(1995) Chain of Evidence

by Ridley Pearson

  Dart could move both shoulders; he had feeling in both hands though he still found it hard to walk. He struggled to breathe—his chest felt caved in; his head pounded from a lack of oxygen. Of the room’s two windows, one faced the street, the other, nearest to Dart, faced a flat rooftop.

  Footsteps …

  He tried for his sidearm, but both hands proved useless. He was a sitting duck.

  No time to break the glass first; this registered immediately. He came to his feet, tucked his head into his chest, and ran backward, ducking and propelling himself through the pane of glass. His head smacked the top frame, dizzying him. Glass flew everywhere in a deafening explosion. Dart felt the cold of the outside air. He felt a warm trickle down his back. He rolled across the hard tar until the crunching sound stopped and he was out of the shards of glass. He came to his feet and headed across the roof to the unforgiving brick wall that faced him.

  “Forget it, Ivy!” Zeller yelled across the expanse. “We should talk.”

  This flat rooftop was wedged between two taller buildings. The brick building Dart now faced also looked flat-roofed, but a full story higher. A steel ladder fixed to the brick wall led up to the other’s roof. That meant that there had to be roof access between the two buildings.

  “Ivy, don’t run! Don’t force me. We can talk!”

  Dart paused and glanced over his shoulder. Zeller was through the window and coming toward him, the shotgun cradled in his arms. Talk? Dart wondered, eyeing the weapon. He could barely catch his breath. The trickle down his back was definitely blood; the top of his shirt was warm and damp with it. He hobbled along the wall, away from his pursuer, working the injured ankle. For the first time in his life he didn’t trust Walter Zeller. He’s out to kill me.

  “Don’t!” Zeller warned loudly as Dart rounded the corner. “I know what you know,” he cautioned, in a voice that indicated he was running now. “Talk to me!”

  Dart found the steel fire door that he had anticipated. The silver duct tape was not anticipated. It had been placed at the level of the handle—blocking the latch open—and told him immediately that Zeller had intended this door as part of a well-planned escape route. Anticipate the unexpected: a Zeller credo. The shouting at him had been for the specific purpose of distracting and stopping Dart before he discovered a way off the roof. Confine the suspect to a specific area—Dart knew the tricks. He hoisted his sluggish arm, forced his unwilling fingers around the handle, and tugged hard on the door. It swung open.

  Tearing the tape from the doorjamb, he ducked inside. The door thumped shut and locked behind him.

  The enormous room spread out twenty feet below him like something from a science fiction film, and smelled immediately familiar: huge gray machines lying like sleeping beasts, cheek by jowl, their metallic skins glistening in the dull light of half a dozen exit signs, the unmistakable odor of cleaning solvents. Dart was inside Abe’s Commercial Cleaners.

  A few steps down was a wooden balcony with offices to the left. Dart stumbled down the stairs, dragging his bad ankle as if it belonged to someone else. Zeller had chosen his route wisely: The heavy machinery would offer good cover. With this idea foremost in mind, Dart hurried to the far staircase, his vision limited by the darkness, and made for the ground floor.

  Two successive shotgun blasts ruptured the door he had come through and flung it open as if it were made of paper.

  “I-vy …,” the familiar voice called out threateningly. Zeller sounded furious. Dart had witnessed the consequences of this temper enough times to know that the possibility of negotiation had passed. Zeller made statements; he would make one now. The shotgun would do that.

  Dart hobbled down the final step and onto the shop floor.

  Giant commercial laundering machines made up the first row. Dart cut through this to the next—a long line of dry cleaning machines—dodging fifty-five-gallon drums of cleaning solvents and reminding Dart that this was no place for small weapons fire. He heard Zeller come down the metal staircase to the shop floor. The thought of entering into a firefight with the man seemed absurd, and yet the deeper he moved into this maze of behemoth equipment the more vulnerable he felt—and the more it seemed inevitable. Zeller obviously knew his way around here. Dart did not.

  Dart headed for the nearest illuminated exit sign, cutting through a row of enormous dryers. He threw his hip into the panic bar and smacked his head against the unwilling door. Chained shut.

  “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.

  CHAPTER 39

  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 tan
gy 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—”

  Dart felt his heart jump. Zeller knew all the right buttons to push …

  “You are not gonna bring me in for this. That ain’t gonna happen. So you have to do it, big fella. No aiming that thing as some kind of threat, because it ain’t no threat to me, it’s the solution. You got it?” He waited for Dart to respond, but his patience ran out. “You got it?” he repeated, shouting. “Pull the fucking trigger, Ivy.” He said more loudly, “Pull the fucking trigger before I dust you, asshole.” The end of the shotgun rotated an inch, trained on Dart’s throat. “From here I can take your head clean off your body. You thought about that?”

  “It crossed my mind,” Dart hollered.

  “So pull the fucking trigger.” Again he waited. “I’ve been inside the system, Ivy. I’m not going through that.” He added, “Not even for something I believe in.”

  Dart’s eyes stung. He felt so angry at the man.

