Not a doctor like you. But I can't swallow it. I can't see psychopaths
working together so smoothly and effectively."
"Why not? Remember the Tate murders in California? There were
several psychopaths in the Manson family, yet they all worked smoothly
and efficiently together, committing a large number of murders."
"They were caught," Preduski said.
"Not for quite some time."
business offices occupied the thirty-first floor of the Bowerton
Building. Graham and Connie tried a few doors, all of which proved to
be locked. They knew the others would be shut tight as well.
However, in the main hall near the elevator alcove, Connie discovered an
unmarked, unlocked door. She opened it. Graham felt for the light
switch, found it. They went inside.
The room was approximately ten feet deep and six or seven feet wide. On
the left was a metal door that had been painted bright red; and to one
side of the dour, mops and brooms and brushes were racked on the wall.
On the right, the wall was lined with metal storage shelves full of
bathroom and cleaning supplies.
"It's a maintenance center," Graham said.
Connie went to the red door. She took one step out of the room, holding
the door behind her. She was sur iss prised and excited by what she
saw. "Graham! Hey, look at this."
He didn't respond.
She stepped back into the room, turned and said, "Graham, look what-" He
was only a foot away, holding a large pair of scissors up to his face.
He gripped the instrument in his fist, in the manner of a man holding a
dagger. The blades gleamed; and like polished gems, the sharp points
caught the light.
"Graham?" she said.
Lowering the scissors, he said, "I found these on the shelf over there.
I can use them as a weapon."
"Against a gun?"
"Maybe we can set up a trap."
"What kind of trap?"
"Lure him into a situation where I can surprise him, where he won't have
time enough to use the damned gun.
"For instance?"
His hand was shaking. Light danced on the blades. "I don't know," he
said miserably.
"It wouldn't work," she said. "Besides, I've found a way out of the
building."
He looked up. "You have?"
"Come look. You won't need the scissors. Put them down."
"I'll look," he said. "But I'll keep the scissors just in case."
She was afraid that when he saw the escape route she'd found he would
prefer to face the Butcher armed only with the scissors.
He followed her through the red door, onto a railed platform that was
only eighteen inches wide and four feet long. A light glowed overhead;
and other lights lay some distance away in a peculiar, at first
unidentifiable void.
They were suspended on the side of one of the two elevator shafts that
went from the ground floor to the roof. It served four cabs, all of
which were parked at the bottom. Fat cables dangled in front of Connie
and Graham. On this side and on the opposite wall of the cavernous
well, from roof to basement at the oddnumbered floors, other doors
opened onto other tiny platforms. There was one directly across from
Graham and Connie, and the sight of it made them realize the precarious
nature of their perch. On both sides of the shaft, metal rungs were
bolted to the walls: ladders connecting the doors in each tier to other
exits in the same tier.
The system could be used for emergency maintenance work or for moving
people off stalled elevators in case of fire, power failure, or other
calamity. A small white light burned above each door; otherwise, the
shaft would have been in absolute darkness. When Connie looked up, and
especially when she looked down from the thirty-first floor, the sets of
farther lights appeared to be closer together than the sets of nearer
lights. It was a long way to the bottom.
His voice wavered when he said, "This is a way out?"
She hesitated, then said, "We can climb down."
T "No."
"We can't use the stairs. He'll be watching those."
"Not this."
it won't be like mountain climbing."
I His eyes shifted quickly from left to right and back again.
"No."
"We'll have the ladder."
"And we'll climb down thirty-one floors?" he asked.
"Please, Graham. If we start now, we might make it. Even if he finds
that the maintenance room is unlocked, and even if he sees this red
door-well, he might not think we'd have enough nerve to climb down the
shaft. And if he did see us, we could get off the ladder, leave the
shaft at another floor. We'd gain more time.
"I can't." He was gripping the railing with both hands, and with such
force that she would not have been surprised if the metal had bent like
paper in his hands.
Exasperated, she said, "Graham, what else can we do?
He stared into the concrete depths.
When Bollinger found that Harris and the woman had locked the fire door,
he ran down two flights to the thirtieth floor. He intended to use that
corridor to reach the far end of the building where he could take the
second stairwell back up to the thirty-first level and try the other
fire door. However, at the next landing the words "Hollowfield Land
Management" were stenciled in black letters on the gray door: the entire
floor be T RK longed to a single occupant.
That level had no public corridor; the fire door could be opened only
from the inside. The same was true of the twenty-ninth and
twenty-eighth floors, which were the domain of Sweet Sixteen Cosmetics.
He tried both entrances without success.
Worried that he would lose track of his prey, he rushed back to the
twenty-sixth floor. That was where he had originally entered the
stairwell, where he had left the elevator cab.
As he pulled open the fire door and stepped into the hall, he looked at
his watch. 1 S. The time was passing too fast, unnaturally fast, as if
the universe had become unbalanced.
Hurrying to the elevator alcove, he fished in his pocket for the dead
guard's keys. They snagged on the lining. When he jerked them loose,
they spun out of his hand and fell on the carpet with a sleighbell
jingie.
He knelt and felt for them in the darkness. Then he remembered the
pencil flashlight, but even with that he needed more than a minute to
locate the keys.
As he got up, angry with himself, he wondered if Harris and the woman
were waiting here for him. He put away the flashlight and snatched the
pistol from his ocket. He stood quite still. He studied the darkp
ness. If they were hiding there, they would have been silhouetted by
the bright spot farther along at the alcove.
When he thought about it, he realized that they couldn't have known on
which floor he'd left the elevator.
Furthermore, they couldn't have gotten down here in time to surprise
him.
The thirty-first floor was a different story. They might have time to
set a trap for him up there. When the elevator doors slid open, they
might be waiting for him; he would be most vulnerable at that moment.
Then again, he was the one with the pistol. So what if they were
waiting with makeshift weapons? They didn't stand a chance of
overpowering him.
At the elevator he put the key in the control board and activated the
circuit.
He looked at his watch. 9:19.
If there were no more delays, he could kill Harris and still have twenty
minutes or half an hour with the woman.
Whistling again, he pushed one of the buttons: 31.
The lab technician disconnected the garbage disposal, wrapped it in a
heavy white plastic sheet, and carried it out of the apartment.