Lindsay suddenly had another idea. Two ideas. She felt good. She took the tank cover off the toilet, carried it into the office, and stood it up against the end of the desk. She took the Frank N. Furter clothes from the drawer and laid them on the end of the coffee table. She picked up the toilet tank lid and, with as controlled a motion as she could manage in the handcuffs, brought it down on the cloth covered end of the table.
The sound of the breaking glass was muffled, but it still seemed loud to her ears. She stopped a moment and listened, hearing only the whooshing sounds from the other room. What's he doing? This is a glass factory. He's firing up the furnace. Oh, damn. Oh, damn. Please let me get out of this.
Lindsay moved quickly. She set the tank lid down by the couch and picked up a shard of glass with the camisole-it was a long piece with razor-sharp edges and a needle point. She used it to cut out three strips of leather from the sofa. She wound the largest around the broader end of the glass several times and tied it securely with the other two strips, forming a handle. I'm not an archaeologist for nothing, she said to herself, giving her glass knife a quick examination. It looked dangerous.
She was implementing two ideas. It felt good. The squirt gun was a real long shot, but the knife might work. She was about an inch taller than Chris and in good shape. He was physically fit and would be a lot stronger. That's the advantage of testosterone, but he wasn't expecting her to mount a defense. She had toyed with the idea of writing a coded letter with the first words of each sentence making a secret message, but unless puzzle master Will Shortz got a look at the letter, no one would ever figure it out. No, she wasn't going to die, and she certainly wasn't going to climb into the furnace. He probably planned to shoot her and burn her body. She had to concentrate on breathing so she could keep her wits about her.
Lindsay looked around the room again. Was there anything else she could use to her advantage? The doors needed to be blocked. The door leading to the furnace room opened inward and so did the storage-room door, but the one they had entered when they arrived opened away from the office.
Lindsay shoved the costume fabric into the cracks under the doors to the furnace room and storage room to try to jam them. She shoved the desk across the floor and against the storage-room door. It was not heavy enough to keep Chris out, but it and the clothes acting as a wedge would slow him down and maybe give her a chance to strike. She dragged the glass-topped table over to the front door, stood it on end, and leaned it against the door. Maybe when he opened the door, the table would fall on him and the sharp edges of the broken glass would injure him enough to stop him.
The couch was heavy. She pushed it across in front of the furnace-room door. She stood by the end of the sofa and held her knife tight in her grasp, listening to the swooshing sounds of the furnace.
Chapter 27
LINDSAY HEARD CHRIS'S footsteps coming toward the room. She held her breath. He put his key in the lock and pushed on the door.
"What?" she heard him say. "Cute, Lindsay, but this just delays things. I can wait you out."
He pushed. The sofa moved. Lindsay shoved back. She held the glass knife firmly in her hand. Stick your fingers in, she thought. He didn't. Instead, she heard him walk away. She listened and thought she heard him behind the wall where the couch had stood. That would mean he's going into the storage room, she thought. He could probably push that door and get through, and he could certainly get through the front door unless a miracle happened and the glass table fell on him.
She turned the knob. He hadn't locked the furnace-room door after trying it. Accident or trap? She moved the sofa and quickly pulled out the fabric jamming the door. She heard the storage-room door rattle. She slipped into the furnace room. She couldn't lock the door behind her, they all needed keys to lock and unlock. Damn.
The room with the glass furnace was huge. On the opposite wall she could see flames through the door of the furnace. Beside the furnace sat a huge sink. On another wall was a fume hood, and beside it was an emergency shower. She ran to the fume hood, turned it on, and looked in the cabinet underneath. Empty, except for tubes of calcium gluconate gel, used to treat skin exposed to hydrofluoric acid, the acid used to etch glass. Her plan might yet succeed. She grabbed one of the tubes and threw it into the emergency shower, where it landed against the wall just as she heard him coming.
