didn’t like being folded in two.
“Take me to see him or I’ll leave you here to die.”
With her head still blurry, the voice sounded like someone else. She felt drunk, overhearing her own conversation and wishing she could sound tough like that chick. And two shots—two hits. She hadn’t been to a gun range in over two years since Dale made her go for training with the gun in her nightstand. She was glad for the training now, and glad she was bad enough not to kill him right away. She needed him to find Dale. Dahlia had no idea where to find this Tat person.
Going there would be a dumb idea. She knew that. But if she was anywhere Dale was, he would handle things. He’d grown distant, his communication skills were shit, they seemed to have different values lately, but one thing she knew: he could be counted on was to protect her. No matter what, he took the job of caring for and protecting his wife very seriously.
In that way she knew he’d have been a good father. Pity the boyfriends if they ended up having a girl. Dale would not be the dad you’d want to have to impress. It made the decision even harder.
But the other side to that coin, if Dale was the one to save her from this man, he also seemed to be the one who brought him to her door. He’d explain it away as a peril of the job. But none of the other cop wives had been abducted. Not that she knew about.
Dahlia tapped the gun on T’s forehead. “Let’s go.”
“I’m shot.” He seemed surprised that she didn’t already know.
“I see that. You drive, I don’t know where I’m going.” She reached over and pulled the driver’s door open. The car’s electronic warning bong-bong-bonged at her with the door open and the keys in the ignition. T looked up from the sidewalk. He knew she wouldn’t take no for an answer and wouldn’t take any more stalling.
He rolled onto his knees and climbed into the car with considerable effort, slumping into the seat and pulling his hand away from his belly. Holding out his bloodstained palm to her, his eyes pleaded for help or mercy.
Dahlia slammed the door and went around to the passenger seat.
“Let’s go.”
ELEVATOR SHAFT
A stenciled 6 rose out of the darkness in white paint on the back of the elevator doors as they passed. Barely enough light penetrated the shaft to make out anything, but the ghostly number cut through.
Dale let his foot hang in the air for a moment, dreading when he’d have to set it down again, igniting the pain like new. His leg up to his knee had gone numb except for a dull pain that radiated up his thigh and into his hips. The foot dangled, lifeless, like it had been amputated and sewn back on. But when he touched his remaining toes down on one of the support beams bolted into the wall—the steel beams with the three-inch lip keeping him from falling to his death—the foot came alive and sparked with new pain. How so much pain could come from something no longer there bothered Dale, but he’d have the rest of his life to ponder it. That could mean as much as five more minutes.
He and Lauren hadn’t spoken since she entered the shaft and started her own slow climb down. Seeing that 6 tempted words out of him.
“Should we try to open it?”
“No. Keep going.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
Lauren clung to an adjacent wall. She’d come even with him, moving faster with her two good feet. Her fingers burned from the tight grip she held on the beams. She wanted to stop, but they had to get down. It was the only way. “The hard part is over. Just keep moving.”
Lying had always come easy to Lauren. Ever since she caught her dad lying during the first campaign when he’d slept with that media consultant. Mom had a temper, one she kept in check during campaign mode. She smiled like a dutiful housewife and supportive candidate’s spouse. Never a hair out of place, never rattled. But when she boiled over, she was Vesuvius. Lauren heard about her father’s lies from two rooms away.
After that and the other lie that nothing would change once he moved into office, Lauren changed as well. She was escorted to school by two bodyguards. No more going out at night or on weekends. She was to be in by ten and had to take the bodyguards with her. Most of her weekends were taken up by photo ops at small business openings, fundraisers, and ribbon cuttings.
She began lying to her parents as a way to get back and seize some control. She told harmless, pointless lies. She was studying with Julie when she was really studying with Stephanie. She loved Little Women when she really thought it was a bore. Lies just to prove she could, and to prove what a fool her dad was. It occupied most of her teenage years and became so normal that she forgot what was a lie and what wasn’t with her parents. They might call out some incongruity in a story she told and she’d have no recollection of the lie or why she’d told it.
So now, she could lie like a champ. It served her well as a reporter, and it served her well when she had to tell someone to keep going even when she felt certain they would die in a tall shaft of darkness.
The stenciled 5 was over their heads now. She heard each pained inhale of breath whenever Dale would set his foot down again and have to support his weight for a brief moment while transferring weight to his good foot. Lauren felt deep guilt for shooting his toe off, but she knew they’d still be there now, Dale pinned under a fire door.
And Elton would be alive. But dammit, none of this was her fault. She rescinded the earlier blame she put on herself. If she took any blame, she’d have to take it all, so she chose to lay it all at Tat’s feet for kidnapping her in the first place and for running such a devious criminal empire. Elton’s blood could be on his hands. The other men she’d killed may as well have been shot by Tat’s own hand. Telling herself that was the only way she could keep going down the shaft. Lying to others came easy—lying to herself was harder.
She felt a fingernail crack and winced against the pain, but she didn’t let go.
To break the silence and get her mind off the slow climb, Lauren asked a question that had been on her mind. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because the elevator is broken.”
“No, why did you come here in the first place? Seems like a crazy thing to do.”
Dale couldn’t ar
gue with her. Being here was crazy.
“I guess…” He felt along the edge of a beam with his foot. Winced in pain as he set it down. “I’m looking for some sort of good karma.”
“You believe in that stuff?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t get it.”
“Look, I’m not here because I’m the world’s greatest cop. I’m here because I’m expendable, and I’m the only one who could get in here without getting shot immediately.”
She voiced her realizations. “That’s how you got up to Tat’s office. You have business with him on the side.”
“See? I knew you were a good reporter.”
“A good reporter would have known that already.”
“Well, either way. You could write an article about me and it would be the story of one more ordinary crooked cop. One more asshole who couldn’t say no to the money. One more jerk who thought he could get away with it. I’m here because if it all went to shit, nobody would cry over me. And it has gone to shit, don’t get me wrong, but we’re not all the way in it yet.”
“Meaning we’re not dead.”
“Exactly. And plus, I’ve got some making up to do. I need to try to set things right with the department and the chief.” Dale looked off into the darkness. “And my wife.”
Lauren could smell the sweat coming off her body. “What, like AA or something? Making amends?”
“Sort of. I’ve got a lot to make up for. This was a chance to turn things around.” Dale thought about his choice to accept the job. He thought about the first time he crossed the line and took the money Tat offered him. His only defense against the shame he felt had been to turn deeper into the take. He hadn’t known at first the toll it would take on him, on Dahlia, on his career. “Yeah, a chance. Step one, anyway. First step of a long journey.”
“Like that Chinese saying.”
“Yeah. I’ll have a lot of time to memorize Chinese sayings in prison.” Dale had to take a break. He drew three deep breaths, felt the cramping in his fingers. “Mostly I needed to prove to myself that I still know what the right thing to do is. Saving you is the right thing to do. Getting to my wife is the right thing.”