by Dean Koontz
Bollinger stopped anyway. “Mr. Harris, you’re acting very strange. I’m a policeman. You know ... you’re acting as if you’ve just done something that you want to hide from me.” He took a step, another, a third.
“The stairs?” Connie asked.
“No,” Graham said. “We don’t have enough of a lead. With my game leg, he’d catch us in a minute.”
“Mr. Harris?” Bollinger said. “What are you two saying? Please don’t whisper.”
“Where then?” Connie whispered.
“The office.”
He nudged her, and they ducked quickly into the Harris Publications suite, slammed and locked the reception room door.
A second later, Bollinger hit the outside of the door with his shoulder. It trembled in its frame. He rattled the knob violently.
“He’s probably got a gun,” Connie said. “He’ll get in sooner or later.”
Graham nodded. “I know.”
part three
FRIDAY 8:30 P.M. 10:30 P.M.
22
Ira Preduski parked at the end of a string of three squad cars and two unmarked police sedans that blocked one half of the two-lane street. Although there was no one in any of the five vehicles, all the engines were running, headlights blazing; the trio of blue-and-whites were crowned with revolving red beacons. Preduski got out of his car and locked it.
A half inch of snow made the street look clean and pretty. As he walked toward the apartment house, Preduski scuffed his shoes against the sidewalk, sending up puffs of white flakes in front of him. The wind whipped the falling snow into his back, and cold flakes found their way past his collar. He was reminded of that February, in his fourth year, when his family moved to Albany, New York, where he saw his first winter storm.
A uniformed patrolman in his late twenties was standing at the bottom of the outside steps to the apartment house.
“Tough job you’ve got tonight,” Preduski said.
“I don’t mind it. I like snow.”
“Yeah? So do I.”
“Besides,” the patrolman said, “it’s better standing out here in the cold than up there in all that blood.”
Fingers bent like claws, the dead woman lay on the floor beside the bed. Her eyes were open.
Two lab technicians were working around the body, studying it carefully before chalking its position and moving it.
Ralph Martin was the detective handling the on-scene investigation. He was chubby, completely bald, with bushy eyebrows and dark-rimmed glasses. He avoided looking at the corpse.
“The call from the Butcher came in at ten of seven,” Martin said. “We tried your home number immediately, but we weren’t able to get through until almost eight o’clock.”
“My phone was off the hook. I just got out of bed at a quarter past eight. I’m working graveyard.” He sighed and turned away from the corpse. “What did he say—this Butcher?”
Martin took two folded sheets of paper from his pocket, unfolded them. “I dictated the conversation, as well as I could recall it, and one of the girls made copies.”
Preduski read the two pages. “He gave you no clue to who else he’s going to kill tonight?”
“Just what’s there.”
“This phone call is out of character.”
“And it’s out of character for him to strike two nights in a row,” Martin said.
“It’s also not like him to kill two women who knew each other and worked together.”
Martin raised his eyebrows. “You think Sarah Piper knew something?”
“You mean, did she know who killed her friend?”
“Yeah. You think he killed Sarah to keep her from talking?”
“No. He probably just saw both of them at the Rhinestone Palace and couldn’t make up his mind which he wanted the most. She didn’t know who murdered Edna Mowry. I’d bet my life on that. Of course I’m not the best judge of character you’ll ever meet. I’m pretty dense when it comes to people. God knows. Dense as stone. But this time I think I’m right. If she had known, she would have told me. She wasn’t the kind of girl who could hide a thing like that. She was open. Forthright. Honest in her way. She was damned nice.”
Glancing at the dead woman’s face, which was surprisingly unmarked and clear of blood in the midst of so much gore, Martin said. “She was lovely.”
“I didn’t mean just nice-looking,” Preduski said. “She was a nice person. ”
Martin nodded.
“She had a soft Georgia accent that reminded me of home.”
“Home?” Martin was confused. “You’re from Georgia?”
“Why not?”
“Ira Preduski from Georgia?”
“They do have Jews and Slavs down there.”
“Where’s your accent?”
“My parents weren’t born in the South, so they didn’t have an accent to pass on to me. And we moved North when I was four, before I had time to pick it up.”
For a moment they stared at the late Sarah Piper and at the pair of technicians who bent over her like Egyptian attendants of death.
Preduski turned away from the corpse, took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.
“The coroner’s in the kitchen,” Martin said. His face was pale and greasy with sweat. “He said he wanted to see you when you checked in.”
“Give me a few minutes,” Preduski said. “I want to look around here a bit and talk with these fellows.”
“Mind if I wait in the living room?”
“No. Go ahead.”
Martin shuddered. “This is a rotten job.”
“Rotten,” Preduski agreed.
23
The gunshot boomed and echoed in the dark corridor.
The lock shattered, and the wood splintered under the impact of the bullet.
Wrinkling his nose at the odor of burnt powder and scorched metal, Bollinger pushed open the ruined door.
The reception lounge was dark. When he found the light switch and flipped it up, he discovered that the room was also deserted.
