Flash

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  From out of nowhere, she suddenly recalled a story she had read in the papers about a man who had murdered his wife and hidden her body in a self-storage locker. It had been three years before the corpse had been discovered.

  “Get a grip, Olivia.”

  When she got out of her car, she noticed that there was only one other vehicle in the small parking lot. Either Pri-Con Self-Storage was not a thriving operation, or there were not a lot of people who wanted to move their personal possessions in and out of storage at eight-forty-five on a Monday morning.

  She surveyed the building as she walked toward a door marked Office. Every window on all four floors had been bricked up. For security purposes, she speculated. Or perhaps to create additional space for lockers inside. It was amazing how forbidding a building without windows looked.

  The small office was empty. There was an Eleanor Lancaster for Governor poster taped to the window.

  Olivia pressed a buzzer. It was a good five minutes before a thickly built man appeared. He was garbed in a pair of well-worn camouflage pants and a black T-shirt. His long gray hair was tied in a ponytail. The word Privacy was tattooed on one arm. Freedom was spelled out in large, flowery capitals on the other. He did not look pleased at the prospect of having to assist a customer.

  “Yeah?”

  Olivia decided the occasion required a certain degree of assertiveness. She drew herself up to her full height and gave him a steely smile.

  “My name is Olivia Chantry. I’m the executor for the estate of Mr. Roland Chantry, recently deceased. In the process of settling his affairs, I discovered that he maintained a locker in this facility. I’m here to examine the contents. I can, of course, provide proof of my legal authority to do so.”

  The attendant squinted at her and then shrugged. “Help yerself.” He turned to go back through the door from which he had emerged.

  “I take it you’re not real big on security around here?” Olivia called after him.

  The attendant paused. He looked at her over his shoulder, eyes slitted. “What we’re real big on around here is privacy.”

  “Privacy?”

  A demonic glint blazed in his squinty eyes. “That’s the problem with this country today, y’know. No privacy anymore. The founding fathers went to the wall to secure privacy and confidentiality for the citizens of these here United States. Guys like me fought and died in a lotta wars for the right to privacy.”

  “Yes, well…”

  “You’d think people today would have a little respect for all the blood that’s been shed to protect the constitutional right to privacy and confidentiality. But, no. Every time you turn around the govmint’s chipped away another piece of our personal privacy.”

  Olivia decided to transition from assertive to soothing-the-client mode. “I understand.”

  “Pri-Con Self-Storage guarantees absolute privacy and confidentiality to its clients. No questions asked. Long as you pay yer rent, you can store anything you damn well want in yer locker.”

  “I was simply commenting on your lack of security measures.”

  “Pri-Con don’t guarantee security.” The broad face worked furiously. “Can’t rightly do that without a coupla grenade launchers and some mortars, which, thanks to the socialist elite that’s taken over our govmint, us entrepreneur types can’t hardly get hold of, let alone set up in front of our place o’ business.”

  “I see.” Olivia cleared her throat. “Could you kindly direct me to Roland Chantry’s locker, Mr. Uh—I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Name’s Silas.” He gave her a suspicious look. “Thought you was an executor.”

  “I am.” She held up the zippered pouch. “I have Mr. Chantry’s keys and plenty of identification, but I don’t have the number of his locker. Many of his records were lost in a house fire.”

  “Huh.”

  “Perhaps you’d like to call the lawyer who handled his estate,” Olivia said smoothly. “He’ll explain everything.”

  Alarm flickered in Silas’s eyes. “Don’t want to talk to no lawyer. Got too many of ’em in this country. We got one rule here at Pri-Con. Whoever pays the rent gets to go inside the locker.”

  Olivia recognized the opening he had given her and moved briskly to seize it. “It may interest you to know that, as the executor of my uncle’s estate, I now pay the rent on Roland Chantry’s locker.”

  “Huh.” Silas mulled that over for a long time.

  “I will be happy to call my lawyer,” Olivia said again. “Chantry’s dead, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  Privacy and Freedom rippled on Silas’s big arms as he raised his shoulders in a massive shrug. “Guess it’ll be okay then. Guy’s dead, probly don’t care too much about his privacy anymore.”

  He stalked into the office, sat down at the desk, and reached for a large rotary card file.

  “I see you don’t use a computer for your office records,” Olivia murmured.

  “Don’t trust ’em.” Silas flipped through the cards. “No privacy with computers. Chantry, Chantry, Chantry. Yep, here we go. Locker Number Four-ninety. That’s up on the top floor clear to the back.”

  A rush of excitement swept through Olivia. “Thanks. How do I get up there?”

  “Elevator’s over there in the corner.” Silas scowled. “Gonna need a hand truck or a platform truck to haul out his stuff?”

  “Not right away.” She smiled brightly at him as she backed out the door. “I’ll have to inventory the contents of the locker first to determine the disposition of the items.”

  “Yeah, sure. Disposition ’em all you want. Light switch for each floor is just to the right of the elevator. Turn out the lights when you leave.”

  “You bet.”

