There was one chance: an ornate iron fire escape of the type common in old New York buildings, constructed in the shape of a series of Z’s on end, the diagonal stepladders linking terraced platforms that reached up six floors. For security purposes, the lowest ladder worked on the drawbridge principle. By good fortune it had been let down to ground level.
She grasped the ironwork and hauled herself up to the first platform. She could see Sarah Jordan coming fast toward the ladder. With all the strength she could summon, Meg hauled it up, rung by rung, so that it homed into brackets on the railings of the platform and the one overhead. The last rung was secured by an iron clasp. She slammed it across and leaned back against the building, fighting for breath, surrendering to the pain in her shoulder, thigh, feet, and hands.
Sarah Jordan was fifteen feet below, unable to reach her. She stood looking up at Meg for a half minute at least, hands on hips. Then she took off the helmet, shook her hair loose, turned, and walked slowly back in the direction of the car, without a word having passed between them.
Meg sank to the platform floor and lay staring at the underside of the next landing, massaging her right hip. She couldn’t think how she was going to get back from this godforsaken place, but she had to wait, anyway, for the sound of the car moving off.
It didn’t happen.
When she turned her head to look again, after maybe six or seven minutes, the Pinto was still where it had stopped. The passenger door was still open. Her vantage point was too high for her to see if Sarah was inside. She sat up and scanned the refuse-littered area below. Not a movement. But she would not be tempted to let down the ladder while that car remained where it was.
She gave up trying to account for what had happened. The one thing she knew for certain was that she was in real danger from Sarah Jordan. If she had to wait all night, she would sit it out.
Ten minutes passed.
Twenty.
By now the police would be asking why she hadn’t turned up. They might call the residence hall. With luck, the super would tell them she had left in a red Ford Pinto. But there was no reason for them to start a search. And no possibility they would come down here. Maybe by the evening Nancy Lim would notice she hadn’t returned.
It occurred to her now — too late, of course — that the message the super had received was not from Bernice at all but from Sarah Jordan: a neat, nasty way of tricking her into the car. But it was still a mystery how Sarah had heard about her interview with the police. Unless Bernice had told her.
Even Bernice didn’t know that the interview concerned Sarah’s actions at the party. Only two people knew that: Nancy and Don.
She glanced at her watch. She had spent thirty-five minutes on the fire escape. The car hadn’t moved.
She refused to depress herself by trying to account for what was happening. She had to find something to do. Climb to the top.
She checked that the ladder was secure and began slowly to mount the steps to the next landing. With each step a searing pain gripped her thigh, but she kept moving up.
There were broken windows on the second landing. She could not see much of the interior, because it had been blackened by fire. She went higher. If she could spot someone in the distance and attract his attention, she might get help. From the fifth landing all she could see was another block like this one, but shaded from the sun. It appeared to be uninhabited. She could not see the street they had driven along. She could not see a living thing.
Until she looked down through the small holes in the iron floor and noticed something black moving in silence across the landing below. She screamed and hurtled up the stairs to the top landing.
Sarah Jordan came after her.
There was a window with a gap wide enough between the frame and the sill for Meg to push her fingers under and force the frame upward. She swung her leg over the sill and saw just in time that she was about to step into a room with no floor, only a drop of perhaps thirty feet to another floor so burned out it was a death trap.
So she waited, straddling the sill. And Sarah Jordan came up the last stairs, smiling. In her left hand was a leather belt, in her right a broken bottle.
“Stay right there,” she told Meg. “Don’t move a muscle.”
“If you touch me, I’ll—”
“—scream? You just did. I don’t see Batman and Robin yet.” She came closer, holding the bottle with the jagged edges toward Meg’s face. “I want you to put your other leg over the sill so you’re facing the inside.”
“There’s no floor.”
“Keep your ass on the sill then.”
Meg hesitated, and the bottle was thrust closer. She obeyed. And prepared for the push that would send her into the chasm below.
“Get your hands off the woodwork and behind your back. Real close together, elbows touching.”
She felt the strap being put around her forearms below the elbow and being tightened notch by notch. She cried out at the pain.
“Save it.”
“I hurt my shoulder falling out of the car.”
“Too bad. The butterfly injured her wing. Move now. Bring your legs over nice and slow and remember what I have in my right hand.”
So with Meg leading, they went down the stairs. At the second landing she was ordered to stop. One of the windows there was open.
“Inside,” she was told. “It’s safe. To coin a phrase, this is where I came in.”
In the building they made their way across a blackened floor to a doorway, then down some stairs and through a passage to the front. “It took me some time to find this way through,” said Sarah. “Good of you to wait.”
They returned to the car. Meg was ordered to lie on the backseat while her ankles were bound with rope. “We’re not going far,” Sarah told her, “but I’m taking no chances.”
The journey took about four minutes, but every jolt and turn was like a stab. When they stopped, it was at a place little different from the first. More derelict blocks, silent and skeletal.
“What are we doing here?”
“Choosing a box for a butterfly.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Would you like to crawl there?”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m in a lot of pain.”
The door was opened and her ankles untied. She was pushed, stumbling over rubble, toward the shell of a building.
“Lean against the door and it’ll open.”
They went inside.
“Straight ahead, then left and down to the basement.” “Would you please listen to me?” Meg asked as calmly as she was able. “I don’t know why you want to hurt me, but—”
“Get down those stairs.”
“I’m scared of cellars.”
“You like being kicked?”
She went down as far as an open door.
Ahead it was pitch black. She could see three steps, then nothing. Her mind supplied impressions of what lay beyond. She was going to scream.
13
Before he left that evening, Don was called to Jerry’s office. One of the detectives was there with Jerry. He looked and acted as if he was senior to the man who had taken the statement. The lieutenant. Probably in his fifties, he was dressed in a good blue suit. He was bald, with smiling eves. He had a couple of gold teeth.
Don had decided the best way to get over the problem of the statement in his pocket was to admit he had lied to keep Sarah’s name out of the investigation. With Jerry sitting in, it was going to be a rough ride.
The lieutenant didn’t bring up the statement. He wanted to know about Meg. She had made an appointment to talk to the police, but she hadn’t kept it. She had left her residence hall at two-forty P.M. and no one had seen her since.
Don tried to cover the kick of fear he felt in his stomach. He admitted he knew Meg, but he hadn’t seen her that afternoon.