by John Lutz
“Mr. Vinson. Room for one more.”
He looked over to the far elevator and saw its light glowing above the door. Charlie moved toward the elevator to see who’d called to him. People were still filing in beneath the glowing green light.
He was surprised to see Della Tanner, one of the salespeople, among those already crowded into the elevator. She was young—still in her twenties—unapologetically ambitious, and attractive, if you liked large-breasted blond women with perfect features. Charlie did.
“Come on!” she said, smiling, and leaned forward to press a button that was out of his field of vision.
She was pressing the right button. The door remained open long enough for Charlie to elbow his way inside. He saw that the lobby button on the brushed aluminum console was glowing, along with half a dozen other numbered lights. The Blenheim Building was emptying out, like a lot of other office buildings in the area.
“Thanks, Della,” he said, returning her smile.
He and Della, pressed together between several large men, could barely move as the elevator began its descent. Charlie decided it wasn’t so bad being crushed into Della.
The elevator didn’t go far. It dropped smoothly from the Medlinger floor, forty-four, toward the next floor down. It stopped at forty-three, and one of the half dozen people waiting there somehow managed to wedge their way into it, mashing Charlie and Della farther toward the back of the car. Someone had forgotten to use deodorant. Someone else was wearing very strong lilac-scented perfume or cologne.
“Push lobby, please,” a woman said politely.
But there was no need. Almost every light on the console was glowing. Even “LL” for Lower Level, which was beneath the lobby. People shifted slightly, but no one said anything. The woman who’d asked to go to the lobby must have seen the glowing button.
The door slid open, and a small man in a blue—or was it dark green?—uniform looked into the packed elevator and smiled. He was wearing a blue baseball cap. He said, “I’ll wait for the next one.”
This was not the place to have a conversation. Della and Charlie both knew they would converse, or at least exchange pleasantries, after they’d reached the lobby. Charlie wondered if Della lived anywhere near the Blenheim Building. Della noticed a wedding ring on Charlie’s finger and wondered how much that mattered. Maybe Mr. Vinson—Charlie—drove into the city, or took a train, or stayed here during the week and went home to a dull suburban life on weekends.
No one in the elevator spoke. Charlie tucked in his chin and looked down at Della. She was staring straight ahead and wearing the slightest of smiles.
A hand snaked out and pressed the glowing Lobby button for good measure. The door closed, and there was silence as everyone waited for the elevator to continue its descent.
The elevator door had no sooner closed than it reopened. A small blond woman huffed up to it. A smaller figure was also waiting at the elevators—a super or maintenance man or some such. He turned away.
“Are you with Medlinger Management?” the woman asked him. “I’m looking for my husband, Charles Vinson. This is his first day at work here and I wondered—”
But the little man had spun on his heel and was swiftly walking away. The woman was left with an obscure image of him hopping and running as he reached the door to the stairs. There was a kind of faint but definite elfin quality about him.
Charlie hadn’t been paying attention and hadn’t heard his wife, Emma, address the small man. And, truth be told, he and Della were looking at each other in that way again.
Ah, well . . . The blond woman gave up on the elevator and pushed one of the down buttons for another. Then she gave up on that and walked toward the stairs.
Emma would walk up a floor and try an elevator that hadn’t yet taken on so many passengers. It was possible that Charlie was down in the lobby, waiting for her. She tried to call him on his cell phone, but apparently it was turned off. Or he’d let the battery run down. They both were distracted these days, he because of the new job, and she because she was pregnant and hadn’t yet told her husband. She smiled in anticipation, absently stroking her stomach. Wherever Charlie was, he was soon to discover that their luck had changed in more ways than one.
Everyone on the elevator was silent, but a few people exchanged glances as a rushing, ticking sound began. The ticks became louder and closer together, but the elevator’s descent was smooth.
Charlie Vinson looked at Della, who returned his stare with a puzzled one of her own.
Something was wrong here.
