Blunt Impact

by Lisa Black

  ‘What did I tell you? The first instinct when you get to a high place is to throw something off.’

  ‘But a person?’

  Jack still had a good grip on the gun and held it loosely pointed toward her. ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

  ‘No!’

  He seemed to give this serious thought. It made the calm tone of his voice sound even crazier when he said, ‘Well, then, I really don’t think you’d understand.’

  She took a deep breath. Physical force had proven pathetically inadequate. Try talking. ‘Was Sam the first person you killed?’

  He smiled, which made him look indescribably creepy. ‘The first is always so special.’

  ‘Why Sam?’

  ‘Why not Sam? If you had – that’s right, you’d never seen her alive. She shook her ass at me every day for months now, but when I decide to take the bait she slaps my hand.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Perhaps he liked talking about it, or he just thought it would accomplish the impossible and frighten her even more than she already was.

  ‘Let’s see, Reader’s Digest Version . . . She’d smile and flick her hair, but then the whistle would blow and she’d disappear. I’m speaking figuratively, of course, we don’t really have a whistle. But she loved this place. I’d see her stand by the edge and look out, get that breeze to blow her hair back like she was in some kind of shampoo commercial, that sun kissing her skin, and she’d look out at the city like she had a freakin’ diamond tiara on her head and it all belonged to her. She’d do it when no one else was around, but when you work up high, you see everything. People think we’re nuts, but we see everything. Like God.’

  The lift came to a stop. ‘Please watch your step,’ Jack told them as he backed on to the thirty-first floor. ‘Keep hand and arms inside the car and remember, if you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll shoot you a couple times in not very comfortable places. Are we on the same page?’

  Theresa didn’t answer, too busy trying to climb to her feet with shaking legs and Ghost still wrapped around her waist.

  ‘Kid? You listening?’

  Theresa said that the child could hear him and stepped carefully off the lift. At least it stopped the rain from pelting their faces. Jack directed them toward the north stairwell. ‘It’s no fun if you don’t go all the way to the top, don’t you think?’

  The stairwell. Higher ground with dark corners. Maybe she still had a chance.

  Keep him talking. ‘So you convinced her to come here with you?’

  ‘But then she got persnickety, somehow palmed a screwdriver that must have been rattling around in that Camry. When we got inside the building, the bitch stabbed me.’

  ‘In the side. You told me it was a spud wrench.’ Theresa and Ghost started up the steps, feeling each riser. ‘Very clever, getting an alibi out there in case I decided to test the smear of blood on the lift.’

  ‘I’m a clever dude. And I wasn’t lying, we gash ourselves with wrenches and sleever bars all the time. So then I brought her up to twenty-three – she was struggling with me so I just gave up and stopped there.’

  They reached the first landing, and the turn. If she turned and kicked him now, she and Ghost could dash across the floor – to where? The lift was one floor down. If they jumped—

  ‘She kept fighting me, the idiot. I didn’t have a gun then – I mean, not with me. But she wasn’t anywhere near as tough as she thought she was, and too skinny to hold that much booze.’

  —they’d have to hit a five-foot square platform that was ten feet below them and approximately three hundred feet off the ground. Theresa didn’t think it was possible to feel any more terrified, but at the image a fresh wave of sweat pricked out of her pores.

  And her alternative would be . . .?

  She turned the corner, the darkest point in the stairwell.

  Suddenly a flash of light blinded her, too long for lightning, and for one surging moment she thought help had arrived. Frank had come, or Ian, and—

  No. Jack held a mini-flashlight in his free hand, aiming it right at her eyes. She could only see the outline of his legs, too far away from her for any chance of a strike. ‘Keep going.’

  ‘She’s exhausted.’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘I’m exhausted. We can only move so fast.’

  ‘I bet you’d find a mysterious store of energy if I shoot at your ankles. But that’s OK, take your time. No one knows we’re here. We’ve got all night, and I’m kind of enjoying this.’

