I moved an aisle over, and here the numbering system seemed to work. I opened a box to confirm. This was, indeed, the two-five section. I skipped the next aisle, turned, and almost bumped into a guy in a bright red jumpsuit, digging through one of the boxes.
“Are they eating our files?” I asked.
The exterminator looked up and smiled. He had a port-wine birthmark covering most of his right cheek, just above a thick goatee. Aviator glasses that reflected like mirrors. And a dark smudge on his forehead, grease or dirt.
“Little fellas like it dark. Gotta check everywhere.”
He set the box back on the shelf and picked up his chemical pack, slinging it over his shoulder. Then he held out the sprayer wand and squirted along the bottom of the shelf he’d been searching, coating the carpeting with white powder.
“Is that stuff dangerous?”
He winked. “Only to vermin.”
Sardina was right. Creepy guy. We passed each other, and I followed the numbers until I got to Alger’s case files. My internal alarm sounded-they were in the same box that the exterminator had been looking through.
I took off after him, rounding the corner, not even thinking that my piece was upstairs in my purse, and then I skidded to a stop because he was waiting for me, his sprayer extended.
“Take a deep breath,” he said.
And then he squeezed the trigger, blasting me right in the face.
CHAPTER 23
LIKE I’D DONE AT the Hothams’ apartment, I closed my throat and sealed off my lungs, halting my breathing in mid-inhale. I also shut my eyes on reflex.
The chemical, or whatever it was, clumped onto my face and neck. It felt warm, slightly moist, almost like a beauty peel or a mud wrap.
I reached up to wipe the poison off, to get it off my face.
“Don’t touch,” the Chemist said. “That’s tetraethyl pyrophosphate. Also known as TEPP. It can be absorbed through the skin, and the mucus membranes. If you rub it, you’ll force it deeper into your pores.”
I stopped. Time seemed to stop too. I had one of those this can’t be happening to me thoughts, which did nothing to improve my situation.
“The first symptoms will be eye pain, headache, and cramps. That quickly progresses to chest pain, vomiting, loss of sphincter control, convulsions, paralysis, low blood pressure, and finally, death. Chances are, unless you can wash it off, you’ll be dead within fifteen minutes. Sooner if you inhale.”
I stuck my hands out, touched the fabric of his uniform, but he pulled away.
“Not on the first date, Jack. But maybe later. If you live through this. Bye, now. Best of luck.”
I heard him walk off, and then all I could hear was the beating of my heart in my ears, and it was beating much too fast for me to make it through this alive.
I pushed aside the panic, which wasn’t that hard to do because I had panicked so many times in the last few days, I didn’t have much left in the tank.
Officer Sardina wouldn’t be of help. She probably wouldn’t even look up from her crayon art. And I dared not open my mouth to yell, because some poison might get in.
I needed to wash this off. That meant a sink. There was one on this floor, but I wasn’t sure of the exact pathway. But on the second floor, I knew the bathroom was right down the hall from the stairs.
Could I make it to the second floor, with only half a chestful of oxygen, blind as a bat?
I had to try.
In my mind, I pictured where I stood in the Records room, tried to remember where the door was. Straight ahead, and to the left. I held my hands in front of me and began to walk in what I thought was a straight line.
I ran straight into a shelf, jamming my right pinky.
Readjust. Step to the left. Keep walking.
“Hey, don’t point that thing at me, Creepy Man.”
Sardina. Then she screamed. It was followed by choking. And gagging.
I had to focus. I walked fast, using the shelf as a guide. When it ended, I kept going forward until I reached the wall, and followed that left, seeking the doorway.
Vomiting sounds from Sardina. Then an eerie, pain-racked wail.
The wall stretched on. I bumped into a chair. Tripped over boxes. Walked fifteen steps. Twenty. Twenty-five.
Sardina began to scream. Wet, gurgling screams.
Where was that goddamn doorway? Did I miss it? Did I go the wrong way?
And then my hand met empty space and I fell through, onto my knees. The tile was cold, hard. I tried to think. The stairs were to the right. I began to crawl until I found the wall again, then followed it to the staircase.
How long had it been since I breathed? Thirty seconds? A minute? It seemed like a long time ago, and my diaphragm spasmed, wanting air, wondering why I wouldn’t allow it. The pounding in my head became louder, and my eyes had begun to sting. The first symptoms.
Again I fell when the hallway opened up into the stairs. I landed on my chest, and that knocked some precious stale air out of my lungs, but I couldn’t dwell on it. I was on all fours, climbing the steps, reaching for the handrail, coming up to where the stairs turned, taking them as fast as I could go to the second floor.
When I reached the hallway, I couldn’t remember if I needed to go left or right.
Panic worsened. The spasm in my chest was now a full-blown cramp, almost doubling me over.
Left or right? Left or right?
My office had been here for ten years. Dammit Jack, focus. This is an easy one.
Left. It was left.
I kept my hand on the wall, found a doorknob, but that was an office, not the bathroom. My head was screaming now, and my legs were giving out, and my vision through my closed eyes-already black-seemed to get even darker.
Dizziness set in. I’d need to breathe within the next few seconds, poison or no poison. Rational thought had been overtaken by animal instinct, and I felt the scream well up in my throat, my whole body beginning to quake.
And then I was in the bathroom.
I ran, my hip crashing into the sink, my shaking hands turning on the water and splashing it onto my face, over my eyes, wiping at my nose and mouth, and then I was sucking in air, crying, still wiping and rubbing and splashing and I opened my eyes and saw they were bloodred, and I started screaming until everything went blurry and finally black.
CHAPTER 24
AN EXTERMINATOR HAD SEEN me crawling blindly through the hallway, and alerted some cops on my floor. Shortly after I passed out I was whisked away to the hospital. They revived me en route, and I semi-coherently informed them it was TEPP poisoning.
The ER nurses scrubbed my face and neck until I appeared to be sunburned. My eyes were irrigated, a process as painful as it sounds. I was given atropine. Pralidoxime. Activated charcoal.
Somehow Herb appeared at my side during the treatment. I gave him bits and pieces about what I remembered, but couldn’t give much of a description beyond the port-wine stain on the Chemist’s cheek, which I guessed to be fake. Even though Herb was no longer my partner, he dutifully took down the info.
I was in eight kinds of pain. The drugs made my heart jittery. My eyes itched, my skin was on fire. My nose and throat felt like I’d been sniffing broken glass.
“My face hurts,” I told Herb. I was setting him up for the punch line, “Yeah, it’s killing me too.” But he didn’t bite. He just stared at me, sadly, his walrus mustache drooping at the ends.
“I brought your purse. It’s next to the bed. We’ve also got a team on the way, to watch your room after you’re admitted.”
“Thanks.” It was painful to talk. “How’s Sardina?”
“She didn’t make it.”
I couldn’t take the way he was staring at me, so I turned away, focusing on the green ER curtain that surrounded my cot. Humble pie time.
“I’m sorry I called you a coward, Herb. You’re no coward.”
His hand touched my arm, above the IV.