Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

She found it in a few seconds, but it had a thick chain and a serious padlock on it. She looked back to see Mary struggling to catch up. She could see that there were tracks all over the field. Unless kids had changed a lot since she was in high school they would never walk an extra quarter mile just to get around a fence. She moved along the fence and saw the answer. There was a city parking lot beyond the fence, filled with plows, dump trucks, tractors, and a forage harvester parked beside a building that looked like a warehouse. The parking lot was empty of cars, but it was clear of snow because they had used the plows to push an enormous pile of snow up against the fence nearly to its top eight feet up.

Mary came up behind her, breathing deeply but not in distress. Jane said, "How are you at climbing fences?"

"Take a guess."

"I'll help you," said Jane. "All we have to do is get to the top. We can walk down." She took Mary's arm and pointedly placed her hand on a chain link above her head. She began to climb, and Jane waited for the moment to come when she decided she couldn't do it.

Mary stopped. "I don't think - "

Jane reached up, put both hands on her thighs, and boosted her higher. "Do the work with your legs. Toes in the spaces, step up. Just use your hands to hold on. Step up. Good. Step up." She climbed up after her, and when Mary reached the intimidating part, where the packed snow was above the top of the fence, she said, "Step up," held on to the fence with one hand, and pushed Mary hard with the other so that she rolled up onto the mountain of snow.

When Jane reached the top and flopped onto the snow she found Mary still lying there, breathing deeply and trying to get her heart to slow. Jane sat up for a second, then clucked down and burrowed into the snow. "Stay down," she said.

A beam of light moved across the field. Jane could see it pass above their heads, lighting up thousands of tiny snowflakes that had been blown into the air by the wind. The police car was beside the ambulance, so the beam widened in the thousand feet of empty fields and became enormous, but it was still so bright that she could see the line of adhesive the tape had left on Mary's cheek.

Mary asked, "Is it - "

"Cops," said Jane. "In a minute they'll shut the light off. When they do, don't move."

The light swept across the field, came back, continued around the horizon, and then went out. "Rest," said Jane. "Use this time to rest." They lay in the darkness and she listened. Suddenly the light came on again, swept over their heads, and shot back and forth around the field. She listened for the sound of the engine, but it didn't come. Finally the light went off. "Okay," said Jane. "Now we move." She sat up a little, slid down the hill, and waited while Mary followed.

They hurried to the far side of the lot, where the gate to the street was, and stopped. This gate was locked with the same kind of padlock and chain as the first one. She looked up at the fence. It was as high as the first, but it had coils of barbed wire strung along the top. They couldn't go back because the police wouldn't leave until they had a tow truck hooked up to the ambulance. She looked around her. There were sure to be cutting tools in the low building at the side of the lot, but breaking in would be harder than getting over a fence, and at least the fence didn't have an alarm. There were trucks, tractors, and plows all over the place, but even if she managed to hot-wire one of them to crash the gate, the sound of the engine would bring the police car across the field in twenty seconds. Then her eyes sorted out the strange shapes at the other end of the yard.

"All right," she said. "I hope you're strong, because I'll need your help."

She ran to the corner of the little compound, past the swing sets stored for the winter and the playground merry-go-rounds and over to the slides. The first two had frames of welded steel pipes that made them too heavy. The third was made of thin fiberglass in the shape of a tube, and Jane could lift the end of it by herself. They dragged it to the fence, lifted it so that the ladder was on their side and the tube went over the barbed wire and out to the street. "Want to go first?" asked Jane.

Mary climbed the ladder, slipped her legs into the tube, and flew out the other end onto the snow. Then Jane slid down and fell in the same spot. Mary was impatient to get away from the fence now, but Jane said, "If we don't move it, the cops will figure it out without having to get out of their car. Help me." They pushed the tube back over into the compound, then started down the street.

"Where are we going?" asked Mary.

"The university."

They jogged the last mile in silence. Jane set the pace again and listened for Mary's footsteps. She glanced at her watch. It was after two a.m. now, and even close to the university there were no pedestrians. Twice she saw headlights far down the street and pulled Mary with her into the dark space between two houses until the car had passed. When they finally reached the university campus, Jane slowed to a walk. She heard Mary's footsteps hit hard for two or three more steps, and then they sounded softer and slower too.

Jane walked on, studying the buildings for a long time. Finally she pointed to a long four-story building. The name on the facade was Helen Mileham Hall. Jane stopped a hundred feet away. "That wouldn't be a bad place to get out of the cold."

Mary Perkins said, "What is it?" She was so exhausted that her voice sounded almost detached.

"I think it's a women's dormitory," said Jane.

"It's the middle of the night. Won't it be locked?"

"Of course," said Jane. She wished she hadn't mentioned the cold. They were both heated from their run, but the night air was already beginning to dry the sweat on her face and leave it numb. The front door was out of the question. It led into a reception area that looked like a hotel lobby. She could see that there was an intercom and some kind of electronic locking system on the glass door. She supposed she had been in the last generation of coeds who had curfews, so probably there was no old bat to take the names of girls who came in late, but the world had gotten more dangerous for women since then, so they would have something worse, like an old bat in a guard's uniform with a .357 Magnum strapped to her hip. She walked around the building once looking for the fire doors while Mary waited. Then she heard the sound of the dryer.

As Jane walked toward it she walked into her memory. When a girl was eighteen and away from home for the first time, nights like this came now and again. The term papers and the laundry had piled up at about the same rate, and it was a Friday night near the end of the fall semester. The music and the shouting in the dorm had died out, but she wasn't ready to lie in the dark yet because even though morning would come with nauseating punctuality in a few hours, she was still eighteen and restless. She would convince herself that what she was doing was eminently practical. She could use all the laundry machines at once if she had enough quarters, and the silence and the solitude would make the term paper better.

The girl was sitting across from the dryers with her feet on a chair, underlining passages in a textbook. The laundry room was hot and humid from the washers and dryers, and she had the door propped open to let the steamy air out.

Jane hurried to the corner of the building and beckoned to Mary. Then she moved to the wall of the building, stepped close to the door, and looked at it. There was a crash bar that pulled a dead bolt out of a hole in the floor, and there was a standard spring latch that fit into the jamb. She opened her purse, pulled six dimes out of her wallet, and leaned behind the door to reach out and slide them into the hole in the floor. Then she came over to Mary and whispered. "What did you do with the tape they put over your mouth?"