Donald Harstad: Code 61

Without a road or alley directly behind the buildings, most of them had constructed their own little footbridges across to their loading areas. Easy access, as they say, but easy for burglars as well. For that reason, I had gotten very, very familiar with the area over the years.

The lighting sucked. One yellowish orange light at the road bridge, and one about a block away. Not much room for them, either, because of the hundred-fifty-foot limestone bluff looming up on my left. It was sheer, naked rock for about fifty feet, and then brush and trees began sprouting all the way to the top. The builders had to squeeze the road in, and the whole area was a sandwich of necessity. Bluff, road, conduit, buildings. No room for anything else.

I squeezed the rubberized transmit button of my walkie-talkie. “Which one you in, Byng?” It was really hard to differentiate the various stores from the rear. Looking up, most of them had some light visible in the second floor. Most third floors in this block were empty, mainly because the heating in the winter was so expensive. Even as I spoke, I saw him at one of the windows on the second floor.

“Up here, Three,” he said. Very faint. I'd forgotten to turn my walkie-talkie volume back up.

I looked closely at the back of his building. A poorly maintained external wooden stair led up the back, to a very narrow platform at the second floor. From there an iron ladder that was bolted to the brick wall rose up to the roof. Great. If the victim had fled upward, this particular cop was going to have to meet her when she came down. I really do hate heights.

“Byng, you got a location for the suspect?”

“Negative, Three. All I got is what your office said. White male with teeth.”

“Okay. I don't see the victim here. You got any better ideas where I might-”

I was interrupted by a female voice. “Help!” It sounded like it was coming from the building, but there was something odd about it.

I played my flashlight along the rows of windows, hoping to see her. Byng stuck his flashlight out the window where he was, and played it down toward the ground. I got a queasy feeling in my stomach. If he was inside and thought it had come from outdoors, and I was outside and thought it had come from up where he was…

The roof. She could be on the roof.

The rear of the store was four windows wide at the second-floor level. Usually, there was a pair to each apartment, with the hall between. The door at the top of the stair very likely marked the division between apartments.

I looked at the reddish brown wooden walkway over the conduit. Nothing special, and absolutely no indication of a foot track on its deck. Its rails were just two-by-fours with peeling paint. I shined my flashlight down into the wide ditch, and checked the damp, accumulated silt as far as I could see. No foot tracks there, either. Too bad. Tracks in the silt had solved at least two burglaries for me in the past. I shined my flashlight up on to the rear of the buildings, left to right. There were all sorts of color variations, pieces of black felt and tar paper dangling from unused windows and old doors. One in particular, a door that just opened up to emptiness because the stair had collapsed years ago, seemed to be packed with a black drop cloth.

I checked the roofline for any ropes or fittings. Just making sure we didn't have somebody who had dropped in, so to speak. There weren't any. Good.

“Where do you want me?” I said into the mike on my shoulder.

“Nobody down there?”

“Nobody I can see.”

“Why don't you come on up the back way? I think… it sounds like she's above me someplace.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm going up the next flight, see if I can get to the roof from the third floor.”

Great. I'm not exactly slight, and I really didn't want to haul my 270 pounds up those chancy wooden steps. Damn.

I took a deep breath. “Be right up,” I said.

As I reached the narrow platform at the top, I paused and looked back down, illuminating the area with my flashlight. All the way into the bottom of the drainage ditch. Looking down probably thirty-five or forty feet. Instant vertigo.

I grabbed the railing, and forced myself to look back toward the building. Wow. I hate when that happens. I turned as I let go of the rail, and was at the door in one step, trying to look casual. It's not that I'm ashamed of my little height problem, but it's bad for the image if you're a cop. I took another deep breath, and forced myself to concentrate on the door. Swell. It was about as wide as the damned platform, and opened outward. I had to take a half step back, onto that platform again, before I could get the stupid door open. When I did, the platform creaked. I turned sideways and squeezed around the partially opened door, and found myself in a dim hallway, between two apartments, just as I had assumed. There was an open door on my left, leading into a surprisingly nice, well-lighted kitchen area. The door on my right was closed. Clear at the other end of the hallway was a stair, leading to the third floor. There was an older woman standing near the stair.

“He thinks she's up on the roof,” she said loudly.

“He's gone upstairs to see if he can get to the roof, but I told him he can't.”

“Thanks,” I said under my breath.

I heard the voice again, very muted this time, as I was now inside. But there was no mistaking it. Not panicky, but frightened.

Byng apparently heard it as well. Excited, I could hear his voice thundering from upstairs, and on my walkie-talkie at the same time.

“The roof! She's on the roof! Get to the roof!”

Well, I was closest to the goddamned ladder.

I turned, and headed back out onto that creaking platform. I stood for a second, looking at the ladder in the beam of my flashlight. Rusty iron. Bolted to the brick, but I could see the thick rust around the bolts, and some orangeish stuff where the bolts had worked in the brick. Shit.

I could hear Byng's running steps as he came off the stair at the far end of the building, and started down the hall toward my platform. There wasn't room for both of us.

I took a very deep breath, slipped my flashlight in my belt, grabbed the sides of the ladder, and took one step up. “Not too bad. Not too bad”-I kept repeating that as I took the second step.

I let my breath out. Piece of cake. Well, so far. The problem was that this ladder went up a whole 'nother floor, and then to the roof. I took another breath, held it, and kept going. Then, about six or seven steps up, I felt the ladder shift. Instant vertigo again. I could feel myself pressing against the ladder rungs, my hands beginning to hurt as they squeezed the flat side rail. “Keep yourself against the ladder, Carl. Press against the ladder, and your weight won't overbalance it and tear it away from the wall,” I whispered to myself. Everything in me said to go back down. I honestly think that, if I hadn't been in uniform, I couldn't have done it. But I went up. Over the years, I've learned that, if I can convince myself that I'm pushing the building down into the ground with each step, as opposed to me rising farther and farther above the ground, I can sometimes fool myself all the way to the top. I mean, I know I'm fooling myself, but with sufficient concentration that doesn't matter. I started to do that now. One step at a time, I'd grab the next rung in a death grip, and then gingerly shift the opposite foot up one rung. Pushing the huge building down into the ground. Ridiculous, but it worked. All I needed was concentration. I was moving as fast as I could, and still not getting more than half an inch from the wall. Progress. My thigh muscles were getting shaky, and my forearms hurt from squeezing, but I was going up.

Then I felt the ladder begin to vibrate, and heard Byng's voice below me. “I'm right behind you, Carl.”