by Carolyn Nash
“J.P., if you harm her.”
“Harm isn’t the word, Andy old man.”
As I arranged the leaves over the recorder, I heard a faint siren in the distance. The sound grew louder. “Thank you God,” I breathed. I left the window open a crack and turned the gain up on the recorder far as it would go and made sure that the little needle flickered as it recorded everything said.
“She has no part in any of this. There’s no reason to hurt her.”
I listened to the sirens, willing them closer.
“Oh, yes there is. You don’t want her hurt. By the time we find her you’ll be dead, which is most unfortunate. I’d like you to have to see what you did to her. But, I think it’s much safer in the long run just to dispose of you now. That way I’m safe.” There was a clear, light happiness in his voice.
I looked out the window again. The sirens had died, but through a gap in the trees I saw two police cars, their lights off, round the corner of one of the quad buildings. They drove along the paved walkways to the front of the building next door. The cars stopped and the doors came open. Four figures jumped from the cars and raced down under the trees toward the building, two toward the front door, two turning down between the buildings heading toward the rear.
“Mr. Sheldon? I weary of this. I believe we really don’t need Dr. Richards anymore. He has become a distinct annoyance and a liability. Would you please dispose of him?”
“Here?”
“Why not? It seems fitting. He spent a great deal of his life here. He might as well die here. Sort of like dying with your boots on, so to speak. Eh, Andy?”
And then I heard a metallic sound. There was no mistaking it; I’d heard it in countless movies: the sound of the slide being worked on an automatic handgun to cock a bullet into place. I pushed away from the window, whirled to face the door. I stopped, arms wide, fists clenched, feet spread wide apart.
“Harrison,” I yelled, letting all the fury and pain and fear come out in the scream of my voice. “You want your book, you son of a bitch? Come and get it!” Even as I flung that last word at the door, I spun, turned to race down the hall toward the stairs. I ran, faster than I would have believed I could run. I dimly heard Andrew’s voice shouting my name, shouting for me to run, a clattering crash from the lab, and I was nearly to the stairs by the time the sound of the door of the lab slamming open reached me. I skidded to a stop under the exit sign and heard a szthwiz-THWACK as something went by me and slammed into the wall. I wrenched the door open and dived through and jumped down the stairs, thinking, there was no BLAM. It must have a silencer, just like in the movies. I skidded down the steps, my feet barely touching them, sliding down, yanking around the turn, leaping faster before I could think how bad it would be if I slipped and fell down those concrete steps. I’d reached the third floor landing and was spinning through the circle of light cast by the security light when I heard the door above me slam open. I didn’t hesitate, didn’t think, didn’t breathe, just ran, skimming down the steps, thinking only of hitting the next riser, balancing, shifting my weight, grabbing the handrail to counterbalance the turn at the landing between the third and second floor.
There was another szthwiz this time followed by a loud CRACK as the bullet hit the old wood banister near my hand and shattered it. Wood fragments flew, but I didn’t feel anything, then I noticed I didn’t feel anything at all in that hand, couldn’t make it work, so I hooked my wrist instead in the loop in the banister at the landing, spun around the turn cringing slightly as I passed through the pool of light on the landing and skidded down the steps toward the first floor. I could hear the pounding of the footsteps of at least two men above me, but I merely noted it, didn’t let myself think about who they were or what they would do to me if they caught me. I rounded the last turn, drummed down the last flight and hit the cross-bar on the door of the first floor and sailed through. I heard it crash back against the wall as I skidded on the linoleum floor, turned, and headed up the hall to the front of the building.
The building had stretched since Andrew and I had first walked its length that morning. At that time the hall had seemed no more than perhaps 200 feet long. Now it stretched at least a quarter of a mile, perhaps more. As I ran, I calculated. Let’s see, I run a nine minute mile, that means it’ll take me more than two minutes to get to the end, and since they’re no more than fifteen seconds behind me, that means I’m going to die and I never told Andrew I loved him. And that, as I ran, seemed to be my only regret.
