Hidden Charges

by Ridley Pearson

  Steuhl pulled at several locked doors and then gained entrance to the service hallway. “Lock it,” Jacobs said into the walkie-talkie, wanting to trap Steuhl in the back service hallway. He intended to direct Steuhl into areas that would grow progressively smaller and would thus offer fewer doorways—fewer choices for the bomber. Using the computer to lock and unlock doors, it might be possible to indirectly manipulate Steuhl into an area where he could confront the man.

  “Mid-door locked,” Brock acknowledged.

  Jacobs hobbled back toward the elevator. So far so good.

  ***

  Brock interrupted and told Jacobs that he had sent Susan down to check on Shleit. She had returned to say that Shleit was conscious, though badly wounded. He finished by saying, “Shleit told her that Steuhl went into the maintenance room with the money and came out without it. Susan went back to check. The money’s not in the room. He must have put it down the chute.”

  “Okay. We’ve got him.” He stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for Sub-level 2. The elevator fell away.

  The maintenance room off Level 2’s service hall also had a trash chute. Jacobs depended on Steuhl’s greed. The bomber would have only two choices: take the utility tunnel and try to escape, or take the trash chute and go for the money.

  Jacobs bet on the money.

  Disembarking from the elevator car, he headed down the dark hallway of Sub-level 2, which accessed a variety of utility rooms. The emergency lights issued a pale yellow glow down the length of the corridor. He limped down the hall toward the door, reached the trash room, and inserted his ID card. This room, like most of the utility rooms, opened only by ID access. This was necessary because of the dangerous machinery inside.

  The door unlocked electronically, and Jacobs let himself in. The smell of garbage overwhelmed him. The room was huge, lit now only by emergency floods. Two gargantuan trash compactors faced him on the far wall, each the size of a tractor-trailer.

  He spotted the briefcase. It lay atop the pile of trash in compactor number 2.

  In his ear he heard, “Ten minutes, T.J.”

  He expected Steuhl to come down the chute into the compactor any second. Planning ahead, he whispered, “Turn the lights on in the east service hallway of Level Two. If he could succeed in removing Steuhl’s glasses here, he could motivate the man with light. The human condition prefers light, to darkness, he thought. I have to make him vulnerable.

  He moved across the room to the compactor and awkwardly climbed the loops of heavy steel that served as a ladder up the machine’s tall side. He passed the dominant black and red buttons that controlled the machinery’s operation. As he reached the top of the large bin he saw Steuhl’s legs appear from the bottom of the chute. Steuhl jumped into the trash.

  Jacobs had to get the man’s glasses off at all costs. This one thought ran through his mind as he threw himself at the small man. He knew he had to lose the fight, but make it look convincing. At all costs he could not let Steuhl out of the trash compactor by any way but back up that ladder. Back up the chute.

  The fight began.

  23

  The cab raced off the highway ramp and bounced through a pothole on Green Boulevard. A cop motioned for the cab to make the detour to the left.

  “Stop here,” said Julia Haverill from the back seat, fumbling with her cash and finally throwing all forty dollars into the front.

  She had been within minutes of boarding the Pan Am flight to Paris when she had overheard the news from a TV chair in the airport. Her heart had sunk and tears had come to her eyes. The announcement behind her called for boarding. Torn between the tiny world of a nine-inch black-and-white television set and an adventure in France, she grew weak-kneed and collapsed. No one paid any notice. The passengers were too anxious to get aboard the plane, and the TV chair had been abandoned. She pulled herself into the chair and wept.

  She could not run. She could not sit on a plane for six hours wondering what had happened at Yankee Green. That place was as much in her blood as it was her father’s. She could not leave him. Would the Paris papers even cover the event? Doubtful. It might take days to find out, a situation she found unacceptable.

  Now, with the cab pulling a U-turn to the protests of the policeman, she looked at the gigantic complex. It seemed so still, cars stopped irregularly, abandoned. Parking lots nearly empty. No foot traffic. No movement whatsoever, except for the waving of branches in the breeze and the shimmering of the leaves.