  Theresa moved up the next few steps, with nearly all of Ghost’s body weight hanging off her waist. The thirty-second floor opened to her left, but if she ran for it Jack would fire before she got five feet. On top of that it had no floor, only a rebar and metal mesh framework stretched between the girders and she wasn’t even sure it would hold her weight. Another flash of electrical discharge showed her a small crate and some scattered tools perched on a central X formed by the girders – much too far away for her to reach. With no weapon and no escape route, only one plan came to mind: somehow she had to get Jack over the edge of the building. She would probably have to get shot to accomplish this, but she had some chance of surviving a gunshot. She would not survive a three-hundred-foot fall.

  First she had to get free to move.

  ‘Ghost, let go of me. I’ll hold your hand. Hang on to my hand.’ She pulled the girl’s arms from her waist as they walked, gently removing them and placing Ghost’s right hand in her left. She squeezed, as a note of encouragement, and the girl clung tightly enough to cut off the circulation to her digits. Jack’s flashlight provided just enough light to see the steps in front of them.

  ‘I don’t want to fall.’ Ghost’s voice sounded too tight to allow tears. ‘Please.’

  ‘You won’t fall. I won’t let you.’ Theresa raised her voice a notch. ‘So Samantha struggled with you. Because she didn’t want to see the city lights in your company, or because she knew what you planned to do?’

  Jack answered from behind her, the light trained unerringly on her plodding body. ‘She had no idea what I planned because I had no idea what I planned. The bitch just thought she was too good for me, is all. A drunk slut, and she was too good for me.’

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe you frightened her.’

  ‘Gee, that’s nice of you to say. Keep going, we’ve got another flight.’

  ‘Maybe Sam could feel what you were planning to do, even if you couldn’t. She didn’t reject you. You scared her.’

  ‘With good reason, as it turns out. Just a few more steps, dear, come on.’

  The risers ended and she had no where to go but the thirty-third floor, consisting of the same girders-and-meshwork she had seen below, and she stopped, preferring to keep her feet on the solid concrete of the stairwell.

  They were at the top. The rain and air currents whipped at them with ferocious energy; what she’d felt on the zip lift had just been a taste. Beyond the edge the city spread around them, a glittering panorama of structures and textures, human sounds and even the crashing lake drowned out by gusts of wind. Drops of water pelted her skin like darts.

  ‘Keep going,’ Jack said.

  ‘Where? There’s no floor. That mesh isn’t going to hold me.’

  ‘Don’t know till you try.’ Much closer to her than she had realized, he pushed her forward with one violent shove.

  Her body flew out on to the open floor, pulling Ghost with her.

  The rebar and mesh patchwork forming the floor sank underneath her feet with a sickening lurch, but she did not fall through. Too late she realized it would have been better if she had – only ten feet of space to the next floor, a floor that Jack wouldn’t be on—

  ‘See? There’s wooden braces under the mesh. What do you think keeps the concrete from dripping out when we pour it? Honestly, Theresa, for a scientist sometimes I wonder about you. Turn left. I want to show you where little Sam landed.’

  ‘I know where she landed. I scrape
d her flesh off the concrete.’

  ‘Temper, temper,’ he muttered. ‘You’re not going to get into heaven with that attitude.’

  She and Ghost staggered across the wet spongy floor, perched out in the open atop a three-hundred-foot lightning rod. Twenty feet to the edge and she had no idea what to do. She saw nothing around to use as a weapon, no loose tools, nothing but her own body and her wit.

  Hah. They were doomed.

  And she would never find out what had been bothering Rachael.

  ‘Why did you follow Ghost home? Why did you tell her you were her father?’ Theresa had a good guess, but anything to keep him talking. She had to practically shout over the weather.

  ‘I needed the screwdriver back. I know about DNA too, you know. But I also needed to know if she could identify me. She shows up on the site. She shows up at my bar. I couldn’t take the chance that I’d run into her some day and have her scream holy hell.’

  ‘Who would listen to her anyway? She’s just a little girl.’ Theresa squeezed the kid’s hand, to let her know that she didn’t mean it, though she doubted Ghost cared much by this point. Their steps had slowed until they were barely moving, and yet the edge came closer. ‘She doesn’t even know your name. Let her go.’