"There you are," he said, "I thought I could flush you out." He had the gun at his side. She had put the knife in her jacket pocket and hoped it didn't show. She held the squirt gun. "I see you found my squirt gun." He grinned. "I guess you have to make do." She leveled the gun at him. "Have we gone a little nuts?" He raised his hands as if to surrender. "If it makes you feel better, I'll play."
Lindsay watched his gun hand, then looked him in the eye, wondering which would tell her when he was about to shoot.
"I have a riddle I would like you to consider," she said.
"Sure. Shoot. Perhaps I shouldn't have said that." He grinned again.
Lindsay squirted the hot water on his neck and chest, watching a large dark spot appear on his navy shirt. He looked at it briefly and smiled. "Feel better?"
"The riddle is, what chemical do geologists, palynologists, and glass etchers all use that is a local anesthetic?" He looked puzzled for a moment, noticed the fume hood fan running, and wrinkled his brow. Lindsay gestured her head toward the shower where the gel lay. His eyes widened. "You don't have much time," she said. "If you shoot me, there will be no one to get help."
She saw his gun hand move, and she jumped aside just as he shot. He screamed as he ran to the shower and pulled the chain. He snatched the gel off the floor and pulled off his shirt. Lindsay ran to the storage room, closing the door behind her. The room was stacked, filled up high with boxes. She could still hear him screaming as she ran to the loading dock door and pulled on it. It was locked. Every thing was locked. Chris stopped screaming. She knocked over a huge row of boxes in front of the two interior doors and hid behind another stack of boxes, holding the knife tightly in both hands, barely breathing.
She heard him trying to open the door. "That was good," he yelled through the crack in the door. "I had the gel rubbed on my chest before I remembered that I'm out of hydrofluoric acid. You fooled me as well as scaring me shitless. Now let's stop all this and get it over with."
She said nothing. She heard the boxes sliding as he pushed his way in. She listened to his footsteps, glad she was wearing running shoes.
"This is silly," he said. "Just come out. This must be as nerve-wracking for you as it is for me."
He was getting close, but she was afraid to move. If he saw her, he'd just shoot and get it over with, as he put it, and forget about her writing the incriminating letter. She crouched. From her vantage point, she could see the keys he had left hanging in the lock of the office door when he had tried to open it before. She needed those keys to get out. If she had not blocked the way, she could make a dash, grab the keys, and run into the office and out the door. She might make it. He might not be a good shot. But the door was blocked, and he would have a clear shot if she tried to go that way. He would be coming around her row of boxes in a moment, so Lindsay eased herself around another row, away from the keys. Damn.
The room was getting hot, from the furnace, she supposed. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her back and stung her underarms. Fear made her nauseated. She stayed still. He was coming down the row where she had been. He wasn't saying anything now. He was just going to hunt until he found her. She held on to her knife. The keys were out of her range of vision now. Desperately, she tried to think of a plan, but none came to her. She waited. It occurred to her that if she could find something to throw, maybe she could misdirect him. There was nothing she could see on the floor that she could use. It probably only worked in the movies anyway.
There was only one row of boxes between him and her and no place else for Lindsay to go. She acted. She shoved the stack of boxes, knocking him off balance. H
e fired the gun as she shoved the knife into his lower back. He screamed and dropped the gun, but she couldn't see where it fell. Chris staggered, looking for the gun and gripping the leather-wrapped knife handle sticking out of his back with his left hand. Lindsay ran for the door, grabbed the keys, and ran for the only open door, which led into the furnace room. There was an ear-shattering bang, and a bullet whizzed past her arm and sent chips of concrete flying from the block wall. She didn't stop. She ran into the office and tried to unlock the door into the reception area. She tried one key after another. Damn, there were too many of them.
"Stop. Stop, or I'll shoot." Chris's voice sounded desperate.
