by Lynn Bohart
The grinding noise of the chain grated on her nerves like the dull clanging sound of a pipe organ out of tune. When Andrew suddenly laughed behind her, she whipped around with a gasp.
“Too bad, Lee. You were almost home-free.”
Lee hardly recognized her fellow administrator anymore. He looked like some misshapen monster. His left eye was swollen shut and had turned an ugly eggplant color. Blood oozed from the corner of his eye and ran down his cheek, and his upper lip was swollen. Spittle glistened as he spoke, and his right arm was bent at his waist as he tried to cradle his broken wrist. But the gun was firmly seated in his left hand and pointed directly at her.
“You killed Maddox,” he said matter-of-factly. “No great loss. All I have to do is create a new scenario.” He attempted a lopsided smile. “Lee Vanderhaven went crazy and attacked both of us. I had to kill her. I had no choice.”
“No one’s going to believe that.”
“Maybe not. But I’ll think of something. I’m better at this than you think, Lee. Let’s go,” he gestured with a flick of his wrist.
Her feet didn’t move. She couldn’t go with him. It wasn’t in her nature. She glanced behind her, wondering if she could make it to the door.
“Don’t even think about it,” he snarled.
Andrew had moved up behind her and was looking past her at the drag chain with a kind of reverence.
“This place is amazing,” he whispered. “So efficient. The hospital ought to work this well.”
“If it doesn’t, it’s your fault,” Lee shot at him. “You’re in charge of Operations.”
He turned to look at her with his good eye.
“You think I have any influence over anything? Martha makes all the decisions. It’s Martha this, and Martha that,” he sneered. “She just wants someone to take the heat so she doesn’t have to. The doctors hate her, you know. There are rumblings of a vote of no confidence. That would surprise her,” he chortled. “The great and mighty Martha Jackson.”
He took a step to the right and gazed again at the bark pile and chain. His expression made her skin crawl; she could see he was devising some sort of plan. Lee took a step forward so that she was further in his blind spot. It was time to take a chance. She suddenly darted toward him, and then around his back. He jerked awkwardly trying to follow her, swinging the gun to the left. But by the time he’d made a full circle, she had made a run for the door.
She skidded around the crane just as a bullet ricocheted off the bucket. She flinched, but kept running. She circled around the end of the guard rail and bounded up the few steps that led to the door. The door was locked. She banged on it frantically, and Andrew’s cruel laughter rang out behind her.
“Too bad, Lee. Caught like a mouse in a trap!”
A bullet slammed into the wall right next to her, sending cement chips flying. She ducked and jumped off the steps and tried the metal roll-up door. Locked!
“Give up, Lee. I’ll make it quick and easy,” he shouted.
Lee turned, breathing hard. There was no exit other than past Andrew, who now stood on the far side of the guard rail. Thank God he was right-handed. Between his broken wrist and bad eye, she’d been lucky. But he was beginning to move along the guard rail, albeit slowly. If he got too much closer, her luck would run out.
She turned to her left and spied a pipe ladder mounted into the cement wall. It led to the rake carriage above. While Andrew negotiated his way around the chain, she ran for the ladder and began to climb, hand over hand. The steel rods were cold to the touch, but she made it to the top and stepped onto the carriage before Andrew could stop her.
“That won’t make a difference, Lee,” he called from below. “Bullets can still reach up there. Wanna see?”
He raised the gun and fired. The bullet came frighteningly close to where Lee stood, forcing her to step back. Her foot slipped over the edge and she grabbed the railing to catch herself. The entire rake carriage shook precariously. With caution, she stepped further onto it, trying to find a way to hide from Andrew. But there were breaks in the planks, and he was almost directly below her now. A lucky shot could kill just as easily as a well-placed one. She had to figure something out.
She stepped to the far side of the platform and carefully moved forward to where the planks were solid and blocked her from view. Just then, a bullet smashed through a floor plank and nicked her earlobe, sending a shock wave through her entire body. She ducked down and grabbed her right ear.
