Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 22

“Mr. Vinson. Room for one more.”

He looked over to the far elevator and saw its light glowing above the door. Charlie moved toward the elevator to see who’d called to him. People were still filing in beneath the glowing green light.

He was surprised to see Della Tanner, one of the salespeople, among those already crowded into the elevator. She was young—still in her twenties—unapologetically ambitious, and attractive, if you liked large-breasted blond women with perfect features. Charlie did.

“Come on!” she said, smiling, and leaned forward to press a button that was out of his field of vision.

She was pressing the right button. The door remained open long enough for Charlie to elbow his way inside. He saw that the lobby button on the brushed aluminum console was glowing, along with half a dozen other numbered lights. The Blenheim Building was emptying out, like a lot of other office buildings in the area.

“Thanks, Della,” he said, returning her smile.

He and Della, pressed together between several large men, could barely move as the elevator began its descent. Charlie decided it wasn’t so bad being crushed into Della.

The elevator didn’t go far. It dropped smoothly from the Medlinger floor, forty-four, toward the next floor down. It stopped at forty-three, and one of the half dozen people waiting there somehow managed to wedge their way into it, mashing Charlie and Della farther toward the back of the car. Someone had forgotten to use deodorant. Someone else was wearing very strong lilac-scented perfume or cologne.

“Push lobby, please,” a woman said politely.

But there was no need. Almost every light on the console was glowing. Even “LL” for Lower Level, which was beneath the lobby. People shifted slightly, but no one said anything. The woman who’d asked to go to the lobby must have seen the glowing button.

The door slid open, and a small man in a blue—or was it dark green?—uniform looked into the packed elevator and smiled. He was wearing a blue baseball cap. He said, “I’ll wait for the next one.”

This was not the place to have a conversation. Della and Charlie both knew they would converse, or at least exchange pleasantries, after they’d reached the lobby. Charlie wondered if Della lived anywhere near the Blenheim Building. Della noticed a wedding ring on Charlie’s finger and wondered how much that mattered. Maybe Mr. Vinson—Charlie—drove into the city, or took a train, or stayed here during the week and went home to a dull suburban life on weekends.

No one in the elevator spoke. Charlie tucked in his chin and looked down at Della. She was staring straight ahead and wearing the slightest of smiles.

A hand snaked out and pressed the glowing Lobby button for good measure. The door closed, and there was silence as everyone waited for the elevator to continue its descent.

The elevator door had no sooner closed than it reopened. A small blond woman huffed up to it. A smaller figure was also waiting at the elevators—a super or maintenance man or some such. He turned away.

“Are you with Medlinger Management?” the woman asked him. “I’m looking for my husband, Charles Vinson. This is his first day at work here and I wondered—”

But the little man had spun on his heel and was swiftly walking away. The woman was left with an obscure image of him hopping and running as he reached the door to the stairs. There was a kind of faint but definite elfin quality about him.

Charlie hadn’t been paying attention and hadn’t heard his wife, Emma, address the small man. And, truth be told, he and Della were looking at each other in that way again.

Ah, well . . . The blond woman gave up on the elevator and pushed one of the down buttons for another. Then she gave up on that and walked toward the stairs.

Emma would walk up a floor and try an elevator that hadn’t yet taken on so many passengers. It was possible that Charlie was down in the lobby, waiting for her. She tried to call him on his cell phone, but apparently it was turned off. Or he’d let the battery run down. They both were distracted these days, he because of the new job, and she because she was pregnant and hadn’t yet told her husband. She smiled in anticipation, absently stroking her stomach. Wherever Charlie was, he was soon to discover that their luck had changed in more ways than one.

Everyone on the elevator was silent, but a few people exchanged glances as a rushing, ticking sound began. The ticks became louder and closer together, but the elevator’s descent was smooth.

Charlie Vinson looked at Della, who returned his stare with a puzzled one of her own.

Something was wrong here.

The packed-in elevator passengers milled, moving against each other where that was possible. Someone’s breath was coming too harsh and fast. There were gasps, and whimpers, and the beginnings of curses and questions and complaints and pleadings.

The elevator picked up speed during its forty-three-floor drop.

It took a few seconds for confusion to become comprehension, but everyone had time to scream.

There were no stops along the way. The crowded elevator was doing close to a hundred miles per hour when it crashed into the basement.

Among those rushing to see if there were any survivors was a nondescript small man in a gray or green uniform. Or was it light blue? Was it actually a uniform? The man wore a blue or black baseball cap. The cap’s bill was cocked at a sharp angle, and his hair, which was dark brown or black, was worn long and combed back in wings over his ears.

He was later reported to have been seen in the building’s basement earlier that day. The building wasn’t new, and had been undergoing renovations. Workmen came and went without anyone becoming curious. This man was assumed to be with building maintenance, or a tradesman of some sort, because he was carrying a toolbox.

If he was the same man.

There was a dull thud from a distance, not enough to startle Emma Vinson, or to make her stumble in the carpeted hall.

When she took the stairs and reached the higher bank of elevators, the digital floor indicator mounted above its doors was flashing that the elevators were temporarily out of service.

Emma suddenly felt nauseated. She bent over, clutching her stomach with both hands, and slid down the wall to sit leaning with her back against it and her knees drawn up.

Her future had taken a sudden lurch and somehow changed. She knew it but wasn’t sure why.

She was terrified to speculate.

24

Within ten minutes the block was closed at both intersections, and police and emergency vehicles were inside the cordon, parked at forty-five-degree angles to the curb. The crowd and uniformed police officers were mostly out on the street. The uniforms provided a corridor for victim after victim to be brought out of the Blenheim Building on gurneys by paramedics and loaded into ambulances. All of the gurneys contained fully zipped body bags.

Quinn, who had rushed to the scene as soon as Renz called him on his cell, saw Renz’s black limo parking outside the cordon. Quinn found himself wondering if Renz would someday mount fender flags on the limo. City or state pennants that proclaimed who was in the car.

A tall man in a black business suit, whom Quinn recognized as an NYPD lieutenant and Renz ally, approached Renz and reached him when Quinn did, just after Renz had ducked under the yellow tape. The lieutenant was the only one showing a shield, fastened to his suit coat pocket. They exchanged glances, and Renz looked at the lieutenant, whose name was Willington, and said, “What’ve we got?”

Willington stepped back out of the path of stretchers and body bags. He had a solemn, hatchet face that Quinn thought made him look a lot like General MacArthur in old newsreels. Quinn and Renz also moved back out of the way.