Linda Fairstein - Cold Hit

I was biting the inside of my cheek so hard that I tore through the thin membrane and could taste blood in my mouth. I put my right hand in my jacket pocket and began to play with the case of Jake’s razor blades, sliding one out the open end of the container and squeezing it between two fingers. I thought of Preston Mattox’s description of Deni, so feminine looking but such a fighter, and his sorrowful certainty that she would have struggled against her attacker. For some women, resistance saves them from the completion of the assault, but for others it causes the attacker to use even more force to accomplish his goal.

“There’s an object lesson in all this, Ms. Cooper.” Wrenley held his revolver up for a moment for me to see, as a reminder. “I’m going to tuck this back in my waistband during my short freedom ride, but I know you’re clever enough to understand that it’s not smart to make me angry.”

Frank Wrenley was standing at the top of the stairwell, lowering his arm from in front of my face as I took my fingers out of my pocket. With a single stroke, I sliced at his hand with one of the sharp cutting edges of the razor blade. The gun fell onto the steps beneath him and clattered to the floor below. Wrenley grabbed his wrist and howled in pain.

I ran as fast as I could go, in the direction of the double glass doors that surrounded the Hi-Line Railroad ties and opened out onto the antiquated structure leading downtown, several stories high above the streets of Chelsea. Wrenley had been at the top of the stairs, blocking my way to the patrol car in the rear of the building. I didn’t waste time; he might have reached the gun before I did, which would have been deadly. I knew I had temporarily disarmed him, but I also guessed the wound had not disabled him completely.

The bolt affixed to the exit yielded easily to a twist of my hand. I yanked it back and was met by a blast of the hot August air as I escaped onto the tracks. For once-I prayed silently-don’t let Chapman’s stories be full of their usual exaggeration. I was trusting his brief oral history of the neighborhood to make my dash away from this callous killer, and I needed Chapman’s facts to be right.

The rusted iron frame of the deserted railway rose on thick beams over Twenty-second Street and stretched out ahead, cutting through the center of the buildings opposite me. The track bed was wider across than most small tenements in the city. Looking down at the littered ground, I chose a path directly between the parallel lines that were vestiges of old track, hoping to avoid tripping over pieces of wood and steel that were obscured by weeds and garbage of all sorts.

I screamed for help. I was headed south, and Brannigan and Lazarro were parked on the north side of Caxton Due. I knew they couldn’t see or hear me as I ran, but I was sure I could attract the attention of someone who would call for assistance. “HELP! POLICE!” I yelled as I crossed to the far side of Twenty-second Street, looking down for signs of life amidst the vans that had congested the entire block since before I had arrived at the gallery. I gasped for breath, holding on to the edge of the building adjacent to the tracks, but could see no people on the pavement below. Wrenley was charging at me from the open glass doors of Caxton Due.

I started jogging again, slowing somewhat as I zigzagged around holes in the skeleton of the trail, afraid I would catch my foot and wedge myself in a crevice from which I’d be unable to retreat. There were shards of broken glass and dirty hypodermic needles, discarded sneakers and dead pigeons, and I danced around objects on the obstacle course, wanting none of them to bring me down in flight.

Racing through the valley of warehouses that rose above the tracks on either side of me, I emerged onto Twenty-first Street, stopping to peer down and repeat my cries for help. Kids were playing ball at the far end of the block, near Eleventh Avenue, and they stopped to look as one of them heard and pointed up at me. “POLICE!” I shouted to them, not knowing if they could make out my words. I glanced back to see Wrenley gaining on me, so I ran again.

There was open iron grillwork on the side of the guardrail at the next intersection. I gave a fleeting thought to climbing over and trying to lower myself down from it. I was still too high off the street to jump, but perhaps I could cling to a ledge until police arrived. Then I saw the rolls of barbed-wire fencing directly below me, spitting their jagged edges upward, so I propelled myself on.

Wrenley was getting closer. His route was a more reckless one than mine, straightforward and relentless in pursuit. Taller buildings rose around me as I followed the next strip of tracks, the intense glare of the sun briefly lost to the shade of the brick walls.

I heard a grunt from behind me and ignored my own directive not to look back. Wrenley had tripped on something and fallen to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I surged ahead and ran on past the giant warehouses, onto a long open stretch of track. I must have been below Nineteenth Street by now. In the distance I could hear the faint wail of sirens. I had no idea how remote they were, or any hope that they would reach me in the maze of one-way streets.

Lowering my eyes to the pavement below in search of the blue-and-white patrol cars that might be on their way, I saw only the tall traffic signs on the nearest corner, their bright red flashers urging me on. don’t walk.

The length of the run had not been enough to slow me down, but the dense humidity and August heat were oppressive. I was gasping for air and felt like my body was running on fumes, trying to find oxygen in the stillness of the stale afternoon.

Wrenley was closing in again. I didn’t have to turn my head to see him, but I could hear his labored panting over the noise coming from my own chest. We were somewhere below Seventeenth Street, and the entire structure of the railroad lay out before me, curving slowly around to the east, away from the surrounding buildings.

I felt the tug on the tail of my jacket a split second before Wrenley pushed me down from the rear, landing with me in a tangle of legs and arms. My knees slammed against the metal tracks as I tried hopelessly to break the fall. The palms of my hands stung as they landed on pieces of rusted metal, rocks, and debris I couldn’t identify. I pushed up and kicked one leg out back behind me, smacking it against Wrenley’s chin or chest-I couldn’t see which-drawing a groan as his head snapped back.

As I raised myself up on my feet, I grabbed at one of the empty beer bottles scattered along the path and carried it in my hand as I resumed my gallop, heading to the section of the Hi-Line that crossed out over Tenth Avenue.

I was hugging the left side of the railing as the elevation passed over the piece of sidewalk edging the wide thoroughfare. I knew the danger that slowing down would bring Wrenley closer to me, but I also knew that this main artery running below me, four lanes wide, would be my most obvious chance to get help. I had no idea how much farther the tracks ran before they would corner me at the dead end of a brick wall on some abandoned tenement.

As I looked down I could see the mesh fencing and barbed wire that bordered a parking lot directly below me. Beyond that, for the first time since I began my run from the gallery, I was free of the prickly metal underpass that would have ripped my skin apart had I landed on it.

I was even with the curb of the sidewalk below me as I looked up the broad avenue. Moving against the sparse flow of uptown traffic were two patrol cars coming at us, lights spinning furiously atop them and sirens screaming their appearance.

I stopped at that point and stuck one foot in the iron gridwork of the side rail, lifting my other leg over the top, half dangling above the street, hoping to make it easier for the cops to see me as they approached, and harder for Wrenley to get to me. My right hand was still clutching the bottle, and with my left I tried to balance against the top of a billboard frame that was posted along the rail.