Ridley Pearson - Chain of Evidence

“They chain ’em shut at night, Ivy,” came the casual voice of Zeller from somewhere out on the floor. “You’re shit out of luck.”

Dart checked the padlock-number coded. The speed key wouldn’t do him any good. But there had to be at least one exit out of here-Zeller’s planned escape route. But where? He instinctively moved toward the back, away from Seymour Street. Where? he kept thinking as he moved along the row of dryers installed cheek by jowl. If all the exits are chained … He tried to make sense of this, knowing that Zeller had more than just the rooftop exit at his disposal.

Not the roof … not the doors … He spotted it then-a black shape in the farthest corner of the vast room: a drain.

The faster he ran, the larger the building seemed to him. The back wall was not drawing any closer. Impossibly, the far wall seemed to move away from him.

“Bad choice,” Zeller hollered, his voice echoing in the cavernous structure. “Bad thinking, Ivy.”

Dart glanced around, realizing he had entered a box canyon of sorts, the brick wall to his left, the line of interconnected dryers to his right. The dryers were too sheer, too high to attempt to climb. His only other way was to reach the drain and hope it was Zeller’s exit-or turn around and get back out into the center of the building where he would be less confined. He limped badly the harder he ran-he wasn’t going to reach the drain in time.

Running at a sprint, he looked right: the machines; he looked left, the wall. He looked right again …

And then the obvious hit him.

Out of breath, Dart stopped. He was facing a clothes dryer.

Dart pulled himself up into the clothes dryer, drew his legs in, and curled into the all-too-familiar position. Thrown into a storm of memory, he all but lost track of where one life left off and the other began: suddenly ten years old again, the footsteps avidly pursuing him. He was a driver who had lost hold of the wheel, a pilot who had lost track of the horizon. Bitter fear seared his throat.

The latch mechanism on the commercial machine was far more serious than what he had faced as a child. His fingers studied it quickly, attempting to decipher its secrets. Whereas his family machine had had a friction catch, this behemoth, used for carrying a hundred pounds of wet laundry, closed via a locking tongue operated solely from the outside. To get out, Dart needed to block the tongue from catching. Removing his wallet from his back pocket required an act of gymnastics. A credit card was too thick; a photo, too thin. His fingers located his laminated driver’s license, held it firmly against the metal jamb, and drew the door slowly closed so that the springed latch was held out of its hole by the card. Dart snugged the door into place, firmly shut.

He was swallowed in a darkness and smell whose familiarity overpowered him. Rationally he knew where he was-who he was. But somehow the past won out. In the darkness of the dryer, a film played before his eyes and he saw his drunken mother stumbling toward him. For Dart, there suddenly was no Walter Zeller, only memories of terror. It felt as if his lungs were burning. His throat tickled. He was hiding from the Beast. Nothing, but nothing, would make him give himself away.

Her footsteps grew louder. His heart swelled painfully, choking him, beating as fast as the clanging wheels of a runaway train. His body steamed with sweat. She’ll kill you! a voice inside him warned. This time she’ll kill you.

He’ll kill you! a deeper voice echoed. He has nothing to lose.

White sparks filled his vision like fireflies. The smell of his own fear overpowered the tangy lint-flavored metal that had meant sanctuary. The back of his shirt was damp with his blood and his ankle throbbed. The sound of shoes approaching-dragging on the cement floor-grew closer.

The Beast was upon him.

The person out there was so close Dart could hear the breathing. He felt a fool for sitting awaiting his fate-a passive acceptance, a relinquishing of control. He wanted to do something, not just sit by and await the hell that might come.

“Bad choice, Ivy,” Zeller shouted, bringing him back.

A nearby dryer kicked into action. Then another switched on, closer this time.

“Round and round we go,” Zeller said. One by one, he was turning on all the machines. He intended to bake Dart out.

Yet another dryer roared into action.

Incredibly close! he realized, imagining the horror of being trapped inside a machine capable of that kind of severe heat. He began a slow but even count: one thousand one, one thousand two … The heat generated was enough to turn water to steam-he would burn in minutes.

But if he timed it right …

One thousand five, one thousand six …

He racked his brain trying to dredge up an image of the front of the machine. Were the controls to the right or left of the door? First he thought left; then he saw a totally different image that had the controls to the right. Which to trust?

“You won’t like it,” Zeller warned, shouting above the din. He was exceptionally close.

One thousand nine …

The wall behind Dart shook and rumbled as this, the next machine over, was switched on. Nine seconds between machines.

He began the count all over again: One thousand one …

The ensuing noise was deafening, too loud to overhear Zeller’s footsteps. Nearly too loud to maintain the rhythmic count in his head. It would come down to timing.

One thousand six …

He cocked his leg back, tucking it up into his chest. With his right hand he needed to make a choice: his weapon, or a firm grip on the rim of the drum so that he could get out quickly? He wanted out.

Above all, he wanted out.

One thousand eight …

He kicked the door open with all his strength and knew immediately that he had connected with Zeller. He heard the big man cough out “Umph” as he went down hard and lost his grip on the shotgun. It slid a few feet away.

Dart leapt out forgetting about his bad ankle, and collapsed to the cement floor as his ankle gave out.

Zeller’s head was bleeding. It left a smeared trail as he wiggled and stretched for the shotgun.

Dart, still down himself, reached for his weapon.

Zeller managed to snag the stock of the shotgun with his right hand. He sucked it toward him. The barrel moved like a huge rotating gun turret until Dart was looking directly into the sole dark eye of the end of the barrel. Dart’s sidearm was aimed at Zeller’s face. No more than a yard apart, both men motionless, lying on the cold cement floor.

“Long time, no see,” Zeller said loudly, above the roar of the dryers. The side of his face was bleeding badly, though all head wounds were bleeders. Dart intended to say something, but the words caught in his throat. “Let me explain something,” the man continued, “because you always needed to hear things straight. You never could get things right the first time around.”

“Bullshit,” Dart managed to cough out. He felt on the verge of tears. Zeller was going to pull the trigger-he felt certain of it. His life had come down to this one fragile moment-the one man he had come to respect in life intended to kill him. He felt his own finger grip more firmly on the trigger. Another fractional pressure and the back of Zeller’s head would explode against the brick wall.

“You ain’t bringing me in,” Zeller announced proudly. “Fuck that look, Ivy. Save it for the Jordons out on Seymour Street. What I’m telling you is that you ain’t gonna do it. Not because you can’t, but because I’m not going to let you. You failed , you see-”