Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 23

“What we’ve got,” Willington said, “is a runaway elevator. Dropped over forty floors and crashed in the basement.”

“Passengers?” Renz asked.

“You mean casualties?”

“Victims.”

“Twelve, and still counting. They’re . . . tangled together. Dead. The inside of the elevator is like something out of a bad dream.”

“Any survivors?”

“Only one, so far. A guy named Vinson. Both legs and an arm broken—and who knows what else? He’s at Roosevelt St. Luke’s, being operated on for a head injury.”

“Only one survivor?”

“So far.”

“I thought you said—”

“Commissioner,” Willington said, “over forty stories, packed into an elevator. Those people instantly became meat.”

Quinn was surprised to see an experienced cop like Willington looking queasy.

Renz must have noticed it, too. “It’s okay, Lieu. We’ll just do our jobs.”

Willington gave a half salute to Renz, then to Quinn, and walked away toward the Blenheim Building entrance, presumably to do his job.

Quinn followed him. Taking the stairs down to the building’s basement. There was a horrible smell that he recognized. As he got closer to where uniforms and paramedics were busy around an elevator, the scene was bathed in bright light from portable battery units set on tripods. A faint buzzing sound got louder as Quinn approached the ruined elevator. He’d assumed it was the lights buzzing; now he saw that flies were swarming. Now and then someone with a clipboard or a rolled-up newspaper would swat them away. The tone and volume of the constant droning didn’t change. The odor clinging to the area indicated why. Blood had been spilled, sphincters had released, bladders had burst.

If this isn’t hell, it must be a lot like it.

Using ID furnished by the NYPD, Quinn moved even closer.

He decided to skip lunch.

Sal and Harold spent hours talking to witnesses to the Blenheim Building elevator disaster. They could furnish only peripheral statements. The lone survivor in the elevator, Charles Vinson, who had been there on the first day of his new job in the building, did help. When he regained consciousness in his hospital bed, he described a man who’d tried to get on the elevator on the forty-fourth floor but decided it was too crowded.

Vinson was in traction and wrapped with so much tape he might as well have been mummified. Harold found it hard to comprehend that they were interviewing an actual live human being.

Except for the eyes. Vinson’s eyes, which were all too human. They never ceased moving, and they were horrified, haunted. Harold and Sal knew the man would be haunted for the rest of his life.

The eyes darted from Harold to Sal to Harold. Pleading. “My wife . . .”

“She’s okay, sir,” Sal grated.

“Emma,” Harold said, knowing the mention of the wife’s name would soothe Vinson. “Emma’s right outside, waiting for us to be done talking with you.”

“She might have been in that damned elevator.”

“But she wasn’t,” Sal said. He started to pat Vinson’s bandaged shoulder, then thought he’d better not.

“Can she come in?”

“Not at this point,” Sal said. “But we’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”

“Whaddya want to know from me?” Vinson asked.

“Whatever you know about what happened.”

The dark eyes, sunken in gauze peepholes, darted. “Elevator took a dive.”

“Why?” Harold asked simply.

“Dunno. Maybe it was too crowded. Weighed too much.”

“Elevators are always overcrowded,” Sal said. “They usually don’t turn into dive-bombers.”

“How far did we drop?” Vinson asked.

“Forty-three floors.” Harold said.

“Oh, good God!”

“Where did you get in the elevator?”

“Forty-fourth floor. It was already crowded. People getting off work, I guess.”

“More than usual?”

“I don’t know. This is my first day at work.”

“Some luck,” Harold said.

Vinson said, “Luckier than some others.”

“All the others,” Sal said.

Vinson didn’t understand at first. Then he did, and the world behind his dark and wounded eyes changed forever.

“How many dead?” Vinson asked.

“We think it’s fifteen,” Harold said. “It’s still . . . hard to get an exact count.”

“Can I see my wife now?”

“We’re about done,” Sal said. “People on the scene downstairs said they and others realized what had happened and rushed to the elevator to see if they could help in rescue attempts.”

“That’s how I got here. I can’t believe I’m the only lucky one.”

You only hope you’re going to live, Harold thought, looking at the mass of taped gauze, stained here and there with blood. The doctors had told Harold and Sal that pressure was building in Vinson’s brain. They were going to operate within minutes. He had about a forty percent chance of survival. At least, Harold thought, he seems to be thinking okay for now.

What does his wife know?

“See anything we oughta know?” Sal asked.

“Not that I can—”

“Little guy in a gray or green outfit with a baseball cap?”

Light glimmered in Vinson’s sunken dark eyes. “Yeah, I did see a guy something like that. When they got the elevator doors open, lots of people had gone to the basement, rushed over to help. One of them looked like the guy you described. I saw him when we got on the elevator, too. He said he’d wait for the next one.”

“Were his ears pointed?” Harold asked.

Vinson said, “Who are we talking about here? Dr. Spock?”

“Maybe the maintenance guy. Somebody like that.”

“Might have been, for all I know. I never before laid eyes on the man except outside the elevator, and I don’t remember anything about his ears. Don’t recall much about him, actually. I remember a lot of people looking, leaning in for a closer look and then backing away. They must have seen what a mess the inside of the elevator was and it made them . . . Made them wanna be someplace else. Anyplace.”

“Little guy stay or leave?” Sal asked.

“I’m not sure. He seemed . . .”

“What?”

“Not like the others. I mean, he was concerned, but also looked calm and . . .” Vinson sought the desired word. Found it: “Curious.”

“Calm and curious.”

“Something like that. We’re talking about a four- or five-second look, more like a glance, then he was gone.”

“Gone where?”

“You’d have to ask him. If he works for maintenance in the building or someplace close, maybe you can find him.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Harold asked.

“I think so. Yeah. I could. That’s because he was the only one who didn’t look as if he’d had a walk-on in a slasher movie.”

“We’ll put our sketch artist to work,” Sal said.

“Is that when I say to make the nose a little longer, and the eyes meaner and closer together?”

“Something like that,” Harold said.

The man behind the gauze might have smiled. “I always wanted to do that.”

The door to the hall opened and a uniformed nurse bustled in. Her name tag said she was Juanita. She was holding some rubber tubing and a small tray on which sat a surgical syringe, what looked like a stethoscope but probably wasn’t, some white pills, and half a glass of water on a white napkin. She was followed by a tall, handsome man in green scrubs.

“I’m Doctor Weiss,” the man in scrubs said. “How we feeling?”

“Are you hurt, too?” Vinson asked.

Weiss said, “Glad to see you’re well enough to be a smart ass.”

“I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going to get the dull needle.”

“Of course it does.”

“Can my wife come in?”

“Shortly.”

The nurse, smiling, made a motion with both hands as if scooping everyone other than herself and the doctor out of the room.

As Sal and Harold left, Juanita bent over Vinson and set to work. Dr. Weiss followed the two detectives out into the hall.

“How is he doing?” Sal asked, as they moved far enough away from the door to Vinson’s room not to be overheard.