Death Mask

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Killing Time

Chrissie Wells climbed out of the back of the taxi and caught her purse on the door handle. As she struggled to disentangle it, she dropped her cell phone and the folder of papers that she was carrying under her arm. The morning breeze caught them and blew them across the sidewalk.

When she had managed to untwist her purse and pick up her cell phone, she frantically gathered up her scattered papers, bending over again and again like a dipping bird until she split the seam at the back of her red cotton skirt. The taxi driver waited for her with an expression on his face like St. Sebastian, martyred with a hundred arrows.

Chrissie fumbled in her purse, took out a twenty, and accidentally dropped a shower of loose coins onto the taxi’s front seat. The taxi driver gave her a ten and said, “Don’t worry about a tip, miss. I’ll pick it up later, off the floor.”

As usual, Chrissie was running late. She always seemed to be running late, no matter how early she set her alarm. She felt that she had been born out of sync with the rest of the planet — fated to miss every bus she wanted to catch and every appointment she was supposed to keep. She never arrived at concerts on time and had to wait in the foyer until the interval. She was always hurrying, always hot, always out of breath, and still she couldn’t catch up.

She bustled up the steps of the Giley Building, but she was stopped in the entrance by two police officers.

“Morning, ma’am. Need some ID, if that’s okay.”

“ID?”

“Driver’s license. Anything like that.”

Chrissie opened her purse and dropped her file of papers again. One of the officers bent down and picked it up for her. She rooted through every compartment inside her purse and finally managed to pull out her Cincinnati public library card.

“Okay, that’ll do it,” said the officer. “You don’t look much like a serial killer anyhow.”

“You haven’t found him yet? I didn’t have time to catch the news this morning.”

“No, ma’am. But we will. You can be damn sure of that.”

Chrissie pushed her way through the revolving doors. All three elevators were working now, and the left-hand elevator still had its doors open. Chrissie called out, “Hold it, please! Hold it!” and click-clacked her way across the lobby. By the time she had reached the elevator, however, more than a dozen people had crowded into it, and there was no more room, especially for a size 14.

The occupants of the elevator stared at her balefully, as if to say, Don’t even think about trying to squeeze your way in. Then the doors closed, and they were gone.

Chrissie pressed the button for another elevator. As she did so, she was joined by five more office workers, secretaries, and junior executives, two of them carrying cappuccinos and one of them holding a brown paper bag which smelled strongly of hot pastrami.

“I’m not too happy about this,” said one of the cappuccino carriers.

“You’re not too happy about what, for Christ’s sake?” his friend gibed him.

“You know — ” and the cappuccino carrier nodded toward the elevator doors and made a stabbing gesture in the air.

“Oh, come on,” said his friend. “The cops went through this entire building with a fine-tooth comb. The guy’s probably three states away by now.”

To her horror, Chrissie saw her boss coming in through the revolving doors. Elaine Vickers, dark and sleek and black suited and highly unforgiving. By now, Chrissie was supposed to be up in the conference room with all of her paperwork prepared and the page proofs for next season’s catalog all laid out. And herbal tea on the table, too, with Elaine’s favorite wafer-thin almond biscuits.

She pushed the elevator button again and again. The elevator indicator read four, three, two, and then stopped.

Please, God, hurry, Chrissie prayed. She could see that Elaine had stopped to talk to two women in the middle of the lobby. If the elevator arrived now, Elaine might just miss it, and Chrissie could get to the conference room with seconds to spare.

The elevator doors opened. Inside, there were two technicians from the elevator company, with part of an electric motor on a trolley. They maneuvered it around slowly and awkwardly, while one of them held the doors open.

Please, God, hurry. Elaine had finished her conversation now and was walking toward the elevator bank with her usual fashion-runway prowl, one stiletto shoe in front of the other.

The technicians managed to trundle their trolley out of the elevator, and Chrissie immediately stepped on, followed by the other five office workers. Elaine was less than thirty feet away now. “Twenty-one, please,” she told the man with the brown paper bag.

Elaine raised her hand, and the man with brown paper bag kept his finger on the “open doors” button. Chrissie stared at the back of his neck and thought, You are going to die for this. You are going to die for this and go to hell.

“Twenty-one, please,” said Elaine, as she stepped inside. The doors closed, and the elevator began to rise. Chrissie stayed right at the back of the car, trying to keep herself concealed behind one of the cappuccino carriers. But when she turned sideways, she realized that Elaine could clearly see her in one of the mirrors.

Positive action. Don’t show Elaine that you’re intimidated. She excused herself and jostled her way around the cappuccino carrier.

“Good morning, Elaine.”

Elaine’s scarlet lips puckered up until they looked like a poisonous rosebud. One eyebrow arched.

“How was your traffic this morning?” Chrissie asked her, trying hard to sound nonchalant. “The I-75 bridge — what a nightmare. My taxi didn’t move for over twenty minutes.”

“I live in Mount Adams, if you remember,” said Elaine. “I don’t use bridges.”

“Oh, so you do. Right next door to Vidal Sassoon. And Mrs. Vidal Sassoon.”

“How long will it take you to get the presentation ready?” asked Elaine.

“Fifteen minutes, tops. It’s shaping up so well. The cardigan range. I have three fabulous new colors to show you.”

Elaine turned to stare at her directly. Her eyes were unblinking. Very quietly, so that nobody else in the elevator could hear her, she said, “This can’t go on, Chrissie. You know that as well as I do.”