Harris Publications occupied the smallest of three business suites on the fortieth floor. In addition to the hall door by which he had entered, two other doors opened from the reception area, one to the left and one to the right. Five rooms. Including the lounge. That didn’t leave Harris and the woman with many places to hide.
First he tried the door to the left. It led to a private corridor that served three large offices: one for an editor and his secretary, one for an advertising space salesman, and one for the two-man art department.
Neither Harris nor the woman was in any of those rooms.
Bollinger was cool, calm, but at the same time enormously excited. No sport could be half so dramatic and rewarding as hunting down people. He actually enjoyed the chase more than he did the kill. Indeed, he got an even greater kick out of the first few days immediately after a kill than he did from either the hunt or the murder itself. Once the act was done, once blood had been spilled, he had to wonder if he’d made a mistake, if he’d left behind a clue that would lead the police straight to him. The tension kept him sharp, made the juices bubble. Finally, when sufficient time had passed for him to be certain that he had gotten away with murder, a sense of well-being—of great importance, towering superiority, godhood—filled him like a magic elixir flowing into a long-empty pitcher.
The other door connected the reception room and Graham Harris’s private office. It was locked.
He stepped back and fired two shots into the lock. The soft metal twisted and tore; chunks of wood spun into the air.
He still could not open it. They had pushed a heavy piece of furniture against the far side.
When he leaned on the door, pushed with all of his strength, he could not budge it; however, he could make the unseen piece of furniture rock back and forth on its base. He figured it was something high, at least as wide as the doorway, but not too deep. Perhaps a bookshelf. Something with a high center of gravity. He began to force
the door rhythmically: push hard, relax, push hard, relax, push hard.... The barricade tipped faster and farther each time he wobbled it—and suddenly it fell away from the door with a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass.
Abruptly the air was laden with whiskey fumes.
He squeezed through the door which remained partly blocked. He stepped over the antique bar they had used as a barrier and put his foot in a puddle of expensive Scotch.
The lights were on, but no one was there.
At the far end of the room there was another door. He went to it, opened it. Beyond lay the gloomy fortieth-floor corridor.
While he had wasted time searching the offices, they had slipped back into the hall by this circuitous route, gaining a few minutes lead on him.
Clever.
But not clever enough.
After all, they were nothing but ignorant game, while he was a master hunter.
He laughed softly.
Bathed in red light, Bollinger went to the nearest end of the hall and opened the fire door without making a sound. He stepped onto the landing in the emergency stairwell, closing the door quietly behind him. A dim white bulb burned above the exit on this side.
He heard their footsteps reverberating from below, amplified by the cold concrete walls.
He went to the steel railing and peered into the alternate layers of light and shadow: landings hung with bulbs, and stairs left dark. Ten or twelve flights down, five or six floors below, the woman’s hand appeared on the railing, moving along less quickly than it should have. (If he had been in their place, he would have taken the steps two at a time, perhaps even faster.) Because the open core was so narrow—as long as a flight of stairs, but only one yard wide—Bollinger wasn’t able to see at an angle into the tiers of steps beneath him. All he could see was the serpentine railing winding to infinity, and nothing of his prey except her white hand. A second later Harris’s hand emerged from the velvety shadows, into the light that spilled out from a landing; he gripped the railing, followed the woman through the hazy light and into the darkness once again, descending.
For an instant Bollinger considered going down the steps behind them, shooting them in the back, but he rejected that thought almost as soon as it occurred to him. They would hear him coming. They would most likely scuttle out of the stairwell, seeking a place to hide or another escape route. He wouldn’t know for certain at which floor they had left the stairs, and he couldn’t run after them and watch their hands on the railing at the same time.
He didn’t want to lose track of them. Although he wouldn’t mind an interesting and complicated hunt, he didn’t want it to drag on all night. For one thing, Billy would be waiting in the car, outside in the alley, at ten o’clock. For another, he wanted time with the woman, at least half an hour if she was at all good-looking.
Her pale hand slipped into sight on a light-swathed patch of railing.
Then Harris’s hand.
They were still not moving as fast as they should have.
He tried to count flights of stairs. Twelve to fourteen.... They were six, maybe seven floors below.
Where did that put them?
Thirty-third floor?
Bollinger turned away from the railing, opened the door and left the stairwell. He ran down the fortieth-floor corridor to the elevator cab he was using. He switched it on with his key, hesitated, then put his thumb on the button for the twenty-sixth floor.
24
To Connie the stairwell seemed endless. As she passed through alternating levels of purple darkness and wan light, she felt as if she were following a long pathway to hell, the Butcher fulfilling the role of the grinning hellhound that harried her ever downward.
The stale air was cool. Nevertheless, she was perspiring.
