Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

In the moonlight the Near South Side looked like postwar Berlin. The lifeless shells of warehouses and factories were surrounded by mountains of brick-filled rubble. When I got out at Twenty-first and Prairie, I was shivering from the desolation of the scene. I took a flashlight from the trunk and stuck it in my jacket pocket.

I took the Smith & Wesson from my shoulder holster and crept along the shadows on Twenty-first, holding it in my right hand. The cold metal brought me little comfort. I was wound up enough to take aim at a passing alley cat. It snarled at me, its eyes glinting in the moonlight as it passed.

Even as my heart pounded I wondered how much of Elena’s panic to believe in. I remembered all the times she’d gotten Tony out of bed with urgent alarms, only to have them dissolve-revealed as the phantasms of her drinking. This might easily turn into another such evening-maybe I shouldn’t even have roused Furey.

My lingering doubts didn’t make me careless. When I got to Indiana I stayed awhile in the shadow of an abandoned auto parts dealer, straining my eyes and ears for any kind of movement. I’d worried about finding Elena’s hideout from her vague directions, but there was only one hotel on the street besides the Indiana Arms. The moonlight picked out the dead neon lights of the Prairie Shores Hotel, halfway down the block on my side of the road.

I heard a rustling across the street and knelt, the gun cocked again, but it was large plastic bag dragged loose from the rest of the garbage by the ubiquitous rats. Against my will I saw their yellow teeth tearing my exposed hands; they felt tingly and uncontrolled and I hugged them under my armpits, the gun digging into my left breast. I gritted my teeth and headed down Indiana.

Across from me loomed the burned-out hull of the Indiana Arms. The sharp night air carried the acrid scent of its charred beams to me and I fought back a sneeze. When I got to the corner I could see the pay phone but not my aunt. I prowled around the street for a few minutes, tempted to return to my bed. Finally I squared my shoulders and went over to the Prairie Shores Hotel.

Its front was boarded shut; I cautiously circled around to the back. The door there was heavily chained, but on the north side a broken window provided an easy entrance.

I shone my flashlight through the missing panes. I was looking at part of the pantry for the old kitchen. I trained the light around as much as I could see of the interior. No one was there, but a rustling and the sudden darkening of shadows along the top of the broken cabinets told me my yellow-toothed pals were.

I wished I’d worn a cap. I tried not to think of the red eyes watching me as I climbed carefully over the bent metal frame. A glass shard caught in the crotch of my jeans. I stopped to loosen the fabric and listened some more before moving again. Still no human sounds.

Once inside I picked my way carefully from the pantry to the kitchen. The old smells of grease still hung heavily there; no wonder the rats were so interested. I got lost in a maze of service rooms but came at length to a door that opened on a flight of steep stairs.

Before starting down I stopped to listen again. I shone the light on each step, not wanting to tumble through the rotten boards. Every few treads I called out softly to my aunt. I couldn’t hear her.

A hall led from the bottom of the stairs to another rabbit warren. I checked each of the rooms whose door opened but saw nothing except decayed furnishings. At the end of the hall another corridor led to the right. When I stuck my hand out to steady myself as I peered around the corner, I clawed at open air. I gulped and jumped back, but the light showed me nothing more menacing than a dumb waiter.

I called to Elena again but still got no reply. I turned out the light to make my ears work harder. I could hear nothing except the scrabbling and squealing of the rodents.

Tiptoeing, straining my ears, I moved down this side corridor. A series of rooms lined it. I tried each in turn, shining the light around, calling softly to my aunt. Some were empty, but most were stacked with rotting refuse from the old hotel-abandoned sofas with stuffing sticking out at all angles, mattresses, old iron springs. Every now and then I’d catch a movement, but when I stopped to look all I saw was red eyes glaring back.

Finally I reached the far end of the corridor, where a lifeless phone hung. It was an old black model with a dial face lined with letters, not numbers. When I replaced the receiver and lifted it again, no dial tone came. It was as dead as the building.

Anger gripped me. How dare she do this to me, call me out on a bootless errand to a rat-infested shell? I turned and began marching at a good clip back up the corridor. Suddenly I thought I heard my name. I stopped in my tracks and strained to listen.

“Vic!”

It was a hoarse whisper, coming from a room on my left. I thought I’d looked in there but I couldn’t be sure. Flinging the door open, I shone the flash around the heap of old furniture. A large mass lay on a sofa wedged in the corner. I’d missed it on my first cursory scan of the room.

“Elena!” I called sharply. “Are you there?”

I knelt next to the couch. My aunt was lying on her side, wrapped in a filthy blanket. Her duffel bag leaned against the wall, the violet nightdress still poking from one side. Relief and anger swept through me in equal measures. How could she pass out after calling for me in such a way?

I shook her roughly. “Elena! Wake up. We’ve got to go.”

She didn’t respond. Her head lolled lifelessly as I shook her. My stomach churning, I laid her gently down. She was still breathing in short shallow snorts. I felt her head. Along the back was a tender swollen mass. A blow-from a fall or from a person?

I heard someone move behind me. Panicking, I pulled the gun from my holster again. Before I could get to my feet the night around me broke into a thousand points of light and I fell into blackness.

The Lady’s Not for Burning

My headache had returned full force. I tried desperately to be sick. My empty stomach could produce only a little bile, which left me more nauseated than ever. I was so sick I didn’t want to move, but I knew I would feel better if I went to the kitchen and put some compresses on my aching head and drank some Coke. My mother had always spoon-fed me Coke for a stomachache. It was a miracle cure.

I sat up and got so fierce a stab of pain that I cried out. And realized beneath the pain that I wasn’t home in bed- I had been lying on a couch, one that smelled so bad I couldn’t lie back down even with my aching head.

I sat with my head on my knees. I was on a couch with no cushions. When I stuck out a gingerly hand I could feel the tufts of padding spring out. My groping hand came on a leg. I recoiled so fast that the lights danced in front of my eyes again and I retched. When the spasm subsided I reached out tentatively and felt it again. A thin bony knob of a kneecap, the hem of a thin cotton housedress.

Elena. She’d called me, gotten me to the burned-out shell of the Indiana Arms. And then? How had I come to be unconscious? It hurt my head to think. I stuck up a hand and touched the locus of the pain. A nice lump, the consistency of raw liver and about as appealing. I’d been hit.? Or had I fallen? I couldn’t remember and it was too much work trying.

But Elena was hurt too. Or maybe passed out. I fumbled in the dark to find her chest. I could feel her heart beneath the thin fabric. It kept up a shallow, irregular beat. And she had a head injury. She’d been hit, someone had called my name so I’d think it was she calling, and all the while she was lying in here unconscious. And then he (she? that hoarse whisper had sounded like Elena) had knocked me out.