The packed-in elevator passengers milled, moving against each other where that was possible. Someone’s breath was coming too harsh and fast. There were gasps, and whimpers, and the beginnings of curses and questions and complaints and pleadings.
The elevator picked up speed during its forty-three-floor drop.
It took a few seconds for confusion to become comprehension, but everyone had time to scream.
There were no stops along the way. The crowded elevator was doing close to a hundred miles per hour when it crashed into the basement.
Among those rushing to see if there were any survivors was a nondescript small man in a gray or green uniform. Or was it light blue? Was it actually a uniform? The man wore a blue or black baseball cap. The cap’s bill was cocked at a sharp angle, and his hair, which was dark brown or black, was worn long and combed back in wings over his ears.
He was later reported to have been seen in the building’s basement earlier that day. The building wasn’t new, and had been undergoing renovations. Workmen came and went without anyone becoming curious. This man was assumed to be with building maintenance, or a tradesman of some sort, because he was carrying a toolbox.
If he was the same man.
There was a dull thud from a distance, not enough to startle Emma Vinson, or to make her stumble in the carpeted hall.
When she took the stairs and reached the higher bank of elevators, the digital floor indicator mounted above its doors was flashing that the elevators were temporarily out of service.
Emma suddenly felt nauseated. She bent over, clutching her stomach with both hands, and slid down the wall to sit leaning with her back against it and her knees drawn up.
Her future had taken a sudden lurch and somehow changed. She knew it but wasn’t sure why.
She was terrified to speculate.
24
Within ten minutes the block was closed at both intersections, and police and emergency vehicles were inside the cordon, parked at forty-five-degree angles to the curb. The crowd and uniformed police officers were mostly out on the street. The uniforms provided a corridor for victim after victim to be brought out of the Blenheim Building on gurneys by paramedics and loaded into ambulances. All of the gurneys contained fully zipped body bags.
Quinn, who had rushed to the scene as soon as Renz called him on his cell, saw Renz’s black limo parking outside the cordon. Quinn found himself wondering if Renz would someday mount fender flags on the limo. City or state pennants that proclaimed who was in the car.
A tall man in a black business suit, whom Quinn recognized as an NYPD lieutenant and Renz ally, approached Renz and reached him when Quinn did, just after Renz had ducked under the yellow tape. The lieutenant was the only one showing a shield, fastened to his suit coat pocket. They exchanged glances, and Renz looked at the lieutenant, whose name was Willington, and said, “What’ve we got?”
Willington stepped back out of the path of stretchers and body bags. He had a solemn, hatchet face that Quinn thought made him look a lot like General MacArthur in old newsreels. Quinn and Renz also moved back out of the way.
“What we’ve got,” Willington said, “is a runaway elevator. Dropped over forty floors and crashed in the basement.”
“Passengers?” Renz asked.
“You mean casualties?”
“Victims.”
“Twelve, and still counting. They’re . . . tangled together. Dead. The inside of
the elevator is like something out of a bad dream.”
“Any survivors?”
“Only one, so far. A guy named Vinson. Both legs and an arm broken—and who knows what else? He’s at Roosevelt St. Luke’s, being operated on for a head injury.”
“Only one survivor?”
“So far.”
“I thought you said—”
“Commissioner,” Willington said, “over forty stories, packed into an elevator. Those people instantly became meat.”
Quinn was surprised to see an experienced cop like Willington looking queasy.
Renz must have noticed it, too. “It’s okay, Lieu. We’ll just do our jobs.”
Willington gave a half salute to Renz, then to Quinn, and walked away toward the Blenheim Building entrance, presumably to do his job.
Quinn followed him. Taking the stairs down to the building’s basement. There was a horrible smell that he recognized. As he got closer to where uniforms and paramedics were busy around an elevator, the scene was bathed in bright light from portable battery units set on tripods. A faint buzzing sound got louder as Quinn approached the ruined elevator. He’d assumed it was the lights buzzing; now he saw that flies were swarming. Now and then someone with a clipboard or a rolled-up newspaper would swat them away. The tone and volume of the constant droning didn’t change. The odor clinging to the area indicated why. Blood had been spilled, sphincters had released, bladders had burst.