Damn! Her ear burned with pain, and blood flowed freely down her neck into her blouse. She had no way to stop the flow other than to put pressure on the injury, so she backed up against the crane and squatted down. She took off her vest, wadded it up, and pressed it against her neck and ear.
“C’mon, Lee. I hit you, didn’t I?”
She waited him out. If she didn’t move, maybe he wouldn’t know exactly where she was. But then she glanced down and realized there was a gap between the carriage and the crane. She could see him. He had moved to the far end of the crane and was looking up at the carriage, trying to find her. He riveted his head one way and then the other, scanning the platform with his good eye.
It was eerie watching him. He shuffled around like a zombie, unsteady on his feet because he couldn’t see well. Suddenly, he saw her and lurched forward, bringing up the gun. But he didn’t see the base of the crane, and his right foot caught underneath it, throwing him to the ground. The gun flew out of his hand, landing on the floor and sliding under the guard rail, towards the chain. It stopped only a few inches from where the drag chain disappeared into the small opening in the floor.
Lee cursed. Why couldn’t it have just gone in? When Andrew realized the gun had stopped just in time, he hooted.
“Oooooh, too bad, Lee. Did you see that? I almost lost it. But fate has saved me once again,” he cackled.
He stumbled to his feet and scuttled over, crablike, to where the gun lay. He looked up to where Lee watched him, displaying a leering grin. When he turned back, he reached out with his good hand, but miscalculated the distance and bumped the butt of the gun before he could grab it. The gun tipped over the edge and into the hole.
Andrew froze, empty fingers outstretched. A full five seconds passed. Then, he threw back his head and howled. The desperation in that cry chilled Lee to the bone. She leaned back against the crane, shivering.
A moment later, she heard something that stopped her heart. Andrew was climbing the ladder. She shoved herself up, still putting pressure on her ear. The top of Andrew’s head appeared at the far end of the carriage as he struggled up the ladder using only one hand. Lee’s heart began to race.
She looked around again, wondering how the hell she could get off this thing. Even though the crane extended to the floor, there wasn’t any way to climb down. But underneath the carriage, the two wheel tracks ran the length of the building, one on each side of the crane. The rake carriage was attached to them by steel wheels. One of the beams was about ten feet to Lee’s right − in between her and Andrew. Without a second thought, she dropped the vest, ripped off her shoes and socks, and ran.
She had just thrown a leg over the railing of the platform above the cross beam, when the rake carriage shook. She glanced to her right. Andrew was standing at the end of it. She was out of time. She swung the other leg over and started to climb down.
“Where are you going this time, Lee?”
Lee looked over at him. He reached behind him, and Lee panicked. Did he have a second gun? No. Instead, he brought forward the ball peen hammer. His eyes never left her face as he began to move towards her. She had to move, too, and fast.
The beam ran to the back wall where it intersected with the rest of the structure supporting the platform. If she was lucky, she might be able to slide down one of the support beams to the floor. It would be risky, and she might break something in the process, but she had no choice.
She climbed off the railing and onto a small ledge, grabbing onto a
steel pipe for balance. She placed her left foot forward onto the beam and tested it. It was solid and nearly the same width as a competition balance beam. The balance beam had been her best sport, but the memory of the accident flashed into her mind, and she momentarily panicked. No, not this time, she stopped herself. There was no room for doubt right now. She shut it out.
She took a couple of tentative steps forward, focusing on the beam and allowing a familiar feeling of confidence to take over.
“You won’t make it, you know,” he said quietly from behind her. “You’ll fall. You have to. It’s too narrow, too slippery.”
She paused. He could be right. Her heart was pounding, and one misstep would send her into the chain below. A glance past her toes made her stomach turn. The two-foot wide chain lumbered relentlessly across the floor to cascade into the black hole, disappearing to depths unknown. It would rip and tear her flesh apart, crushing bone and marrow.
