If I was wrong, then I could wait till I saw someone approach the front door and slip in with them. Safety in numbers. This was New York. The City That Never Sleeps. Surely this building included early risers, morning joggers, coffee fiends. Dwight would never have to know how silly I’d been.
To my horror, I heard the front elevator descending to the basement.
I quickly retreated back around the corner and pressed myself against the wall.
The door swooshed open, followed by the sound of the brass gate being pulled back. Someone—Horvath?—shuffled across the hall. I risked a quick look and saw Horvath’s white head and broad back disappear down a hall opposite the elevator doors. For one mad moment, I felt like pulling a Corey Wall and stealing the elevator.
“Yeah, right,” jeered the pragmatist. “An elevator with no buttons to push and an accordion gate to close first.”
Several minutes later from somewhere down that other hall came the sound of a flushing toilet, then footsteps back to the elevator. More door closings and the car rose again.
I realized I seemed to have stopped breathing and took huge breaths of air to calm myself.
When I reached the outer door, I carefully slipped one of my gloves between the door and the lock on the jamb so that I could get back in if I needed to.
There was a narrow areaway and a steep ramp that led up to street level. At the top of the ramp was a gate made of steel bars, but it wasn’t locked and I passed easily out onto the sidewalk. The air was bitter cold, and down on Broadway an ambulance went shrieking by. That way was east and I fancied that the sky looked lighter there.
From two blocks away, toward the river, I saw flashing lights and the roar of a heavy engine—a garbage truck making early morning pickups and coming this way.
I moved over to the pile of black bags and quickly ran my hands over the chilled plastic. Nothing odd about the first bag, but the second one atop the pile sent a frisson of horror through me as I realized that my hand had found a shoe, a shoe that felt as if it was attached to something.
“Mrs. Bryant? What are you doing? Did you lose something?”
I turned and was relieved to see a different brown uniform and friendly face.
“Thank God!”
I’m sure I was white as new-fallen snow, and he looked alarmed.
“You okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“In the bag!” I gibbered. “There’s another body in that bag!”
“What?”
“Feel,” I told him, guiding his hand over that foot.
He touched it and immediately jerked his hand back and stared at me in consternation. “Oh my God!”
“Do you have a phone?” I asked. “I forgot to bring mine.”
“But Mr. Bryant—?”
“No, he’s still asleep. We’ve got to call Lieutenant Harald.”
He slapped his own pockets and came up empty-handed. “There’s a phone in the break room. Come on!”
He hurried toward the ramp and I followed him down and through the basement door. My glove fell to the ground and his foot sent it skidding across the floor inside, but I didn’t stop to pick it up. The hall I’d seen Horvath go down earlier led to a sort of combination kitchen and common room with a set of tumbled bunk beds at the far end and a lavatory off to the side.
“Do you know Lieutenant Harald’s number?” he asked, reaching for the wall phone. “Oh, never mind, I’ll just call 911.”
“I’ll wait for them outside,” I said. “Make sure the sanitation people don’t take that bag.”
I pulled up the hood of my parka and had taken one step toward the door when something slammed into my head.
Dazed, I fell to the floor. Before I could gather my senses, I felt myself being rolled over and over until my arms were pinned to my side. More rolling and I realized that he was wrapping duct tape around my body and over my face. I opened my mouth to scream and a wide strip of duct tape effectively silenced me. To my horror, even my nose was covered and breathing came hard.
I felt him grab me by the ankles and drag me across the floor. I bit into the tape that had folded itself upon my tongue when my screaming mouth closed. I was desperate for air and tried to writhe away from my attacker, but the struggle only made it worse. I was going to suffocate