Waiting for Armando (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (24 page)

No matter what or who suffered for it, I now realized, Ingrid must have what Ingrid wanted, because that’s what cool, blonde beauties deserved. Denial was unthinkable and not to be tolerated. I had seen that sort of self-centeredness on a minor level before. How could I have failed to see it in Ingrid?

Involuntarily, my eyes dropped to the lethal little weapon she still pointed at me. “Now what, Ingrid? Now that I know the truth, what are your plans for me? You must know that Margo and
Strutter
both know I’m here. If I don’t contact them soon, they’ll come looking for me, and they’ll know it wasn’t Karp that shot me. He’s still on Martha’s Vineyard. Diaz will be after you before you can leave town. Besides, I left messages for them both before I came here today. I told them what you and I talked about this morning. They’ll be worried about me.”

Ingrid shook her head stubbornly. “You didn’t leave messages for them. There wasn’t time. I was around the corner from your condo in my car when we talked, and you drove out right afterward. I know this is unfair, Kate. Everything you’ve done, you’ve done to try to help me, and I want you to know that I appreciate that.”

“You have an odd way of showing it,” I said, still strangely calm.

She frowned. “It can’t be helped. If you had just minded your own business, my plan would have worked out perfectly, but you just couldn’t stay out of it. Earth Mother Kate, looking out for the world’s strays.” She looked at her watch and gestured at me with the gun. “Get up. We’ve been here too long.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, getting to my feet and wishing desperately that Karp or a lawyer or even one of the secretaries would appear. Instead of answering, Ingrid picked up a black tote bag from the floor beside her and held it in front of her, concealing the hand holding the gun, which remained squarely pointed at me. She moved close behind me and shoved me roughly forward. We returned to the file cabinet outside Karp’s office, where she fished out the paper clip and handed it to me along with another key.

“You didn’t even notice the second key was missing today, did you? It’s Karp’s spare passkey to the elevators. I used it to get into the building today without being seen, but now it’s got to go back where it belongs.” I fumbled with the clip and finally managed to get the passkey back on it and hang it in the mug.

“Now start walking toward the emergency exit stairs by the women’s room,” she commanded, “and don’t take all day about it. There isn’t much time.”

I did what she said. “Time for what?” I asked, if only to keep her talking.

Again, she ignored me except to urge me forward at a faster pace.

“Are we going down the fire stairs? You know I get panicky in that stairwell, Ingrid. Please don’t make me go down it. I promise I won’t tell anybody about you. I’m just a temporary secretary here. Nobody cares what I have to say anyway.
Girouard
probably had it coming,” I babbled.

We came to the emergency exit, and Ingrid stopped. Keeping the gun pointing at me, she fumbled in the black bag and pulled out something that looked like skin diving goggles at first. Then I realized it was a gas mask, like the ones we’re all supposed to have in our emergency kits in case terrorists decide to poison us with biochemical agents.

“Don’t worry,” she told me pleasantly, as if she were reassuring me about an upcoming dental appointment. “You aren’t going down the stairs. Only I am. I’m afraid you won’t be joining me.”

“Why not?” I asked through lips almost too stiff to speak, and then the emergency klaxons went off over our heads. A security guard began yelling the same evacuation message we had heard a few weeks earlier into the public address system, and I got the first whiff of smoke.

Ingrid smiled coldly. “I’m afraid the painters carelessly left their painting cloths and other flammable materials piled up in the freight elevator lobby on one of the floors below us,” she said loudly. “Someone must have been smoking in that area and tossed a cigarette away carelessly, because about twenty minutes ago, the pile burst into flames. While fleeing for his life, the fool accidentally left the fire door open on that floor, which means the stairwell must be full of toxic smoke and fumes by now.” She pulled the gas mask on and tightened
it
snugly with her free hand. “Unfortunately, the elevators have automatically shut down now, and not knowing how many floors below us the fire is, it would be suicidal for you to try to go down the stairwell without a mask.” She pushed open the door to the stairwell. Acrid, black smoke billowed through it. “Since the doors above us are locked on the stairwell side, I’m afraid your only option is to climb up to the roof. It’s a shame about your paralyzing fear of heights, but never mind. You’ll be overcome with smoke long before you get there.”