She lifted her chin and took a deep breath. She’d be damned if she would die that way. She’d once bled through her socks just to prove a point. She wouldn’t give up. She would focus on the back wall, hold her arms out to her side, and keep going.
With a grace that belied the situation, she placed one foot in front of the other, toes reaching out for the beam, and began to move again. All thoughts of the noisy, sawdust filled lumber mill faded away, and she was in the middle of a competition again. She could almost hear the hushed voices of the spectators around her and the voice of her coach in training, “Don’t look down, Lee. The floor isn’t going anywhere, so you don’t need to check on it.”
Time slowed, and she was alone with the beam. She was almost a third of the way across when she heard Andrew whisper an expletive. Then something slammed into her right shoulder.
She flinched to the left as the ball peen hammer spun end over end to the back wall. A cry escaped her lips, and she started to fall, the world swirling around her. But years of training kicked in, and she immediately twisted her upper torso sharply to the right and grabbed the beam with both hands as she came down. She swung under the beam, her feet coming up on the other side. Her fingers looped around the lip of the track, allowing her to anchor herself so that she could jackknife back up. In an instant, she was laying across the beam on her stomach. A moment later, she’d swung her left leg up and over, and she was straddling it. The cold steel dug into her inner thighs, and her shoulder ached, but for the moment, she was secure.
She looked up at Andrew, her breathing coming in deep gulps. He glared at her, clearly unhinged. She had bested him once again. It took him only a moment to make a decision.
He grabbed the railing and hoisted himself over it, wincing when he bumped his wrist. He lowered himself awkwardly onto the small ledge that ran the width of the carriage, his face red with the strain. Without a word, he held onto the railing and lifted his foot and slammed it down onto the beam. The beam shook, and Lee was forced to lean forward and wrap her arms around it, struggling to keep her balance.
This seemed to please Andrew, so he did it again, harder.
“What’s the matter, Lee? Having trouble holding on?”
He sniggered as he did it again and again. She was forced to hug the beam in order not to slide sideways, and he began to laugh.
“Maybe one more time. What d’you think? Send you into the jaws of death below.”
As Lee hugged the beam, she glanced down. The chain and the small opening in the floor were right below her. She tightened her grip and her legs circling the beam. The unforgiving steel cut into her flesh.
“Enough!” Andrew screamed. “I’m done with you. This ends now!”
Lee lifted her head to watch him. Andrew turned and extended his good hand to the pipe Lee had used for balance. Once he was secured, he turned back to her, a fierce look of determination on his swollen features. He slowly lifted his knee chest high, ready to bring his foot down full force.
This would be it. She couldn’t withstand that much of a jolt. She turned away as tears slipped from the corners of her eyes. It seemed she would die in this horrible place after all. She would never see Amy again. She would never hear Patrick laugh again. This awful little man, who had killed Diane, would kill her. And for what? She would never even know.
That’s when a familiar sound rose above the clanging of the chain. Her head came up with a jerk.
It was the distant “keer” of a hawk. But how?
“Goodbye, Lee,” Andrew screamed.
Andrew yanked his knee up as high as it would go and then slammed it down − just as something swooped in front of his face. That’s all it took. Just half a second.
Andrew flinched.
Then his foot missed the beam.
His hand was pulled off the pipe behind him, and with a sickening scream, he fell away from the carriage. His head hit the ledge hard, as the fleeting shadow of a bird disappeared into the rafters.
Andrew landed on his back, crossways on the chain, right in between the guard rail. Blood gushed from his mouth. He lay still, too stunned, or too broken to move. His eyes were open, but they stared lifelessly at the ceiling. Lee thought he was dead, until she saw his fingers move.
He tried weakly to roll to one side, but one of the lugs on the chain caught suddenly on his jacket and began to drag him head first towards the opening in the floor. Lee gasped, feeling her stomach lurch. Andrew’s legs twitched and his hands fluttered. He knew what was happening, but he couldn’t move. His head had hit the ledge hard enough to cause real damage, and his back was likely broken. He was clearly disoriented and in pain, and seemed to have trouble getting air into his lungs.