  When the elevator door slid open on the fourth floor a short while later, Olivia understood why Silas had mentioned the location of the light switches.

  She could barely see her hand in front of her face.

  The fourth floor was cloaked in a thick darkness that was relieved only by the eerie green glow of an emergency exit sign above the stairwell.

  Olivia felt her way out of the elevator and groped for the light switch. She found it just as the door of the elevator cab slid shut behind her.

  Only a few of the fluorescent fixtures overhead stuttered to life. In its endless quest for privacy and confidentiality, the management of Pri-Con Self-Storage was obviously committed to maintaining low light levels.

  The floor-to-ceiling lockers were arranged in blocks separated by long, shadowy corridors. Olivia wished she had thought to bring along a flashlight. She would need one if she managed to get inside number four-ninety.

  She glanced at the number stenciled on a nearby door. Four-oh-one. Silas had said that Rollie’s locker was somewhere in the rear.

  She started down the nearest corridor. The heels of her oxfords echoed strangely on the concrete floor.

  The fourth level of the facility seemed much larger from the inside than it had looked from outside the building. It also felt very empty. She heard nothing as she made her way deeper into the complex. As far as she could tell she was alone on this floor.

  She kept a wary eye out for rats.

  It was cold up here, too, she noticed. A chill went through her when she turned down another aisle and started toward the back wall of the building.

  She crossed three more intersections before she admitted to herself that what she really felt was a growing unease.

  She turned another corner and collided with a large wooden pallet mounted on casters. She yelped in surprise and stepped back very quickly.

  The platform truck was nearly as wide as the corridor between the lockers. It effectively blocked her path.

  She gripped the steel bar that had been installed at one end and pushed the heavy contraption into another aisle. The casters squeaked and groaned, but the platform moved fairly easily.

  When it was out of her way, she checked locker numbers again. Four-eigh
t-seven. She was close.

  She found number four-ninety in the very last aisle. The padlock that secured the door looked surprisingly shiny, almost new.

  Olivia unzipped the pouch containing the keys and rummaged around inside for one that looked as if it might fit the lock.

  She was on her third try when a small scraping sound in the distance caused the hair on the nape of her neck to stand on end.

  The elevator door had just opened. Someone else was on the fourth floor. Olivia was suddenly, intensely aware of how very alone she was here at the back of the labyrinth.

  Her vivid imagination produced an image of the privacy-crazed Silas stalking female customers through the maze of lockers. He could murder dozens of people and conceal the bodies in their own lockers for years before anyone realized that something strange was going on at Pri-Con Self-Storage.

  Stop it, Olivia told herself. You’re acting like an idiot.

  At that moment the weak fluorescent lights overhead winked out. The fourth floor was plunged into unrelenting darkness.

  A jolt of fear shafted through Olivia.

  Her fingers froze on the padlock. She opened her mouth to call out. It was possible that someone, another attendant perhaps, had turned off the lights on the assumption that the fourth floor was deserted.

  But just as she started to shout that there was a paying customer in the last aisle, something made her pause.

  A soft, distant thud echoed from the other end of the room. It sounded remarkably like someone blundering into a locker wall.

  In that moment she knew for certain that whoever had turned off the lights had not gone back downstairs in the elevator. He was still here on the fourth floor.

  In the dark.

  With her.

  Olivia no longer tried to talk herself out of the panic that rose like nausea within her. She definitely had a right to be afraid now, she thought.

  She considered going back into assertive mode. Perhaps she could bluff her way out of this. The downside to that plan, she realized, was that, if she called out, she would give away her position. If Silas was playing some evil game, that was the last thing she wanted to do.

  On the other hand, if Silas was stalking her here in the darkness, he already had a good idea of her location. He worked here, after all. He knew exactly where locker four-ninety was located.

  She had to get out of this aisle. She had to put some distance between herself and locker four-ninety.

  Olivia realized she was gripping the padlock as if it were a talisman. With an effort of will she pried her icy fingers away from the cold metal.

  Flattening one palm against the nearest plywood wall, she prepared to use her sense of touch to guide her back toward the next intersection.

  She took one step and heard the faint but unmistakable sound of her own shoe sliding on concrete.

  She froze. When she could breathe again she bent down, quickly untied her oxfords, and stepped out of them. She winced when she put her stocking-clad feet on the glacier-cold concrete.

  She inched slowly forward. Her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness. It was still densely shadowed here in the last aisle. But when she ran out of wall at the intersection, she looked down a darkened corridor and saw the green glow of the exit light above the stairwell.

  She realized that she could use the exit lamp to guide her back to the elevators. But maybe that was exactly what the stalker expected her to do.

  She crossed the intersection and slipped cautiously into another black aisle. At least she was no longer standing next to locker four-ninety.

  The thought that she was not quite so much of a sitting duck as she had been a few seconds ago brought a tiny shot of hope. She seized on it as she worked her way along the gloom-filled corridor.

  She heard another scraping sound and realized that the stalker was on the move. He was not waiting for her at the elevator. She wondered how he was navigating his way along the cave-dark paths.