  Her father was in there somewhere. Strong Marv Haverill. She could feel it. He was one of the hostages. How had it happened? Where would it lead? How had she ever thought she could leave Yankee Green? She felt so at home here. She felt as if her home had been taken hostage.

  The presence of the SWAT teams, the fire trucks and ambulances, intensified the dangerous urgency of the situation.

  “My father’s in there,” she told the cop, not fully aware that tears were pouring from her reddened eyes. She felt so much pride for her father at that moment. “He owns it,” she said.

  “Julia! Thank God,” a strong male voice called out. The cop stepped out of the way. Forest Long approached at a fast clip. There was sorrow on his face.

  ***

  Steuhl proved surprisingly quick and nimble despite his stocky build. He had learned to fight on the streets. He kneed Jacobs in the groin and delivered a hard right to the security man’s neck. Jacobs fell back into the spongy heap, clutching at his throat. Steuhl retrieved the briefcase.

  With his right foot, Jacobs managed to hook Steuhl’s leg and send him over backwards. He crawled forward through the paper and clawed at the bomber, going for the man’s glasses.

  Steuhl was up in a flash. He drew back a leg and kicked Jacobs in the face, bending the man’s nose to meet his cheek. Jacobs scrambled and rolled into the short man’s legs, which brought him down again.

  Steuhl crawled away frantically, dragging the briefcase behind. Jacobs dragged his arm across his bloody face and cleared his eyes.

  He lunged forward and caught Steuhl by the ankles. The little man fell forward and out of the compactor. There, nearly within Steuhl’s reach, was the bright red button that engaged the compactor. He stretched to hit it, but his arm was too short. He began banging the briefcase against the side of the huge compactor. He heard a tremendous clunk. Contact.

  The compactor’s single ram began to move from right to left, carrying Jacobs with it, burying him beneath the trash.

  Jacobs struggled his way through the garbage and fished his hand out blindly, grabbing hold of Steuhl’s ankle.

  The little man screamed.

  The huge steel wall, covered with fetid matter, continued to crush the garbage toward the far wall.

  Jacobs raked Steuhl’s glasses off the man’s face. They disappeared into the trash. Steuhl clutched the briefcase tightly, refusing to let go. Jacobs rose to his knees and spun the small man around so Steuhl was now on the inside of the machine, Jacobs on the outside. With one tremendous effort, he pushed Steuhl to the far side of the compactor, directly below the trash chute. The powerful ram reached the edge of the overhead chute.

  Steuhl had a split second to make a decision. Briefcase in hand, he climbed up the trash chute, unable to see.

  Jacobs dug through the trash searching for the glasses. The steel ram continued its path toward him. His hands groped through the trash. He searched furiously for them, the space closing in around him. His fingers touched the thin metal rims. He pulled the glasses from the trash. The moving wall closed against him. He pocketed the glasses and reached for the edge of the bin. The thundering wall of metal pushed him off balance. The trash began to rise from beneath him. As the compressing trash lifted him, his fingers finally found the lip of the bin and he struggled to pull himself free. He fell to the cement floor as bottles exploded inside the angry grasp of steel.

  He ran for the door. “Mag-lock all the east side, mid-level maintenance rooms, except for Level Two. Do
you copy?”

  “All but Level Two. Copy.”

  “And cut all power to the sub-level trash rooms immediately.”

  “Cutting power,” Brock said, typing furiously.

  “You got those lights on in Level Two?”

  “They’re on.”

  “How much time?”

  “Seven minutes,” came the reply. As he rode the elevator toward Level 2, Jacobs tried to picture Steuhl’s actions. Without his glasses, the man had to be really blind. Jacobs hoped he would continue climbing until he saw the light of Level 2. If, by any chance, he tried to exit the garbage chute on any of the other levels, the doors to the maintenance rooms would not allow it. He would be forced back into the chute. By cutting power to the trash room Jacobs had stopped the giant compactor in the middle of its cycle, thus sealing the bottom of the chute closed.

  Steuhl had only one way out: the maintenance room at Level 2.