  Zeller bellowed, “There was a time I wanted to recruit you. Can you imagine that? I convinced myself that you could—that you would—help. But then I feared that Boy Scout attitude of yours. You live in a fucking bubble, Ivy: righteous ignorance. You’re your own morality play. You want to know why Ginny left you? Because you’re too good. You protect this image of yourself. Fuck the image, Ivy.”

  Dart felt absolutely still all of a sudden. He could hear the traffic through the wall and, far in the distance, something dripping. The air felt hot and incredibly thin. His finger begged him to squeeze the trigger. It was as if, for a moment, he had connected with God. He had never been in this place before.

  “Nice try,” Dart said, realizing that Zeller was attempting to trick him into firing.

  “You don’t get it, do you? You still don’t fucking get it! You think you’re so fucking smart, Mr. Detective? Let me tell you something: I avoided your shift because I didn’t want you becoming lead—not on any of them. Give me a Kowalski or a Thompson, but keep me away from Joe Dartelli. Not because you’re such hot shit—but because you’re so well trained,” said the man who had trained him. Zeller smirked, pleased with himself.

  Dart glanced toward the wall, wondering if he could roll fast enough….

  “You so much as twitch,” Zeller declared, “and Doc Ray is going to need a sponge mop to bring you home.”

  “They’re trying to help,” Dart said. If he was going to be accused of being overly righteous, then he was going to speak his mind.

  “Martinson?” Zeller asked. He smiled. Dart knew that smile—it was Zeller’s unforgiving smile, the one that gave way to the anger and fury. “You’re going to tell me about Arielle Martinson? You were always so fucking naive. I thought we broke you of that.” He blinked rapidly. Maybe he had lost enough blood to pass out. “Righteous and naive. You shoulda been a fucking minister, you know that?” Moving the weapon back toward Dart’s eyes, he said dryly, “And no fucking sense of humor either.”

  “The suicides were meant to make them scrub the testing,” Dart said, trying to buy himself some time, to find some way out of this. He was not going to shoot Zeller; he was determined to bring him up on charges.

  “Gold fucking star, Ivy.” He blinked rapidly again. “And why the fuck would I want to do that?”

  If Zeller blinked repeatedly like that again, Dart thought he might manage to knock the shotgun barrel toward the wall. But far enough? he wondered. The spray pattern of a shotgun was far wider than its small barrel opening.

  “I know what you’re thinking, because I know you, Ivy. You’re so fucking predictable. That’s your problem. You’re thinking I flipped out; you’re thinking it’s for Lucky—God rest her sweet soul.” This last bit was said in the true voice of Walter Zeller—the Zeller who Dart knew and respected. “But you don’t know shit.” He offered Dart a look of disappointment and said, “Martinson was raped while at the university. Cut up bad.”

  Dart recalled the ugly scar behind her ear. Victims everywhere—and he knew by the man’s tone of voice where Zeller was going with it. Dart did
n’t want to hear this.

  “It took her over a year to recover. After that, she made it her life’s work to do something about sex offense. It became a passion, and from there, an obsession. She became consumed by it. She made mistakes—bad business decisions—based on the conviction that gene therapy was the answer. An unproven technology, mind you! She devoted funds that she shouldn’t have—got herself into trouble. She had to make it work—that’s the hole she dug for herself.” He blinked repeatedly like a man about to lose consciousness. “They’ve conducted three different trials in five years—all to shitty results. Nesbit—the Ice Man—was in the first group. They paroled him early to be part of that trial. That was the only reason he was out and able to kill Lucky—”

  The fire door at the top of the stairs cried out over the top of the roar—the door by which they had entered. Dart felt paralyzed by what Zeller had told him—his mind swimming. The cop in both of them knew from the distinct, prolonged sound that it was not a squeak caused by wind. It was not the door settling all of its own.

  Someone had come through that door, had entered.

  They both lifted their heads at once to listen more clearly, the threats of only seconds before gone.

  Footsteps coming down the first set of stairs that lead to the balcony.

  Dart wanted the rest of Zeller’s explanation.

  Staring up into the darkness, Zeller hissed, “You stupid shit, Dartelli. You led him here.” He whispered incredulously, “You let yourself be followed? Jesus Christ!”

  Dart felt himself shrink. He had not checked for someone following him, too preoccupied with the dangers of Park Street.

  Zeller’s hand came off the weapon, drew a zipper across his lips, and signaled first to Dart and then to himself—he wanted Dart to follow him. Adversaries, they were suddenly partners.

  Again.

  The transition felt natural. Dart didn’t question it. Zeller rocked up onto his knees, grabbed the shotgun, checked over his shoulder for Dart, and stood in a crouch, moving along the line of groaning dryers, keeping close to the machines. He lifted his hand and stopped Dart short of the very end. He pointed to a depression in the corner of the floor where a large mesh grate covered a manhole. He signaled that Dart should cover with his weapon as he would go first and lift the grate for Dart who was to follow and enter the hole ahead of Zeller. Dart signaled back that he would hold the grate for Zeller instead, but the Sergeant flashed his middle finger at his former protégé. Then he raised his index finger as if to say, Ready?