there was nothing unusual about a forty-two-story office building. Now,
however, abandoned for the night, the tower seemed incredibly huge and
complex; in solitude and silence one had time to contemplate it and see
how magnificent and extraordinary it was. He was like a microbe
wandering through the I'veins and bowels of a living creature, a
behemoth almost beyond measurement.
He felt in league with the minds that could conceive of a monument-like
this. He was one of them, a mover and shaker, a superior man. The
Olympian nture of 'i the building-and of the architects responsible for
itstruck a responsive chord in him, made him reverberate il 1 with the
knowledge of his own special godlike stature.
Brimming with a sense of glory, he was more deter- 4 mined than ever to
kill Harris and the woman. They were animals. Lice.
Parasites.
Because of Harris's freakish psychic gift, they posed a threat to
Bollinger. They were trying to deny him his rightful place in this new
and forceful current of history: the at first gradual but
ever-quickening rise of the new men.
He pushed the doorstop against the floor to keep the door open and the
lights burning. Then he went to the edge of the platform and peered
down the ladder.
They were three floors under him. The woman on top, nearest by a few
rungs. Harris below her, going first. Neither of them looked up.
Thiey certainly were aware of the momentary loss of light and understood
the significance of it. They were hurrying toward the next platform,
where they could get out of the shaft.
Bollinger knelt, tested the railing. It was strong. He leaned against
it, using it like a safety harness to keep him from tumbling to his
death.
He didn't want to kill them here. The place and method of murder were
extremely important tonight. Here, they would drop to the bottom of the
well, and that would ruin the scheme that he and Billy had come up with
this afternoon. He wasn't here just to kill them any way he could; he
had to dispose of them in a certain manner. If he brought it off just
right, the police would be confused, misled; and the people of New York
would begin to experience a spiraling reign of terror unlike anything in
their worst nightmares. He and Billy had worked out a damned clever
gambit, and he wouldn't abandon it so long as there was a chance of
bringing it off as planned.
it was a quarter of ten. In fifteen minutes Billy would be in the
alleyway outside, and he would wait on y until ten-thirty. Bollinger
saw that he probably wouldn't have time for the woman, but he was pretty
sure he'd be able to carry out the plan in forty-five minutes.
Besides, he didn't know what Harris looked like, and he felt there was
something cowardly about killing a man whose face he'd never seen.
It was akin to shooting someone in the back. That sort of killingven of
an animal, even of a louse like Harris-Aidn't fit Bollinger's image of a
superman. He liked to meet his prey head-on, to get close, so that
there was at least a hint of danger.
The trick was to force them out of the shaft without killing them; to
herd them to other ground where the plan could be carried out. He
pointed the pistol down, aimed wide of the woman's head and squeezed the
trigger.
The shot exploded; ear-splitting noise assaulted Connie from every side.
Over the diminishing echoes, she could hear the bullet ricocheting from
one wall to the other, farther down the shaft.
The situation was so unreal that she had to wonder if it was transpiring
in her mind. She supposed it was possible that she was in a hospital
and that all of this was the product of a fevered imagination, the
delusions of madness.
Descending the ladder, she repeatedly caught herself murmuring softly:
sometimes it was jumbled phrases that made little sense, sometimes
strings of utterly meaningless sounds. Her stomach rolled over like a
fish on a wet boat dock. Her bowels quivered. She felt as if a bullet
had already ripped into her, already had torn apart her vital organs.
Bollinger fired again.
The shot seemed less sharp than the one before it. Her ears were
desensitized, still ringing from the first explosion.
For a woman who had experienced little emotionaland no physical-terror
in her life, she was handling herself surprisingly well.
When she looked down, she saw Graham let go of, the ladder with one
hand. He grabbed the railing that ringed the platform. He took one
foot off the ladder; hesitated, leaning at a precarious angle; started
to bring his foot back; suddenly found the courage to put it on the edge
of the platform. For a moment, fighting his own terror, he stayed that
way, crucified between the two points of safety. She was about to call
to him, urge him on, when he finally freed himself of the ladder
altogether, wobbled on the brink of the platform as if he would fall,
then got his balance and climbed over the railing.
She descended the last dozen rungs much too fast and reached the
platform as Bollinger fired a third shot. She hurried through the red
door that Graham held open for her, into the maintenance supply room on
the twenty-seventh level.
The first thing she saw was the blood on his trousers. A bright spot of
it. As big as a silver dollar. Glistening on the gray fabric.
"What happened?"
"Had these in my pocket," he said, holding up the scissors. "A couple
of floors back, when I almost fell, the blades tore through the lining
and gouged my thigh.
"Is it bad?"
"No."
urt?
"Not much."
"Better get rid of them."
"Not just yet."
Bollinger watched until they left the shaft.
They had gotten out two platforms down. Because there was only a
service entrance at every second floor, that put them on the
twenty-seventh level.
He got up, hurried toward the elevator.
"Come on," Graham said. "Let's make a run for the stairs.
"No. We've got to go back up the shaft."
Incredulity showed on his face, anguish in hi s eyes. "That's crazy! "
"He won't be looking for us in the shaft. At least not for a couple of
minutes. We can go up two floors, then use the stairs when he comes
back to check the shaft."
She opened the red door through which they'd come only seconds ago.
"I don't know if I can do it again," he said.
"Of course you can."
"You said up the shaft?"
"That's right."
"We have to go down to escape."
She shook her head; her hair formed a brief dark halo. "You remember
what I said about the night guards?
'."They might be dead."
"If Bollinger killed them so he could have a free hand with us, wouldn't
he also have sealed off the building?
What if we get to the lobby, with Bollinger hot on our heels, and we
find the doors are locked? Before we could break the glass and get
out, he'd have killed us."
lee "But the guards might not be dead. He might have gotten past them
somehow."
"Can we take that chance?"
He frowned. "I guess not."
"I don't want to get to the lobby until we're certain of having a long
lead on Bollinger."
"So we go up. How's that better?"
"We can't play cat and mouse with him for twenty-seven floors. The next
time he catches us in the shaft or on the stairs, he won't make any
mistakes. But if he doesn't realize we're going up, we might be able to
alternate between the shaft and the stairs for thirteen floors, long
enough to get to your office."
"Why there?"
"Because he won't expect us to backtrack."