“Elaine — ”

“Every time you’re late, Chrissie, every time you miss a meeting, that’s an act of disrespect to everybody you work with. We respect you. Why don’t you respect us?”

Chrissie’s mouth opened and closed. “It’s time,” she said. “I don’t know. No matter what I do, it refuses to behave itself.”

“Time won’t behave itself?” Elaine repeated.

“The clock jumps when I’m not looking. It’s three-thirty. I look up five minutes later, and it’s almost five. And I’m sure my watch goes faster than anybody else’s.”

Elaine was about to say something, when the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. The corridor outside looked dark and deserted.

“Fourteenth floor, anybody?” asked the man with the brown paper bag.

“Nineteenth, I want,” said a tall black man.

“Nothing here, anyhow,” said one of the cappuccino carriers, peering out. “This used to be Atlas Carriers, before they moved out.”

The man with the brown paper bag pressed the button for nineteen. The doors closed again, and the elevator continued to rise. But this time it didn’t stop at all.

“Hey, I said the nineteenth!” the black man protested.

“I pressed it for the nineteenth. It should have stopped.”

The black man pushed his way forward and jabbed the button. No matter how hard he jabbed it, however, the elevator continued to rise smoothly upward — twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four — all the way up to the twenty-fifth floor, where it stopped. The doors, however, didn’t open.

“This goddamned building,” said one of the cappuccino carriers. “We should sue the managers, you know that? They must have broken every safety regulation in the book.”

“Use the emergency phone,” said Elaine.

The black man opened the hatch and took out the red receiver. He held it up to show her. The wire was cut.

One of the cappuccino carriers handed his cup to his friend and took out his cell phone. “These building managers. When I take them court, they’re going to go bankrupt, I’m telling you. I’m going to sue them for everything. Criminal negligence, false imprisonment, you name it.”

He prodded at his cell phone and held it to his ear. “No goddamned signal. Anybody else got a signal?”

They all took out their cell phones, but none of them showed any reception.

“Isn’t that just great! We’re stuck here until somebody realizes that we haven’t shown up for work! And knowing my secretary, that will take till lunchtime!”

Elaine said, “Isn’t there a way to force these doors open?”

“With what, exactly?”

“Well, let’s bang on them and shout. Somebody has to hear us.”

“Okay. Let’s bang on them and shout.”

The tall black man clenched his fists and hammered on the doors. “Help!” he bellowed. “Help! We’re trapped in the elevator! Help!”

The rest of them joined in, although they were embarrassed by the different pitches in their voices.

“Christ,” said the man with the brown bag. “We sound like a crateful of frightened chickens.”

“Wait,” said the black man, lifting up his hand. They waited, and listened, but there was no response. Only the moaning of the wind down the hoistway, and the sad, distracted singing of the elevator cables. A distant echo of elevator doors, opening and closing, and hummmmm.

“Okay — let’s try it again.”

He hammered on the doors with even more fury. “Help! We’re trapped in the elevator! Help!”

They listened again, but still nobody answered.

“This is ridiculous!” snapped Elaine, but she sounded more frightened than angry.

At that moment, the elevator gave a violent jerk and dropped downward two or three feet, then stopped. All of them cried out in alarm, and one of the secretaries burst into tears. “Let me out! Let me out! I have to get out!”

“It’s okay,” the black man reassured her. “All elevators have emergency brakes. They can never drop all the way down.”

“Well, that makes me feel a whole lot better — not,” said one of the cappuccino carriers.

The elevator gave another jerk and dropped another two feet, and then another, and another. With each jerk, they all shouted out, in a terrible off-key chorus.

Chrissie had wanted to go to the bathroom even before she had arrived at the Giley Building, and now she wet herself. Only a little, but enough to make her feel even more terrified and out of control.

“We need to shout again and go on shouting,” said Elaine.

The black man yelled out, “Get us out of here! Get us out of here!” and thumped on the doors with both fists, denting the metal.

The elevator dropped at least fifteen feet, and then stopped with a sickening thump, sending them all sprawling and splashing hot coffee all over them. Before they could manage to stand up, it dropped again, and stopped; and then again. They had no choice but to crouch on the floor on their hands and knees while the elevator took them down and down in a series of staccato jolts — sometimes six inches and sometimes as much as twenty feet. By the time they were down to the ninth floor, they had stopped shouting and moaning and crying for help. They simply knelt on the floor, grim-faced, each of them silently praying that the elevator would reach ground level without dropping too fast.

They passed eight — seven — six — five. Just past five, they dropped over thirty feet, all the way down to the third story, and when the elevator came bang! to a halt, Chrissie was flung against one of the junior executives and knocked her forehead against his teeth. Blood ran into her eyes, so that she could hardly see.

The elevator fell past three — two — one, but as it did so it slowed down to a shuddering crawl. When it reached basement level it was sinking so gradually that they hardly felt it come to a standstill.

“We’ve stopped,” said the black man. “Thank God, we’ve stopped.”

They clambered to their feet. One of the junior executives pressed the button for the doors to open, but they stayed firmly closed.

“Now we should shout,” said the black man. “They must be able to hear us down here.”

“Help!” shrilled out one of the secretaries. “Help, let us out of here!”

But then, quite unexpectedly, the doors slid open. There was a split-second hesitation, and then a figure in red rushed into the elevator with two butcher knives in his upraised hands, chopping and stabbing at them in a frenzy. They staggered back, screaming, tumbling over each other in confusion. But the figure kept on stabbing and hacking until blood was flying everywhere, like a dark red rainstorm.