But the chain didn’t care. It continued to move him inch by inch, carrying him toward the hole like a passenger on a train. Lee remembered what Masterson had said; the hole was too small. A person wouldn’t fit through it. It would rip Andrew apart.
“Get out of your jacket,” Lee whispered, horrified. “Please…get out of your jacket!”
But it was too late. He couldn’t hear her, and he was a mere inches from that black well of death. The pounding of the chain drowned out all other sounds, as Andrew seemed to surrender to his fate. The muscles in his face relaxed, and he looked directly up at Lee. As they made eye contact, for a brief moment, he looked like the man she’d once known.
Two seconds later, his left shoulder reached the opening in the floor, and Lee shut her eyes, sobbing uncontrollably. She turned away and tried to cover her ears. But she couldn’t block the sounds as the chain began to feast on its victim. The air filled with wave after wave of Andrew’s terrifying screams, until the chain was satiated, and the screams suddenly stopped.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Lee remained where she was, still clinging to the top of the beam. At some point her stomach had emptied the popcorn she’d shared with Marion earlier to create a nice starburst pattern in the sawdust below. Now that her stomach was quiet, Lee rested her cheek against the cold steel, arms wrapped tightly around its hard surface. Quiet sobs racked her body, and tears rolled down her face to form little puddles on the steel surface. The thought of Bud Maddox surfaced briefly. He was dead, with a picaroon embedded in his back. Andrew was dead, too. The chain had never stopped. It had never even slowed down. The events of the last hour stunned Lee. Life wasn’t supposed to be like this. Friends weren’t supposed to be murdered, and people you knew weren’t supposed to be the murderers.
The clanging of the chain began to numb her brain, and her thoughts drifted. Images surfaced. First hazy, then so clear they seemed real. She was on the farm where Lee and Patrick had spent the summer when she was ten. Patrick and a friend were tossing stones at an overturned bucket next to the old red barn. Lee stood behind them, laughing, pressing her legs together to control the urge to pee. Finally, she warned the boys to stay away and ran behind the barn where she pulled down her pants and squatted in the brown grass. Laughter rang out behind her, and one of the boys yelled, “God, look at the glare off that th
ing.” Lee screamed and pulled up her pants too soon, wetting the denim. The boys laughed harder, and she ran away in tears to climb an old oak tree behind the house hoping to hide. Later, Patrick sauntered across the yard calling her name, apologizing. Lee squeezed her eyes shut as if that would make her invisible, but Patrick’s voice kept getting closer. Finally, she knew he stood in the grass just below her, but she kept her eyes closed, willing him to go away.
“Lee, I can see you.”
He sounded so close, yet so far away. Like a dream. She opened one eye to look down into that handsome face, pinched with genuine concern at the foot of the tree. Then she closed it again.
“Lee, are you all right?”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of replying. She’d wait until he was gone, and then go inside to change out of her wet jeans.
“Lee!”
Lee’s eyes fluttered open. Remarkably, Patrick stood below her in the sawdust, just as he had so many years before.
“Are you okay?” he asked again, a steely edge of concern in his voice.
Her eyes had trouble focusing, but when she looked again, Patrick really was there. Those days on the farm were gone.
“I’m not sure.” Her husky voice wasn’t much above a whisper. “I don’t think I can get down.”
“I’m coming up,” he yelled.
It seemed like an eternity, but finally the carriage rattled.
“Lee, I’m here. I’ll get you off. Hold on.”
She tilted her head up, resting her chin on the beam. Patrick had found a thick rope somewhere and was climbing over the railing. He lowered himself onto the beam and then leaned back against the carriage. He slipped the rope off his shoulder and tied one end securely around the beam, making several knots. Then he took the other end and tied it into a small loop, yanking on it several times to test it. Finally, he wrapped his legs around the beam, threw the loose rope around his neck and slowly began to inch forward. It took Patrick only a minute or two to come within reach.