  The answer came a moment later when she crossed another intersection and glimpsed a narrowly focused beam of light. It vanished almost at once, but she knew now that whoever he was, the stalker had come here better prepared than she had. He had thought to bring a pencil-thin flashlight

  She tried frantically to think of a strategy. If she could work her way back to the elevator, she could go down the stairs. But if she turned down the wrong corridor enroute, she would blunder into the stalker.

  From out of nowhere she recalled something Silas had said about guns. She did not have access to a grenade launcher or a bazooka, but she had left a very large, extremely heavy platform truck in a nearby aisle. It would have to do.

  If she could find it.

  She closed her eyes. For some reason it was easier to construct a mental map of the locker complex with her eyes shut. She was certain that she had made only one turn after pushing the platform truck into a side aisle.

  Almost certain.

  A soft thud made her snap open her eyes. She was out of time. The stalker was getting closer. If she was going to act, she had to do it now.

  Slowly, painstakingly, she made her way back to the intersection she had just crossed. When she reached it, she turned and went slowly along another corridor. If she was right, she was only one aisle over from four-ninety. This was where she had left the platform truck.

  She must be careful not to stumble into it.

  She went down on her hands and knees and began to crawl along the cold concrete.

  Her fingers connected with one of the casters on the platform truck a few seconds later. She stopped and took a deep breath. She could not see the outline of the truck, but she found the steel handle bar by touch.

  Slowly she got to her feet and gripped the bar.

  She did not have long to wait.

  The scraping sound drew closer. Olivia held her breath. She was very cold, but rivulets of perspiration dampened her blouse.

  The thin beam of the stalker’s flashlight crossed the entrance to the aisle in which she stood poised with the platform truck.

  A shadowy figure stepped into the intersection. It swung the flashlight beam down the opposite aisle.

  It was now or never. The beam would shine into her aisle next.

  With every ounce of strength she possessed, Olivia shoved the platform into motion. She pushed it as fast as possible toward the figure in the intersection.

  The creaking and groaning of the heavy truck caused the stalker to whirl around. The narrow beam of the flashlight struck the truck, lifted. It hit Olivia squarely in the eyes, blinding her.

  She kept moving, shoving the platform truck in front of her. All she had to do was keep it going forward in a relatively straight line, she thought. She couldn’t miss.

  There was a choked, angry cry. The stalker staggered back, frantically trying to get out of the path of the heavy cart. He succeeded only partially.

  The wheeled platform caught the figure on the thigh at the intersection. The jolt of the impact went through Olivia.

  Her victim reeled backward.

  There was a hoarse shout. The flashlight flew out of the stalker’s hand and rolled on the concrete.

  He was down, but Olivia did not know if he was hurt. She did not know if he had a gun.

  She did the only thing that made sense at that moment.

  She ran toward the glowing green exit sign.

  19

  Jasper planted both hands flat on the desk and leaned forward. He kept his voice very soft because he did not trust himself to speak in a normal tone. The rage that had been swirling inside him all morning made him extremely cautious.

  “What do you mean, she left a message about a facility?”

  On the other side of the desk, Rose flinched. Her mouth worked tremulously. “I… I really can’t tell you anything else, Mr. Sloan. Olivia called and said to let you know that her appointment schedule for the day had been ch … ch … changed. She said she was going to check out the facility in south Seattle
this morning, since she had time.”

  “Damn.”

  Rose swallowed. “I’m sorry, sir, if I didn’t get the message right.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Rose.” Jasper straightened. “I’ll take care of the problem.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He glanced at his watch as he went into the inner office. “I’m going to be out of the office for the rest of the day. Call Tyler. Tell him what’s going on. He can handle things until tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jasper grabbed his jacket off the back of the door and walked swiftly through the outer office. He could feel Rose’s curious, nervous eyes on him as he went out the door and headed toward the elevator.

  He was well aware that his odd reaction to the phone message from Olivia would be all over the office by noon. Rose might not know quite what to make of it, but one thing was for certain. It constituted Chantry family gossip.

  He was overreacting, he told himself as he drove into the small lot in front of the Pri-Con Self-Storage company. There was no reason for the chill in his gut. What could possibly happen to Olivia in a storage locker facility?

  He parked his Jeep next to Olivia’s sleek red Nissan and got out. He walked swiftly toward the battered red, white, and blue sign that pointed to the office.

  Relief shot through him when he reached the grimy one-window room and saw Olivia inside. She had cornered a harassed-looking man with tattoos behind a battered metal desk. Her angry, outraged voice floated through the open door.

  “I’m telling you there’s some idiot on the fourth floor with a flashlight. He’s stalking people up there. Don’t you care?”

  “Look, lady, the lights up there are a little tricky, y’know? They’re always goin’ out.”

  “He deliberately turned them off, I tell you.”

  “Calm down, ma’am. There ain’t no other customers here.”

  “Someone is upstairs playing vicious games.”

  The attendant put up his hands as if to ward her off. “I’ll take a look if it will make you feel any better.”