She turned her head and saw him holding the gun on her. She must have missed everything vital, but he didn't look good. He was sweating, breathing heavily, and he was in pain. Lindsay had no doubt he would behave like any wounded animal. Gone were the talking and any feelings of guilt. There was only the anger that comes with pain and frustration. The light switch was next to her hand. She turned off the light and dove behind the desk as he fired the gun three times. She stumbled on something on the floor and he turned and fired twice more into the desk. That was six bullets, or was it seven? She had no idea how many bullets the gun held. She felt along the floor. It was the toilet tank lid she had tripped over. She eased her fingers around it awkwardly, trying not to jangle the handcuffs against it. As careful as she tried to be, the cuffs clinked against the lid. She jumped out of the way as another shot was fired in her direction. She heard Chris walking toward the door. He was going for the light. She grabbed the tank lid and swung it at the sound. It connected with some part of his body. He yelled and she heard the gun clatter to the floor. She swung again. She heard him drop.
Holding the lid, Lindsay eased over to the wall and slid along it until she came to the door. She flipped on the light switch. Chris lay on the floor, blood trickling from a gash on the side of his face. She looked for the gun on the floor, but it wasn't in sight. It apparently had slid under the desk or the sofa.
The keys were still in the door and she began trying them again, watching Chris closely. He groaned and moved slightly. Give it up, she told him silently.
Finally, a key turned in the lock. She opened the door, closed and locked it behind her, and flew out the front door, colliding with Sinjin.
"Lindsay, are you all right?" He looked at the handcuffs. "What in the hell is going on? We heard shots from the road."
"Oh, Sinjin." She leaned against his chest. "I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life."
"Where's Chris?" Will Patterson called, coming from the parking lot.
"He's in the office. I knocked him out." Will started for the door. "Be careful, he has a gun and has already killed three people. He's pretty desperate. I heard the gun fall, but he may have come to and found it."
"I'll be careful."
Lindsay turned back to Sinjin. "How did you find me?"
"Sally and I brought lunch back to her office. She had an old Red and Black on her desk with an article in it about Gloria Rankin being hit by the bus. Gloria's picture was in it, and I recognized her from the picture on the mantel in the Pryors' house-the one you said Kerwin was in. Gloria Rankin was with Chris in that picture. Apparently, she had been his girlfriend. It kind of worried me. Then we found out no one knew where you were. Will called your office while we were there. He said that you called him asking about Gloria Rankin and were supposed to come over, but you never showed up. I asked Will about Chris and Gloria. He said he didn't know about them, but he said Chris had been in his office and left right after you called. We put it all together and both got worried. Chris wasn't at his shop and the clerk didn't know where he was. Will knew about this factory. It was his idea to come here."
"I'm glad you did."
The sound of a gunshot cracked through the air and Lindsay ducked. "Oh, God, if he shot Will, he'll be coming out here with a gun and he'll kill us. We've got to get help."
"It's Will," said Sinjin, pointing as the private detective emerged from the door.
"He found his gun," Will said, putting his own back in his shoulder holster. "We called the police from the car phone on the way over. They'll be here any minute."
"Chris?" asked Lindsay.
Will shook his head.
Lindsay felt sorry for Chris's parents. Two children dead.
Lindsay couldn't get out of the handcuffs until the police came. She told them her story. They had a hard time understanding exactly what Chris did to his sister and why, but they had no trouble with the fortune in antiquities stored in his glassworks, among which were the Kentucky artifacts. They accepted Will's explanation that he had shot Chris in self-defense. Apparently, the evidence bore his story out, but Lindsay couldn't help but wonder.
Sinjin took Lindsay home, and she went to bed. "Call Dad," she told him. "Explain everything to him about the skeleton, Papaw, Billy, the whole thing. Let him handle Anne, Steven, and everybody else."
"Sure. Get some sleep, baby sister."
When Lindsay awoke, Sinjin was packing. "The fire in California is worse. I have to go."
"But I just woke up, I was hoping ... this is too soon."
"I'll be back," he told her. "I've got to fly out there. Sally is taking me to the airport. I hope you don't mind. She's driving my Jeep back here."
"So, you'll be back as soon as the fire's out?"