  As Jacobs left the elevator he radioed Brock. “Set the computer up to cut all the lights in that back hallway. Leave Susan with the radio headset. Show her the ENTER button. I’ll give her the signal to cut the lights.” He began to run, despite his pain. “You go down to Spanner’s and make sure all their lights are on and the door to the service hall is cracked open. If I get Steuhl through that door, I want you to scare the shit out of him and head him toward the new wing. But don’t stop him. Copy?”

  “I’ll do it,” was all Brock said.

  ***

  “Toby?” came the eager voice of Susan Lyme.

  “Hi, babe. You got that ENTER key?”

  “All set.”

  “Nice to hear your voice.”

  “Likewise, Sherlock. Thanks for the rescue.”

  “All in a day’s work, lady,” he quipped. “Hang with me now.”

  “Right here.”

  Jacobs used his ID card to admit him to the brightly lit service hallway’s north entrance. No sign of Steuhl yet. He knelt in the corner and waited. Pain overwhelmed him. As long as his adrenaline had been pumping he had not dwelled on the pain. Now it tried to pull him beneath a blanket of darkness. His head swam. He fought against it. Unable to stand, he slipped to the floor. The pain was winning. “No,” he mumbled unintelligibly. Through blurred vision he saw the door to Spanner’s open a crack. “Dicky,” he called, but not even a whisper escaped his lips.

  He fumbled for the handset to the walkie-talkie. He drew it to his lips but could not depress the button. He dropped the handset.

  Again his mind swam.

  ***

  When he opened his eyes, John Steuhl was staggering toward him, eyes squinted, hands groping along the walls.

  How much time had passed?

  Jacobs blinked. Had Steuhl seen him yet? The man was inching along, apparently sightless, the briefcase clutched in his folded fist.

  “Steuhl,” he managed to gasp.

  The little man spun around and hurried away, down the hall. A frightened rat. Jacobs couldn’t get up. He tried in vain. He looked down at the hole in his leg, lifted his fist, and pounded the wound. Pain shot through his body and charged him with adrenaline.

  He yelled in agony and pounded again. He rose to his feet.

  Steuhl, exhausted from the climb, frightened by the yell, stumbled and fell to the floor, dragging the briefcase.

  Jacobs depressed the button on the handset and said, “Now.”

  The hallway went black, a blade of light seeping through the crack at Spanner’s Drugs.

  Jacobs thought about rats and mazes.

  The blind man moved steadily toward the light.

  Jacobs staggered slowly down the hall.

  Steuhl reached the door and pulled it open. As he stepped inside, Jacobs heard Brock scream at the top of his lungs. The little man turned left at a full run.

  Jacobs found a sudden flash of strength. He ran to catch up, entering the drugstore and passing by Brock, who gasped at the sight of Jacobs’s bloodied face. “Get back up there,” the Director of Security said over his shoulder. And he ran straight for Steuhl.

  Steuhl stumbled blindly forward through the open entrance of the drugstore, with no idea of where he was. Sensing more light, he began to hurry as he reached the empty concourse.

  ***

  Jacobs tugged his ID card from his lapel and inserted it into the metal box in the corner of the store. The red LED changed to green. He pushed the square button marked “C” for close, and the wide metal lattice gate popped into motion, rolling toward the floor. It was no coincidence, he thought, that this gate looked like the door to a cage. He hesitated, standing there. Only a few minutes to go.

  “Don’t do it,” said Brock from behind.

  Jacobs spun around and glared. “Get moving.”

  The gate continued to roll closed from above.

  “Don’t do it. Don’t lock yourself in there. We can still get away. Come on. It’s over.” He looked at his watch. “Two minutes. Come on.”

  Jacobs pursed his lips and shrugged. “Got to do it” was all he said. He dropped to the floor and rolled under the lip of the cage as it lowered and stopped.

  He was sealed inside with Steuhl. “Get up there,” he yelled to Brock through the gate. “Steuhl,” he called out to the little man.

  Steuhl had fallen next to a potted tree. He was mumbling incoherently to himself.