If this isn’t hell, it must be a lot like it.
Using ID furnished by the NYPD, Quinn moved even closer.
He decided to skip lunch.
Sal and Harold spent hours talking to witnesses to the Blenheim Building elevator disaster. They could furnish only peripheral statements. The lone survivor in the elevator, Charles Vinson, who had been there on the first day of his new job in the building, did help. When he regained consciousness in his hospital bed, he described a man who’d tried to get on the elevator on the forty-fourth floor but decided it was too crowded.
Vinson was in traction and wrapped with so much tape he might as well have been mummified. Harold found it hard to comprehend that they were interviewing an actual live human being.
Except for the eyes. Vinson’s eyes, which were all too human. They never ceased moving, and they were horrified, haunted. Harold and Sal knew the man would be haunted for the rest of his life.
The eyes darted from Harold to Sal to Harold. Pleading. “My wife . . .”
“She’s okay, sir,” Sal grated.
“Emma,” Harold said, knowing the mention of the wife’s name would soothe Vinson. “Emma’s right outside, waiting for us to be done talking with you.”
“She might have been in that damned elevator.”
“But she wasn’t,” Sal said. He started to pat Vinson’s bandaged shoulder, then thought he’d better not.
“Can she come in?”
“Not at this point,” Sal said. “But we’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
“Whaddya want to know from me?” Vinson asked.
“Whatever you know about what happened.”
The dark eyes, sunken in gauze peepholes, darted. “Elevator took a dive.”
“Why?” Harold asked simply.
“Dunno. Maybe it was too crowded. Weighed too much.”
“Elevators are always overcrowded,” Sal said. “They usually don’t turn into dive-bombers.”
“How far did we drop?” Vinson asked.
“Forty-three floors.” Harold said.
“Oh, good God!”
“Where did you get in the elevator?”
“Forty-fourth floor. It was already crowded. People getting off work, I guess.”
“More than usual?”
“I don’t know. This is my first day at work.”
“Some luck,” Harold said.
Vinson said, “Luckier than some others.”
“All the others,” Sal said.
Vinson didn’t understand at first. Then he did, and the world behind his dark and wounded eyes changed forever.
“How many dead?” Vinson asked.
“We think it’s fifteen,” Harold said. “It’s still . . . hard to get an exact count.”
“Can I see my wife now?”
“We’re about done,” Sal said. “People on the scene downstairs said they and others realized what had happened and rushed to the elevator to see if they could help in rescue attempts.”
“That’s how I got here. I can’t believe I’m the only lucky one.”
You only hope you’re going to live, Harold thought, looking at the mass of taped gauze, stained here and there with blood. The doctors had told Harold and Sal that pressure was building in Vinson’s brain. They were going to operate within minutes. He had about a forty percent chance of survival. At least, Harold thought, he seems to be thinking okay for now.
What does his wife know?
“See anything we oughta know?” Sal asked.
“Not that I can—”
“Little guy in a gray or green outfit with a baseball cap?”
Light glimmered in Vinson’s sunken dark eyes. “Yeah, I did see a guy something like that. When they got the elevator doors open, lots of people had gone to the basement, rushed over to help. One of them looked like the guy you described. I saw him when we got on the elevator, too. He said he’d wait for the next one.”
“Were his ears pointed?” Harold asked.
Vinson said, “Who are we talking about here? Dr. Spock?”
“Maybe the maintenance guy. Somebody like that.”
“Might have been, for all I know. I never before laid eyes on the man except outside the elevator, and I don’t remember anything about his ears. Don’t recall much about him, actually. I remember a lot of people looking, leaning in for a closer look and then backing away. They must have seen what a mess the inside of the elevator was and it made them . . . Made them wanna be someplace else. Anyplace.”