I heard the door of the stairwell slam open while I was still in the open hall. I heard the szthwiz, then felt a burn on the surface of my upper arm, a pull on the sleeve of my t-shirt, then the THWACK, and a puff of plaster burst out of the wall ahead of me. Then I was around the corner, out of the line of fire, and the front door was in sight. I didn’t even slow, but crashed into the cross-bar and ran straight into the arms of a startled San Francisco policeman just as I had run into the arms of an equally startled playground supervisor so many years before.
“Stop! What? Who?”
“Behind me,” I gasped. “Gun.”
The policemen pushed me to the left, behind a pillar, where the brick walls formed a small corner. Another policeman crouched behind the pillar on the right.
He trained his gun on me. “Stay there!” he hissed. “Don’t move.”
I nodded as my mind cried, Safe Place! and I shrank down into it. I stared at the door. It was closing slowly, swinging shut ponderously. I could hear footsteps pounding up the hall, growing louder.
“How many?” the policeman near me whispered.
“At least two,” I gasped.
“Two,” he said into the microphone on his shoulder and simultaneously to his partner just as the door crashed open and Beer Belly ran out followed closely by Short Blond.
“Stop!” both policemen screamed, guns leveled at the pair. “Police!”
Beer Belly skidded to a stop and Short Blond slammed into his back. They both almost went down in a heap, and at the look of shock on their faces, I could feel an hysterical giggle welling up.
“Drop ‘em!” screamed the cop near me. Beer Belly and Short Blond flung the guns away as if the policemen’s cries had sent a flash of fire through them.
“On your knees! On your knees!” screamed the other officer. They dropped so quickly that they and the guns reached the ground at nearly the same time. “Hands on your head! Interlace your fingers! Cross your feet at the ankles! Do it!”
One of the policemen stood in front of them, his gun held straight out in front of him in both hands. His partner moved up cautiously and began to pat them down. I looked up and saw the door swinging closed again. I pushed away from my corner and ran on wobbly legs, and slipped through the door just before it would have closed and locked.
“Hold it!” screamed the policeman with the gun. “Stay where you are!”
“Fourth floor,” I panted. “Front. There’s a man hurt, and one of them is still up there.”
“Get back here!”
“No,” I threw back over my shoulder as I let the door click into place and ran back toward the stairs.
CHAPTER 13
My hair had come loose from the braid in my flight down the stairs, and now, climbing back up, it kept falling in my face and getting in my eyes. I tried to twist and fling it back, but I had nothing to hold it there and it kept slipping forward again. I reached for the rubber band holding what was left of the braid and noticed for the first time the blood on my left hand. Small drops of red splattered across the steps near my feet. And then I noticed that my hand was beginning to pulse like an infected tooth. When the bullet hit the wood banister it had sent splinters slashing across my hand, some cutting it, some becoming lodged in the muscle. I looked at it dripping blood, figured there was nothing I could do, and so tried to ignore it.
When I reached the fourth floor, I stood on the landing in the light from the security lamp, listening at the door, breathing throug
h my mouth, then eased open the door a crack.
The hall was empty and silent. The door of J.P.’s laboratory was wide open, and a flood of light lit the end of the hall. The echo of a voice floated down the hall, but the words were indecipherable. But if there was one voice, I figured that it had to mean two people were alive. It had to mean that. I edged out the door and skimmed along the surface of the wall, bumping over a fire extinguisher and a drinking fountain, this time glad of the shadows and the darkness, feeling now a part of that dark substance that I had feared before.
“A minor set-back, my lad. Just a minor setback,” J.P. was saying as I crept close to the lab. “Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Demming are quite good at what they do. They’ll be back in just a few moments to confirm that they have the book and that your little friend, Melanie did you say her name was? That Melanie is dead and gone.”
“J.P.” The voice was weak, ragged, but it was Andrew’s. I closed my eyes for a moment and sent a prayer of thanks heavenward.