  “I have your glasses,” Jacobs said. He approached the fatigued man wearily and slid the glasses along the stone floor, landing them at Steuhl’s feet. The little man bent down and slapped the floor hungrily; finally he fished the glasses around his ears. Then he looked around and said incredulously, “Fun-World?”

  “Right as rain,” Jacobs said calmly. He checked his watch. “Two minutes till four.”

  “No,” Steuhl barked, panicking. He surprised Jacobs, giving the security man no time to react; he ran down the concourse at a full clip and without warning threw himself over the railing, briefcase in hand. The large solar clock was mounted on the wide band of cement below the second level concourse and well above the floor to Level 1. This entire tier was covered with mirror. Steuhl lowered himself onto the upper edge of the giant solar clock and began kicking his legs against its face. He worked his way around the curved edge of its surface, still kicking. “Stop it!” he said hysterically. “Stop it!”

  The round edge of the clock didn’t provide enough purchase for him.

  “No time, Steuhl,” Jacobs yelled down at him. “Which button do we push?” Beads of sweat fell from his head and splashed on the stone floor twenty feet below.

  Steuhl looked up at Jacobs. “Stop it!” he shouted.

  “Which button?”

  “The charges,” he said. “Four o’clock.”

  Four plus twelve, Jacobs thought. Four o’clock! “Which button?” he yelled louder.

  Steuhl kicked again. His foot cracked the thick Plexiglas face, broke through, and the strained plastic bit into him. He screamed and released his grip, falling away from the clock but quickly stopped by his caught foot. He dangled upside down. The briefcase fell onto its corner and broke open. The cash spilled out onto the floor. The broken Plexiglas bent under his weight.

  Jacobs limped as fast as he could toward the man. Don’t fall, he was thinking, you’ve got to help me. “I’ve got you,” he announced, climbing over the railing. As he stepped onto the top of the clock, the Plexiglas unbinded and Steuhl’s foot came free.

  Jacobs heard the man’s head strike the floor. It sounded like a beer bottle being run over by a tire. Absolute silence filled the pavilion, broken only by the distant sound of sirens, and the rhythmic ticking of the large sweep hand on the solar clock.

  He looked down. Steuhl’s head lay in a pool of blood and money, his neck folded back ungainly. His mouth was open.

  Steuhl wouldn’t be telling anyone anything.

  ***

  Jacobs looked at his watch: one minute. He looked down at Steuhl, dead or dying, light shining off the plastic face of the oversized c
lock.

  Why did he kick the clock? he wondered. What had he been yelling? Stop it! Stop it!

  The clock.

  The timer.

  Jacobs remembered telling Susan that you had to look for the signs—the unintended signals that people gave you. You could gain as much from deductive reasoning and observation as you could from what people told you.

  A solar-powered clock. One that wouldn’t stop running even in a power failure.

  He recalled the message Shleit had found: Where under the sun does 12 + 4 make doom?

  Four o’clock, on the face of a solar-powered clock.

  Stop it! The timer.

  Jacobs lowered himself and kicked with his good leg. The Plexiglas was too thick. He directed his efforts to the photovoltaic cells in the solar panels alongside the clock. Short the system, he thought. Blow the fuse. Stop the timer.

  He dislodged several of the cells. They plummeted to the stone floor below. He looked over—the clock continued to run. Breaking the cells wouldn’t short out the clock. The cells simply supplied a battery.

  He lifted up and dropped all his weight onto both legs, attempting to tear the panel from the wall. In order to short the system, he needed bare wires.

  The edge of the solar panel separated from the concrete. The large screws pulled loose. The pain in his wounded leg made him delirious. He began to scream with each blow to the panel.

  He couldn’t look at the clock. He couldn’t think of the time. He hooked his toes into the gap he had created and pushed hard, driving the panel farther from the wall. It groaned behind his efforts.

  The panel tore loose and fell to the floor, burying Steuhl. A thick white cable protruded from the wall, three bare copper wires visible.

  He couldn’t reach it. He let himself hang from one hand, and still it was just out of reach.

  He let go of the railing, pressing both hands against the warm cement.