"Yes, and I'm taking you out on the town when I get back. And this time we're going to have fun, and nobody's going to die."
Lindsay grinned. "You and Sally are getting along pretty well, huh?"
He smiled back. "Not bad." He stopped packing and took her by the shoulders. "I hate to leave you here. You need a keeper. I swear, Lindsay, your life is far more perilous than mine."
"I know it must seem that way."
"Seem nothing, it is. Do you want me to enumerate the close calls you've had just since I've been here?"
"But that's only since you've been here. It's not like that all the time."
"I'm glad to hear it. I don't want anything to happen to you, baby sister."
After Sinjin and Sally left for the airport, Lindsay went to her office to get the file she had been putting together for her tenure application. She took it to Mary Catherine Dellinger, an archaeology buff who had worked on several digs with Lindsay. She was also a lawyer who had taken on the university in four major cases and won all of them.
Mary Catherine's seventy-year-old hands showed mild arthritis around the knuckles, but they were sure and steady as she turned the pages in Lindsay's folder. Her nailslong, shiny, and strong, were painted a peach color that matched the suit she wore. She listened without interruption as Lindsay told her the whole story. Her white hair was in its usual French twist without a strand out of place. Lindsay didn't believe she had ever seen it any other way. Mary Catherine fixed her dark blue eyes on Lindsay and asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to write the university a really scary letter."
Mary Catherine smiled. "With this and everything else you've told me, I can scare their pants off. What would you consider a remedy?"
"My job and tenure."
"No money?"
"I'd rather have job security."
"All right then, we'll start with five million and work down to job security." She smiled, showing even white teeth.
Lindsay left Mary Catherine's downtown office and went to Will's. She half expected him not to be there, but he was, filling out some paperwork.
"Lindsay," he said, ushering her in and motioning to the red leather chair in the room filled with Shirley's ghosts. "I'm glad you came by. I wanted to thank you for solving the mystery of what happened to Shirley. It wasn't pretty, but there is a kind of peace in knowing. Irene's dropped the charges against the Ferris kid. I guess you know."
"Yes, Irene called and left a message on my machine. I need to call her back."
"There's something I want you to know. I reall
y did shoot Chris in self-defense. That's the truth."
"I thought you did."
That wasn't exactly the truth, and Will shook his head. "I know you wondered about it, and frankly, I don't know what I would have done if he hadn't had the gun ready to shoot me." "I imagine his parents are taking this very hard."
Will shrugged. "My association with them is finished."
"What are you going to do now?"
"I don't know."
Lindsay sat there, saying nothing, and for an awkward moment they stared at each other. Lindsay took a deep breath and said what was on her mind. "Don't go anywhere you can't return from."
"What a delicate way of putting it."
"You've thought about it, I'm sure. I just, well, I ..." She stopped, embarrassed, not knowing what to say exactly. "You're the person who knew Shirley best, the way she really was, not the person she showed to her parents or to anyone else. If you aren't here, she's truly gone."
"You're kind, Lindsay Chamberlain. I'll keep that in mind. Things are better. I didn't think closure was possible, but maybe it is. If I figure out how to buy that detective agency in Atlanta, can I put you on as a consultant?"
"Sure. I might be needing work if I can't get my job back." He raised his eyebrows, and Lindsay explained the situation to him.
"That's gotta be tough. They're outta their minds if they don't keep you."
"Some would say they are frequently out of their minds." She stood. "Maybe we can have dinner sometime."
"Maybe so. I like you."
It took only two days for the Dean of Arts and Sciences to summon Lindsay to his office. The dean and the university's counsel wanted her to come without her attorney. Lindsay called Mary Catherine.
"Oh, I think it will be fine," Mary Catherine assured her. "Don't you worry. What they will probably offer you is your job, the tenure you asked for, and in exchange, you don't sue. Will that suit you?"
"Yes."
"Good. You can show me the contract before you sign it, but I think things will be fine."
Dressed to Die: A Lindsay Chamberlain Novel Page 33