She knew they should be going faster, but they were hampered in their flight by Graham’s lame left leg. At one point she was almost overcome with anger, furious at him for being a hindrance to their escape. However, her fury vanished in the same instant, leaving her surprised by it and flushed with guilt. She had thought that no pressure, however great, could cause her to react to him so negatively. But filled with—nearly consumed by—the survival instinct, she clearly was capable of responses and attitudes that she would have criticized in others. Extreme circumstances could alter anyone’s personality. That insight forced her to understand and appreciate Graham’s fear to an extent she had never done before. After all, he had not wanted to fall on Everest; he hadn’t asked for the injury. And indeed, considering the dull pain he suffered when he tried to climb or descend more than two flights of stairs, he was responding to this challenge damned well.
From behind her, Graham said, “You go on ahead.” He had said it several times before. “You move faster.”
“I’m staying,” she said breathlessly.
The echoes of their low-pitched voices were eerie, soft and sibilant.
She reached the landing at the thirty-first floor, waited for him to catch up, then went ahead. “I won’t leave you alone. Two of us ... have a better chance against him ... better than one of us would.”
“He’s got a gun. We’ve no chance.”
She said nothing. She just kept taking the steps one at a time.
“Go on,” he said, sucking breath between phrases. “You bring back ... security guard ... in time to keep ... him from ... killing me.”
“I think the guards are dead.”
“What?”
She hadn’t wanted to say it, as if saying would make it so. “How else ... would he get past them?”
“Sign the registry.”
“And leave his name ... for the cops to find?”
A dozen steps later he said, “Christ!”
“What?”
“You’re right.”
“No help ... to be had,” she said. “We’ve just got ... to get out of ... the building.”
Somehow he found new strength in his left leg. When she reached the thirtieth-floor landing, Connie didn’t have to wait for him to catch up.
A minute later, a cannonlike sound boomed up from below, halting them within the fuzzy circle of light at the twenty-ninth floor.
“What was that?”
Graham said, “A fire door. Someone slammed it ... down there.”
“Him?” “Ssshh. ”
They stood perfectly still, trying to hear movement above the noise of their own labored breathing.
Connie felt as if the circle of light were shrinking around her, rapidly pulling back to a tiny point of brilliance. She was afraid of being blind and helpless, an easy target in pitch blackness. In her mind the Butcher had the quality of a mythical being; he could see in darkness.
As they got control of their breathing, the stairwell became silent.
Too silent.
Unnaturally silent.
Finally Graham said, “Who’s there?”
She jumped, startled by his voice.
The man below said, “Police, Mr. Harris.”
Under her breath Connie said, “Bollinger.”
She was at the outer edge of the steps; she looked down the open core. A man’s hand was on the railing, four flights below, in the meager illumination just two or three steps up from the landing. She could also see the sleeve of his overcoat.
“Mr. Harris,” Bollinger said. His voice was cold, hollow, distorted by the shaft.
“What do you want?” Graham asked.
“Is she pretty?”
“What?”
“Is she pretty?”
“Who?”
“Your woman.”
With that, Bollinger started up. Not hurrying. Leisurely. One step at a time.
She was more frightened by his slow, casual approach than if he had rushed them. By not hurrying, he was telling them that they were trapped, that he had the whole night to get them if he wished to stretch it out that long.
If only we had a gun, she thought.
Graham took hold of her hand, and they cl
imbed the steps as fast as he was able. It wasn’t easy for either of them. Her back and legs ached. With each step, Graham either gritted his teeth or moaned loudly.
When they had gone two floors, four flights, they were forced to stop and rest. He bent over, massaging his bum leg. She went to the railing, peered down.
Bollinger was four flights under them. Evidently he had run when he heard them running; but now he had stopped again. He was leaning over the railing, framed in a pool of light, the gun extended in his right hand.
He smiled at her and said, “Hey now, you are pretty.”
She screamed, jerked back.
He fired.
The shot passed up the core, ricocheted off the top of the rail, smashed into the wall over their heads and ricocheted once more into the steps above them.
She grabbed Graham; he held her.
“I could have killed you,” Bollinger called to her. “I had you dead on, sweetheart. But you and I are going to have a lot of fun later.”
Then he started up again. As before. Slowly. Shoes scraping ominously on the concrete: shuss ... shuss ... shuss ... shuss.... He began to whistle softly.
“He’s not just chasing us,” Graham said angrily. “The son of a bitch is playing with us.”
“What are we going to do?”
Shuss ... shuss....
“We can’t outrun him.”
“But we’ve got to.”
Shuss.... shuss....
Harris pulled open the landing door. The thirty-first floor lay beyond. “Come on.”
Not convinced that they gained anything by leaving the stairs, but having nothing better to suggest, she went out of the white light into the red.
Shuss ... shuss....
Graham shut the door and stooped beside it. A collapsible doorstop was fixed to the bottom right-hand corner of the door. He pushed it all the way down, until the rubber-tipped shank was hard against the floor and the braces were locked in place. His hands were trembling, so that for a moment it looked as if he wouldn’t be able to handle even a simple task like this.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He stood up. “It might not work if the stop didn’t have locking hinges. But it does. See the doorsill? It’s an inch higher than the floor on either side. When he tries to open the door, the stop will catch on the sill. It’ll be almost as good as a bolt latch.”