  Ghost’s hand tightened on hers, in a spasm of fear, but whether for herself or for Theresa’s sake, she could not know.

  ‘Stop,’ he said. She and Ghost were five feet from the edge. ‘Turn around.’

  She did, slowly, carefully on the uneven and shifting ground, switching Ghost’s hand from her left to her right. Lightning flashed, illuminating the man in shades of black and bluish white.

  ‘This is the fun part,’ Jack told her.

  FORTY-TWO

  Angela watched, eyes widening, as Frank listened to Ian Bauer. The attorney’s rising tones were easily audible, and she didn’t look away until her desk phone rang.

  Then she interrupted her partner’s frantic questioning of the man to say: ‘Report of shots fired in the vicinity of the construction site. Maybe it’s thunder.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Frank said.

  Boonie, the boss and the boss’s bodyguard pulled up to the fence.

  ‘Wait,’ Boonie said, kneeling up and peeking over the front seat like some little kid.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I closed that gate when I left.’

  ‘So maybe the guy left it open when he left. I don’t see no cop cars.’

  ‘Oh,’ Boonie said, feeling foolish. The shock of Damon’s death was wearing off – death came often in their line of work, you couldn’t let personal grief get in the way of thinking straight – and he didn’t want to act the bitch in front of the boss. So he straightened up and opened the van door, led the way into the site. Truth be told, he wasn’t afraid of the killer, not with the boss and his bodyguard in tow; they would have four pieces between them, and of course Boonie had his own. Whoever killed Damon would be a piece of Swiss cheese two seconds after they met.

  But running into the cops with a dead body, two convicted felons and a load of stolen copper pipe did worry him. So he stopped dead, his body already soaked, when he heard the sirens. They hadn’t even reached Damon’s body, were standing out in the open area to the south of the building with only a backhoe and a pile of beams for cover. It didn’t seem like enough, not from the killer, not from the cops. Boonie’s heart began to thud against the inside of his ribs.

  ‘Well that –’ the boss had stopped as well – ‘changes things.’

  Just then they heard a gunshot and a woman’s scream. Boonie jumped. ‘There’s someone up there.’

  The boss scanned the dark building; no signs of movement. ‘You got any women working with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then this is not our problem.’ He turned and headed back toward the gate.

  ‘But—’ Boonie protested, picturing his friend’s twisted body, what little he could see of it in the dark fleshed out by what he felt with his hands as he’d tried to figure out what had happened. ‘What about Damon?’

  The boss looked at him with what seemed like contempt. ‘He dead. He don’t care.’

  Boonie knew this to be true; he had walked away from the dead and wounded before without hesitation. This was different. He took one step before guilt and shame crashed in on him. The boss had turned to go without waiting for his response, and that only added a sheen of humiliation with the next step.

  But he moved his feet a third time. Damon was dead. And he’d been a soldier.

  After that, it got easier, and he had nearly caught up to the boss by the time they reached the gate.

  But suddenly, through the rain, bright lights blinded them and a few voices shouted, ‘Freeze!’

  And Boonie’s steps became of lead once more.

  This was it. Out of time, out of space, the wind and rain assaulting her as if it wanted to throw her to the ground every bit as much as Jack did. Even if help arrived, it would never reach them in time. The zip lift would not return on its own so any rescuers would have to walk up thirty-three floors, and she and Ghost would be dead by then.

  ‘So what now?’ Theresa challenged, with all the pluck she could muster as her feet sank a few inches into the mesh, Ghost trembling by her side. ‘You threw Sam off because you were fighting with her. We’re not fighting. You’re not close enough to touch me. So what’s your plan? You have one murder under your belt and suddenly you’re an expert?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was only one.’

  ‘You didn’t kill Kyle. Novosek killed Kyle.’

