Michael Palmer - A Heartbeat Away

Angie charged ahead. The killer, scrambling to his feet, might have gotten her right there, had he not slipped and fallen heavily into a puddle of garbage mixed with freezing slush.

Still, with the man quickly regaining his feet, Angie knew the chase was almost over. She was too far from either end of the alley to make it.

“Help!” she screamed. “Someone help me, please!”

Her cries were swallowed by the dense winter night.

A fire escape seemed her only chance. The way up to the nearest one was the built-in rungs on the side of one of the narrow Dumpsters, standing no more than eight feet away.

Gasping for breath, Angie grasped the top rung and hauled herself up until she was standing on the rim of the Dumpster, six feet from the ground and another six feet or so from the steel ladder at the base of the slatted stairway.

“End of the line, senorita, ” the man said, breathing heavily.

He reached for her ankle, but just as he did, Angie took a single deep breath and launched herself upward. The cold air and her winter jacket held her back, making the difficult leap almost impossible. She was certain she had missed, and was already wondering what she could possibly do next when the fingers of her right hand hit against the edge of the lowest rung of the fire escape ladder and curled around the metal. There was no way she would be able to hold on for more than a second or two, but that was enough. Her weight began to pull the rusted ladder down, far enough so that her feet reconnected with the rim of the Dumpster. She adjusted her grip, hooked the fingers of her other hand around the icy metal, and pulled with all her strength.

In what seemed like slow motion, the ladder swung down.

Her foot was on the second rung when she felt the killer clawing at her leg once more. This time, she pulled away easily and climbed upward toward the first landing. She screamed and screamed again for help, aware that any misstep now would mean her death.

To her dismay the windows on the building remained dark and closed. By the time she reached the first landing, the man was on the ladder. The windows facing the landing were barred. From now on it would be stairs—slatted, freezing metal that would make every step treacherous.

At the second-floor landing the windows weren’t barred. She considered and quickly abandoned the notion of smashing one of them, and trying to climb or dive inside someone’s apartment. The killer was way too close, and two people had already died because of her.

Keeping her hands in contact with the railing, she pounded upward past one landing, then another. Blood sprayed from her nose with every frozen breath. She pawed at it with the back of her hand and coughed it from the back of her throat. Still, the distance between her and the killer seemed to be widening. Perhaps his sodden clothes were slowing him down. Perhaps he was hurt. Perhaps it was all those hours she had spent on the stationary bike.

God, but she missed her apartment.…

Her dizziness was getting more intense, and her breathing was growing more difficult, but she could hear that her pursuer was laboring also. She was reconsidering smashing a window, when she looked above and saw movement. A woman was poking out from one of the windows on the next landing.

“Help me!” Angie cried out to her. “Please!”

The woman slipped back inside the room, but the narrow window remained open. Angie dove through it, landing awkwardly, hitting her already battered forehead and smearing the hardwood floor with blood. A wizened woman stood in a corner, illuminated by a small bedside lamp. Angie suddenly realized where she was. Riverside! She’d explored the place just hours ago. She knew the room and she knew its occupant.

It was Chen Su—Sylvia Chen’s mother.

“Mrs. Chen, hide! You’ve got to hide!”

Angie heard the killer on the landing. It had been a mistake to lead him in here. Now she had to lead him away.

To her right, the aged woman stood placidly, her Alzheimer’s disease apparently shielding her from the terror of the situation.

“Go!” Chen Su ordered suddenly. “Go quickly!”

Angie hesitated, then raced from the room at the moment she heard her pursuer climbing through the window.

“She not here! Not here!” she heard Chen cry out.

“Shut up, old woman!” the man snapped.

“Not here … not here … not here!”

Chen’s room was at the end of the sixth floor, nearest to the freight elevator. The long corridor to the other rooms was totally deserted. Angie headed for the elevator, hoping to use it to escape. As she reached it and pulled the doors apart, she remembered that Mei Wu had used a key to start it. Counting on the relic had been a dumb idea in the first place.

“I said SHUT UP!”

The killer’s furious words echoed out into the hallway.

A moment later, Angie heard the woman get slapped and fall to the floor.

She sickened at the sound.

It had been wrong to put Chen Su in harm’s way. Now, it was time to end it. It was time to surrender before the poor woman or anyone else got killed. Angie took a step back toward room 603. Then she stopped.

Even without the key, the elevator could be of use.

Angie took a single step inside. The perilous gap in the floor at the rear of the car was as she remembered.

There was a second slap from room 603 followed by the sound of the armoire doors being yanked open.

“Not here!” she again heard Chen say. “No one here! No one here!”

Angie set her red knit cap on the floor of the car, a foot from the gap. Then she grabbed one of two wheelchairs resting against a nearby wall, and ducked around the corner beyond the elevator, looking back toward room 603. A moment later, the killer emerged, dragging the old woman by her hair.

“Come out, senorita, or I kill this nice lady right here, right now,” he said. “Scream and she dies too.”

Angie kept perfectly still. Then she heard the man laugh.

“End of the line,” he said.

Angie could hear him moving toward her and the elevator.

Chen Su was still continuously whimpering, “Not here.… Not here.…”

Angie took a chance and craned around the corner enough to see that the killer had let the woman go and was now approaching the gloomy elevator car with little caution. At the door, he paused, scanning inside. Then he spied her bright cap and stepped in toward it.

Angie hesitated just a beat. Then she swung the wheelchair around the corner and began a sprint toward the car. The man was on one knee, picking up the cap and then peering over the edge of the gap in the floor. He turned when she was just a few feet away, but he was twisted and off balance, and his reaction was far too late. The wheelchair slammed into his mid-back, and he went down. A second ramming, and he was into the gap.

At the last possible moment, the fingers of his gloved left hand gained a hold on the edge of the steel floor … then, as Angie watched from above, he swung his right hand up and those fingers tightened over the rim as well.

Glaring up at her, not saying a word, he swung one leg back and was able to gain purchase with it against the brick wall of the shaft. He pushed himself up one inch … then another. Now, one hand was over the rim and flat on the floor of the car.

Even at such a disadvantage, his scar was menacing.

Angie had never physically hurt another human being let alone murdered someone. Dizzy and battered, she stared down at the man. Good or bad, she was thinking, there had been far too much killing already. Far too much death.

The killer’s leg continued to give him support. Now, his second hand was fully on the steel floor, inching forward.