“The audacity of the girl. Calling me--J.P. Harrison--a son of a bitch!” He laughed. “Spunky. I can see why you liked her.”
“J.P. If you hurt her.”
I shivered at the sound of his voice. As low as it was, as difficult as it was for him to speak, if I had been J.P., I would have run at the sound of those words and not looked back.
J.P., it seemed, did not hear well. “My boy, my boy. Please. Save what little energy you have left. The deed is done. You know she didn’t have a chance against those two, just as you don’t with me. I hold all the cards…” he paused and giggled, “as well as the gun. Hah!”
“No,” Andrew whispered. “No. She’s not dead. I would know.”
I crept closer to the door until I could just see around the corner. J.P. stood with his back to me. A large man, bordering on fat, he still carried his weight well. I had always sort of liked the way he looked in the photos and talk shows I had seen, because though he looked the part of an academician, it was a likable, harmless, fun-loving, one-of-the-regular-guys academician. But looking at him now, looking from his red suspenders and expensively casual clothes to his prematurely white, curling hair that he wore rather too long, it was clear that he worked a little too hard to cultivate that image.
I bet the s.o.b. plays Kris Kringle at the country club every year.
“No, I’m quite sure she must be dead by now. I heard at least two gunshots, and believe me, Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Demming don’t miss too often. They didn’t miss you, did they?”
“She’s not dead.”
I shifted so that I could just see the corner of the island counter past J.P., but I still couldn’t see Andrew. From the sound of his voice he was somewhere behind that counter.
J.P. rocked back on his heels and waved his arm out. In his hand was a revolver. “Now, don’t argue with me,” he said.
While carefully watching his movements, I slipped just around the door jamb into the room and moved to the left around behind J.P. Andrew’s arm came into view. From what I could see, he sat on the floor, leaning back against the drawers under the counter against the far wall.
“The girl is history by now. But don’t worry. When Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Demming get back, they’ll arrange for you two to see each other again, real soon.” He looked at his watch. “I don’t know what’s keeping them.”
He started to turn toward the door, pivoting with his back to me. I had no time to think, just to move, to leap for the island counter, my heart beating in my throat, sure that he would see me, there was no way I could make it, he would hear me, but he merely turned and craned his neck out the door as I slipped down on the floor and pressed back against the drawers under the counter, out of his line of sight.
“Your boys not back? Trouble J.P?” Instead of from around the end of the counter, I could hear Andrew’s voice coming from my left. I’d forgotten the pass-throughs under the island counter. Designed for storage, they also formed tunnels to the other side. I began to inch toward the one nearest me.
“No trouble,” J.P. said heartily. “After all, they’ll have to clean up the mess after they take care of your little girlfriend.”
I eased back into the space, carefully lifting a cardboard box of petri dishes to one side, wincing and nearly groaning out loud as the fingers on my wounded hand tried to work.
“That is what she thought she was, wasn’t it? Thought she was your girlfriend?”
I lifted another box—thankfully empty—and set it next to the box of petri dishes.
“Isn’t that how you always do it Andy? Find these little women and just wink in their direction and they just do anything old thing for you?”
I shifted forward and Andrew’s hand, lying palm up on the floor, came into view. I leaned until I could just see his face. He was looking up toward J.P. with such a look of hatred and pain that it made me shiver. The side of his face toward me was red and swollen where they had hit him. A cut on his lip had bled down onto the brown shirt. Another cut on the left side of his forehead had turned his sideburn red.
“Just do any little thing at all? In fact, they’d just die for you, wouldn’t they?” He giggled again. “Get it? Die for you?”
Andrew’s eyes closed and he turned away. He opened them again and looked straight into my eyes and I shivered again. He blinked, blinked again and shook his head.
I placed my finger to my lips.
He started to move toward me, to say something, but restrained himself with an effort that made him shudder.
“Can’t take the truth, huh Andy?”
