Part 38 (1/2)

”Holy s.h.i.+t, lady, what are you doing?”

”Why the h.e.l.l were you in there?”

”She's tied. Look, she's tied.”

The faces above her were visible now that they were all on the same side of the lights, the men illuminated with brilliant glare so that they seemed to be boys telling scary tales with the aid of a flashlight. She grabbed the one who had bent the lowest and used him to haul herself to a sitting position.

”You okay? Are you okay, lady?”

”Uhh-hh-hh.”

A familiar click, and another man dug his finger under her gag. Then he slipped in a blade and sliced it off. She took a second to rub her jaw, which felt frozen in place. The habit men had of carrying pocket knives...That's a good habit, she decided.

”Hands,” she said, although it didn't come out quite that clearly, and thrust her wrists toward him. He obediently sawed at the ropes with the swiftness of an adrenaline rush.

”Don't cut her,” another man told him.

”Hardly matters at this point,” she said, though that didn't come out so clear either. She could see the blood coating her hands, could feel it oozing down her legs as she stood. ”The man. Did you see the man come out?”

They continued to ask her questions, so that she raised her voice. ”Did you see a man come out of the building?” But even as she asked, she realized that of course they hadn't. If they had, they would have postponed the demolition until they rechecked the premises.

”A man?”

”What were you doing in there?”

”What man?”

”You mean that guy?” one said, pointing.

Everyone turned. Overflow from the dazzling lights lit up the parking lot and street enough to illuminate the only figure moving away from them, a man who wove through the heavy machinery to pause on the edge of Kingsbury Run. Corliss.

”Call 911,” she said, pushed past the men, and ran.

She crossed the lot and dodged through the wreckers. With luck Corliss's injury had slowed him-no, he had probably wanted to watch, to see that she did not escape, that there would be no chance of her body being found. He would want to see the end of what his father had begun. She reached the top of the ridge and plunged over.

The slope had not gotten any easier to traverse since her last trip down it, still an irregular surface dotted with brush and rocks. A train rumbled in the distance.

What the h.e.l.l am I doing? The blood loss would probably bring her to her knees before she caught up with him anyway, and she had dropped the knife in her scramble from the building. They knew him now, his name. She would tell Frank, the cops would go get him...what could she do, by herself?

She kept running.

She had made it only halfway down the hill when Corliss reached the bottom and turned to the west, away from the RTA station, disappearing into the dark and a light fog. It hung in vague wisps throughout the valley as the ground cooled in the absence of sun.

A spa.r.s.e but tough bush caught her mids.h.i.+n. She somersaulted the last ten or fifteen feet to the bottom but had at least gotten down the hill. A shout from behind her and a weak beam of light told her that one or more of the construction workers had located a flashlight and were in pursuit. But they were too far behind Corliss. So was she.

Then she heard him, a stentorian wheeze. Perhaps she could catch him after all. He did have an extra twenty years and a stab wound. Just then she tripped over a train track, slamming one elbow into a tie and nearly braining herself on the second rail.

Through a break in the mist she saw him, speeding up and over the next set of rails as if he had their locations memorized.

She knew she really should stop. It was not her job to chase murderers. She ought to call Frank. Did she still have her cell phone on her?

She hoped Rachael had not gone back to college.

Where was Corliss going to go, anyway?

Theresa pushed herself to her feet with her bleeding hands and continued, taking care to watch for the shadows of the tracks on the ground. It might not have been her job to haul Edward Corliss to justice, but maybe she didn't care so much about justice right then. Maybe she just wanted to beat his brains in.

The train she had heard in the distance had not stayed there. Heading west toward them, its headlamp made the fog glow like a living ent.i.ty. Corliss raced across the run, trying to beat the iron monster and let it cut her off from him. His father had moved through Cleveland like a phantom for over a decade. Edward had learned how to murder from him. He might also have learned how to disappear.

The wet fog slapped her face, but it didn't help to dredge up more energy for her tired legs. She tried like h.e.l.l to push another ounce of adrenaline from her glands, give herself one little boost.... Try all you like, her over-forty body let her know. It's not there anymore.

But he could not get away!

She kept running.

Corliss had only ten feet to the track, but he still had to get over it before the speeding engine hit him...perhaps the image of the cattle-catcher slicing his feet off at the ankles made him hesitate. Perhaps he knew he couldn't make it. He slowed and blew his chance of beating the train. The engine roared up the track in front of him, cutting off his escape and certainly moving too fast to jump.

As he stopped, Theresa's tired form began to slow as well, so automatically that her brain did not notice it for a second or two.

The mist worked both for and against her, taking the light from the construction workers above and diffusing it throughout the valley, making parts of the run easier to see than they would normally have been. But the fog's undulations made it seem as if the world were moving and made distances difficult to estimate.

For instance, she could see the train pa.s.sing behind Corliss. But it seemed as if the end were approaching very fast, too fast, so fast that it would free Corliss before she could reach him. The train consisted of only five or ten cars, not long enough to imprison him.

Perhaps it was only a trick of the light. She peered into the fog for a better look, stepped into a hollow, and turned her ankle. The bolt of pain brought her to her knees.

Corliss began to run toward the rear of the train, increasing the speed with which it was pa.s.sing him.

She pushed up with her good foot and sped on. The last car, a blue boxcar with a bright light on its rear corner, came toward them.

”Corliss!” Why she thought shouting would help...

The blue boxcar drew parallel with him for one split second, then went on its western way and left the track free.

Corliss glanced back at her with, she could swear, a grin of pure triumph. He might not escape detection forever, but at least he could best her on his home field, here among the trains. Then he leapt up and over the tracks as lightly as a man one-third his age.

But a second train had come from the west, moving in the same direction, its noise and lights obscured by the first train. Corliss stood dead center in the second set of tracks when it struck him.

It happened so fast that Theresa could not comprehend how one moment Corliss stood on the tracks, and in the next an iron behemoth swept across the landscape, slicing the night in two. She didn't understand. But her body did, and stopped running.

Footsteps pounded up behind her. She didn't turn, expecting it to be one of the construction crew.

”Theresa!” Frank grasped her with both arms, holding her, shaking her, even going so far as to cup her face in his hands. ”Are you all right? You're bleeding.”