Sara Paretsky - Burn Marks

I waited for the noise of doors opening or feet on concrete. When a minute had gone by with no sound, I peered around the edge of the pillar. I couldn’t see the box-like car inside the frame. Over the wind in the girders and Elena’s nervous whispers, I strained to hear. Finally I moved away from her in the dark, ignoring her piteous cry.

To my left I suddenly saw a bobbing point of light. I moved toward it cautiously, keeping my weight on my back foot with each step until I was certain I hadn’t come to some unexpected hole.

The light flickered again and went out. Ernie had mentioned a ladder in the stairwell opening. This must be Cray or some other confederate hoping to climb up and surprise us from behind.

My eyes were so accustomed to the dark that I saw the stairwell opening loom in front of me as a darker patch in the black night. I lay on my stomach and watched until the black changed again, a blob crawling up the side to the top. When a hand emerged on the deck I smashed the butt of the Smith & Wesson into it with all my strength.

Cray cried out but leaned against the ladder and brought his other hand up and fired. The bullet went wide in the night but I slid back, away from the opening, as he hoisted himself one-handed to the deck.

I aimed at the dark shape in front of me and fired. Lying awkwardly as I was, the recoil wrenched my right shoulder. I fell over but managed to hang on to the gun. Light shone on me, blinding me, and I rolled instinctively as he shot.

Somehow I managed to get to my feet and around behind one of the girders. Cray kept the light on for a moment but realized when I fired again that it made him as much a target as it did me. When the light went out I dropped to my knees and elbows and scooted to the next girder. I stopped there and listened. Elena had started talking again, in an undertone, the sound just audible above the wind.

“You can get the old woman, Cray,” Ernie called in the thread of a voice. “She’s jabbering away over here. You can find her by the babble.”

Elena whimpered but couldn’t make herself shut up.

“You still there, Wunsch?” Cray shouted back. “Keep the faith-I’ll have you down in no time.”

Cray started circling around behind me in the dark. I couldn’t keep track of where he was. I was tired and disoriented and I clung to my girder without trying to figure out his next move. Suddenly he gave a cry, a scream of such panic that my heart thudded violently.

“What happened? Where are you?” Ernie called out.

From the middle of the deck I could hear Cray screaming, his voice muffled, coming from a distance. He had fallen down the opening for the crane, but the safety nets around it had saved him.

On the Scales of Justice

I have a hard time remembering what remained of the night. I managed somehow to climb down the slats connecting the deck to the floor below. My arms trembled so violently that I don’t know how I made it-more by will than by muscle. And I got the hoist up, after a painful round of trial and error. It wasn’t easy to run at the best of times; with one hand it was pure bloody hell. And I got Elena and Ernie into the cage and lowered us down to the ground.

Furey was waiting there but he’d been joined by some uniformed cops. A passing blue-and-white had heard the gunshots and swung over to the site. They were keeping Furey company until the hoist came down. I spent a good chunk of what was left of the night in a lockup at Eleventh Street-I was in cuffs and Furey persuaded the uniformed boys that I’d resisted arrest.

Furey went off to the hospital to get his knee attended to. He had bravely stayed at the construction site in excruciating pain waiting for his pals to come down-it was just his bad luck that the patrol car had shown up first.

I couldn’t get the cops who were holding me to understand that another man was on top of the building, in the nets around the crane, and that he had the key to my handcuffs. After a while I gave up trying, I didn’t say anything at all except to tell them my name. When they shut the lockup on me I lay on the floor and went to sleep, oblivious to the clamor of the drunks around me.

They got me up about a couple of hours later. I was so sleepy and disoriented, I didn’t even try to ask where we were going-I assumed it was for early morning court calls. Instead they hustled me to the third floor, to the Violent Crimes area, to the corner office where Bobby Mallory was sitting behind his desk. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, but he’d shaved and his tie was neatly knotted.

“Is there some reason she’s still in cuffs?” Bobby asked. The men who’d escorted me didn’t know anything about it. They said they’d been told I was dangerous and to leave me locked up.

“Well, get them off before I make a report to your commander,”

He didn’t speak again until they’d found a key that would work on those cuffs. When I was free, rubbing my sore arms, he laced into me with a scorching bitterness. He went on and on about me playing at police, ruining his best men, screwing up his department until nobody knew what he was supposed to be doing. I let it wash over me, too tired, in too much pain, too overwhelmed by his fury, to try to form a response. When he’d finally exhausted himself he sat still, tears coursing down his ruddy face.

“May I go now?” I asked in a thread of a voice. “Or am I still facing charges?”

“Go. Go.” The word was a hoarse squawk. He covered his face with his right hand and shoved the left in the air as if to drive me from the room.

“The boys here wouldn’t listen to me, but there’s a man named Cray trapped at the top of the Rapelec building. He fell into the nets around the crane.” I stood up. “Can you tell me where my aunt is?”

“Leave, Vicki. I can’t stand the sound of your voice tonight.”

When I left his office and got to the Eleventh Street entrance, Lotty was waiting for me. I fell into her arms, beyond surprise or question.

In Lotty’s Nest

Lotty took the day off on Thursday to look after me. She wouldn’t let anyone near me, not Murray nor the networks, not even the federal district attorney. Good Republican appointee that he was, he was slobbering at the possibility of bringing down the Democratic county chairman. With her characteristic flair for detail, Lotty called my answering service and told them to switch calls for me through to her-but she wouldn’t let me take any.

When I woke up finally around five I remembered Mr. Contreras. Lotty bundled me into some blankets on the daybed in her living room and insisted I eat some soup before she told me her end of the adventure.

The shot and our scuffle had brought Vinnie and Rick York to the hall. They’d been busy in the back bedroom or they might have arrived soon enough to help out-or maybe to get shot themselves. Anyway, Mr. Contreras had taken the bullet in his shoulder and was able to give Rick Lotty’s number.

“He’s all right,” Lotty assured me. “It would take more than a broken shoulder to stop him-as soon as we got someone to patch him together he had to be sedated to keep from racing off to hunt for you.”

“How did you find me?” I asked from my nest on the daybed.

“I called Lieutenant Mallory. Your tiresome neighbor knew who had shot him-I gather he monitors all your male visitors?” She flashed a wicked grin. “A full-time job for him, my dean Anyway, the lieutenant was not at all disposed to intervene, but he could scarcely ignore the evidence of a man who’d been shot. He finally agreed to call me when they’d located you. I was afraid he wasn’t going to push hard enough-you had me very frightened, my dear.”