Andrew didn’t take his eyes from me. He shifted around, turning his head further away from J.P. and just stared at me. His lips curved upward in the slightest smile. Thank god, his lips said.
I smiled.
“I said, can’t take the truth?”
Andrew ignored him.
“You listen to me.”
“I’m tired of you,” he said. He didn’t take his eyes from me.
I made a circle with my thumb and forefinger and mimed a badge on my chest and then pointed downstairs. Police, I mouthed.
“Where are they?” J.P.’s voice was getting higher pitched. “They should have been back by now.”
Andrew ignored him.
“What are you doing? What are you looking at?” Andrew’s eyes dropped to the floor and I backed quickly into the pass-through.
“You getting paranoid J.P.?”
“Shut-up. Just shut-up. This is all your fault. You had to come up here, butt into my life. Try to ruin everything.” I could hear him walking up and down, up and down. “Everything is perfect. Everything. I have friends. Important friends. I have the clone; I have that company eating out of my hand. They think I’m god, you know that? They treat me like royalty. Then you’ve got to come up here and try to screw it up. Screw it up!” His voice rose in volume. “Where are they?”
“J.P.,” said Andrew, “give it up.”
“No,” he shouted. “No! I won’t give it up. I won’t let you win! You. You’ve always had everything you’ve ever wanted. Everything handed to you--looks and brains and women falling all over you. You’re not going to beat me this time.”
A new note in his voice, an hysterical, desperate note, sent a chill over my skin. I pushed backward under the counter, eased out the other side, and began to frantically look around for a weapon of some kind.
“I don’t think I’ll wait for Mr. Demming any longer.” J.P. was trying for his old tone of nonchalance, but his voice had risen to such a high pitch that it broke on the last word.
I reached up, twisting my arm up and over the edge of the counter. My fingers closed on a small glass flask and I lifted it down and began to awkwardly crawl toward the front of the room, my injured hand leaving a smear of blood.
“No, I don’t think I’ll wait for Mr. Sheldon, or Mr. Demming. I think I’ll just take care of this little matter myself.”
I rose. J.P. stood at the corner of the counter, the gun pointing
at Andrew. I could see his finger begin to tighten. I hurled the small flask across the room. It exploded with a satisfying crash into a shelf of glassware on the opposite wall.
J.P. turned toward the crash, swinging the gun away from Andrew. I picked up a large, gooseneck flask and swung it at the back of J.P.’s head.
Somehow J.P. must have seen or heard something, because he swung his arm up at the last second and the flask shattered on his elbow. He turned on me. His face was scarlet, his eyes puffed to slits, sweat dripped down the sides of his face. “You bitch!” he screamed and brought the gun around. I tried to leap forward around the counter to grab the gun before he could aim it at me, but that only worked in movies. I came to a trembling halt as the gun stopped dead, aimed at my stomach.
J.P. grinned and his hand tightened. “Bye-bye,” he whispered and the trigger moved back a fraction.
“No!”
We both jerked. Andrew stood on the other side of the counter, leaning heavily against it. The flow of blood from the cuts on his lip and face had dripped down leaving a long stain of dark red on the light brown flannel of his shirt. I took an involuntary step forward. J.P. jerked and his finger tightened on the trigger again. I froze, staring at the dark hole at the end of the barrel.
“J.P., no,” Andrew gasped. “Don’t. You want me, not her. Let her go.”
J.P. backed toward the open door. He began to shake his head and the white curls surrounding his red face swayed back and forth until they stuck in the sweat dripping down his cheeks. “I don’t think so.”
Andrew took an unsteady step forward and the gun swung from me to Andrew. “Yes. Think, J.P. You can kill me and get away with it. I’m a madman who blew up my own lab. I came up here for revenge. You shot me in self-defense. But if you kill her, you’ll never get away with it. She’s an innocent.” He took another step. “Let her go.”
J.P. waved the gun. “Stop! Right there.” He swung the gun back at me. “Stop or I kill her now.”