“Little guy stay or leave?” Sal asked.
“I’m not sure. He seemed . . .”
“What?”
“Not like the others. I mean, he was concerned, but also looked calm and . . .” Vinson sought the desired word. Found it: “Curious.”
“Calm and curious.”
“Something like that. We’re talking about a four- or five-second look, more like a glance, then he was gone.”
“Gone where?”
“You’d have to ask him. If he works for maintenance in the building or someplace close, maybe you can find him.”
“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Harold asked.
“I think so. Yeah. I could. That’s because he was the only one who didn’t look as if he’d had a walk-on in a slasher movie.”
“We’ll put our sketch artist to work,” Sal said.
“Is that when I say to make the nose a little longer, and the eyes meaner and closer together?”
“Something like that,” Harold said.
The man behind the gauze might have smiled. “I always wanted to do that.”
The door to the hall opened and a uniformed nurse bustled in. Her name tag said she was Juanita. She was holding some rubber tubing and a small tray on which sat a surgical syringe, what looked like a stethoscope but probably wasn’t, some white pills, and half a glass of water on a white napkin. She was followed by a tall, handsome man in green scrubs.
“I’m Doctor Weiss,” the man in scrubs said. “How we feeling?”
“Are you hurt, too?” Vinson asked.
Weiss said, “Glad to see you’re well enough to be a smart ass.”
“I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going to get the dull needle.”
“Of course it does.”
“Can my wife come in?”
“Shortly.”
The nurse, smiling, made a motion with both hands as if scooping everyone other than herself and the doctor out of the room.
As Sal and Harold left, Juanita bent over Vinson and set to work. Dr
. Weiss followed the two detectives out into the hall.
“How is he doing?” Sal asked, as they moved far enough away from the door to Vinson’s room not to be overheard.
“It’s still a forty percent chance that he’ll make it,” Dr. Weiss said.
“So nothing’s changed?”
“I’m afraid not. Have you learned anything from talking to him?”
“Maybe. We’re gonna have him work with a police sketch artist.”
“That can’t be until after the operation,” Dr. Weiss said.
Here was a complication. “Are you sure, Doctor? We can have a sketch artist here in fifteen minutes.”
“Absolutely not. The nurse is preparing him for surgery, and the OR is set up and ready.”
“What kind of operation?”
“An urgent one.”
“I mean, what kind of doctor are you?”
“I’m a neurosurgeon,” Dr. Weiss said.
A nurse Sal and Harold hadn’t seen before passed in the hall with Emma Vinson. Emma looked miserable and had obviously been crying.
“What’s all that about?” Harold asked.
Dr. Weiss said, “They’re going to say good-bye.”
“Christ!” Sal said.
Dr. Weiss looked thoughtful. “We could use His help.”
On the way down in the elevator, Harold kept softly repeating, “We’re hard-boiled cops, we’re hard-boiled cops . . .”
Sal said, “Keep telling yourself that, Harold.”
“What are you telling yourself, Sal?”
“Forty percent. How it’s so much better than nothing.”
“Especially if it’s your forty percent,” Harold said.
25
The killer slept late but still got up to sit in on the news on television. Some of the news, anyway. Most of it was just above the level of gossip related by beautiful blondes who for the most part were smarter than he was. Certainly more well-informed.
He had to admit he admired Minnie Miner ASAP. Minnie, a small and dynamic African American woman, was more interested in the story than the news. Not that she was the only journalist/entertainer who worked that way. But she was the best at fitting things together so everything seemed newsworthy. She skillfully blended mayhem and murder with fashion and gossip. She was obviously fascinated by the Gremlin. She’d heard the survivor of what she called “The Elevator Nightmare” mention on another talk/news show that a police sketch artist was going to use what evidence the law possessed to create the Gremlin’s likeness. Though small, he was also distinctive. If the sketch was close, chances are someone would recognize him.