  ‘Did he really? Somebody being on somebody’s take, I suppose – never mind, don’t tell me. But the interesting thing about being on the edge, Theresa? It only takes a little push to topple something over.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Technically I should do you first, get you out of the way. The kid might run in the meantime, of course, but where’s she going to go? But I think it would be so much more fun to watch your face as she falls.’ In one quick move he stepped up to Ghost and grabbed her shoulder, gun still trained on Theresa.

  She didn’t think, couldn’t think. She just jumped, propelled her body toward his and pummeled into his torso. A blast of sound split the night air as the gun went off, and somewhere at the back of her mind she wondered if anyone would be able to distinguish it from a crack of thunder. The sound felt as if it split Theresa’s left eardrum, but she could still hear his frenzied breathing as he fell across a girder with her on top of him, a sharp grunt of pain as the steel beam caught him in the spine.

  Ghost screamed.

  The gun flew out of his hand, landing in the next section of mesh flooring. Theresa put one knee in Jack’s chest to propel herself closer to it. But he reached around with an ironworker’s hand and peeled her off him as if she were a piece of wet newspaper, tossing her closer to the precipice and away from the gun. Then he grunted, rolled over and began a scrabbling dash to get it.

  He was also between them and the exit.

  That left only one way down. And again, if she thought about it for even a second, she’d never find the courage to try.

  Still in a crouch, she grabbed Ghost by her shirt front and said, ‘Get on my back!’

  The girl said something, some kind of protest, but Theresa didn’t listen. She swung the child behind her and pulled her arms around her neck, leaving the kid to figure out where to wrap her legs. Then she stood, the mesh sinking even deeper under their combined weight, and staggered the two feet to the edge of the building.

  She didn’t know what Jack was doing, didn’t take the time to look.

  Three hundred feet below the ground tilted dizzily, and the street lights blurred in the rain.

  ‘Hang on,’ she told Ghost – unnecessarily, the girl now squeezed her neck tight enough to choke her, her clunky shoes digging into Theresa’s stomach – and climbed over the side, now slick with rain.

  FORTY-THREE

  The city might have
been glittering all around her like a deep and beautiful jewel, but gravity, that dark Satan, was trying to kill her. Theresa could feel the pull of the earth, steady and inexorable and growing stronger by the minute.

  You’re going to fall. Your hands are going to slip right off this wet steel.

  You can’t do this!

  Jack is going to lean over that edge and fire a bullet directly into the top of your skull. Or Ghost’s.

  Beams are vertical. Girders are horizontal. One big crystal structure of right angles. And all around it, a vacuum.

  Theresa couldn’t tell if her limbs trembled from fear or exhaustion as she clung to the beam, wrapping her arms and legs around it just as Ghost wrapped her arms and legs around her. The I-beam felt much less pliable and much less welcoming. It wasn’t the concrete-encased column she had leaned on the day before but a bare steel beam, slippery in the rain. Better because she could get her arms and legs all the way around it; worse because the I-beam was shaped exactly as it sounded, not a solid square but with hollows on each side. The cross hatches of the I gave her hands something to grab on to, but it was a thin, sharp something that bit into her palms without giving her fingers much traction. Her feet pulled her close to the steel as her knees bowed out, but her hands felt as if they had every pound of hers plus all of Ghost’s weight hanging from them.

  You’re going to fall.

  She needed to slide around to the other side of the beam, to the inside of the building, out of Jack’s line of fire. Then Ghost’s arms and her own face could get some space in the hollow of the I, but then the hatches would then bite into her shoulders and she doubted she could make herself loosen her grip long enough to get some leeway to shuffle her body around. She didn’t need to let go long enough to slide or shimmy downward – the slick metal, her lack of strength and the force of gravity took care of that for her. She had no idea how far or how fast she had moved, but the beam slipped by. She wished she had gloves.

  You’re going to fall. And if you fall, Ghost falls.

  She needed to tell Ghost to loosen the arms around her neck before pressure on her carotids made her lose consciousness. At least the rain kept her awake. It drove into her like the swiping paw of a huge animal, not a steady force from one side but a random series of blows that changed direction faster than thought.