My heart hammered in my chest, but still I stalled for time. “No, thanks. I think I’ll stay right here and wait for the firefighters. You go ahead, though.”

“I’m afraid not,” Ingrid said, pushing the fire door fully open. Planting the gun between my shoulder blades, she shoved me into the smoky stairwell. The fire door slammed shut behind us. Putting the gun into the tote bag, she felt for and found the handrail. “Just take a few deep breaths,” she advised. “You’ll lose consciousness quickly.” Then she was gone, swallowed up in the murk in just a few steps.

I dropped to the floor, gasping, in a relatively clear corner of the stairwell and dragged the bottom of my cotton dress up over my nose and mouth, trying to think through the screaming klaxons. Throat already raw, heart pounding with fear, I ached to plunge down those stairs, down to the light, air, safety, but the memory of Ingrid’s chilling words kept me motionless, eyes and ears straining. Not knowing if the fire was one or ten floors below me, going down these stairs was too risky. I stumbled to my feet and yanked at the fire door knob. It had locked behind us, but surely all of the fire doors couldn’t be locked. I struggled to visualize the emergency evacuation floor plan posted next to the elevators. There were floors of refuge every few stories for just such a situation as this, I knew. There were only three floors above me. If this one was locked, maybe one of the remaining doors above me would not be.

Coughing and gagging, I half walked, half crawled up the first flight of stairs and fumbled on the wall for a door. Then I remembered there were two flights between floors. I forced myself up the second flight and grasped the doorknob, twisting it wildly. Locked.

I hammered on the door with what little strength remained and tried to yell, but no sound emerged from my smoke-seared throat. Whimpering, I dragged myself to the bottom of the next set of stairs and looked up toward the next landing, but I could see nothing through my streaming eyes. I willed myself to stand up, climb just one more step, but the heaviness in my lungs made moving impossible, and I sank back to the concrete floor of the landing. It felt cool under my cheek.
Maybe dying this way won’t be too bad,
I thought.

As I began to lose consciousness, I became dimly aware of a banging noise above the blaring alarm. Someone was yelling, “She’s here, get her, get her!”

Someone else yelled, “We’ve got her! Get the paramedics over here!”

Strong arms lifted me bodily from the floor, and I was slung like a sack of cement over a hard shoulder. It hurt and made me cough again. I just wanted to slip back into that cool darkness, I tried to explain, slapping feebly at my tormentor’s arms, but instead, I was dropped onto yet another floor, this one carpeted. Someone snapped a mask over my nose and mouth.
It’s a little late for a gas mask,
I thought, mightily annoyed, but I couldn’t get the words past the damned thing on my face. Then, at last, I was allowed to lose consciousness.

~

My respite didn’t last very long. The oxygen brought me around, and I opened my eyes and blinked dazedly at
Strutter
and Margo on either side of the stretcher to which I seemed to be strapped. Two white-suited young men stood at the head of my bed on wheels. One held an oxygen tank on top of the stretcher, and the other held an IV bag aloft, squeezing it occasionally to encourage the flow.

“We’re in the freight elevator, Sugar,” Margo informed me. “It operates on an emergency generator.”

I tugged weakly at the oxygen mask covering my mouth, but
Strutter
stopped my hands with her own.

“You need to leave that right where it is,” she said in her most maternal tone, “so just let it be. We’ll have plenty of time to talk later, when we get you safely to the hospital.”

I turned my head a little to see who else was in the elevator and saw Charles Harris standing by the elevator’s operating panel. “Good thing you signed in as yourself,” he grinned at me, “or I’d still be up there searching for Lena or Sally in that stairwell.”

I smiled my thanks with my eyes and fumbled for his hand. He patted my arm awkwardly. “It’s okay now,” he said. “It’s all over, and you’re safe, thanks to Aunt Charlene.”

The elevator creaked to a stop, and the doors slid open, revealing a scene of controlled chaos in the lobby. My entourage passed yellow-suited firefighters carrying hoses and chemical tanks. They seemed to be finishing up operations and called instructions to each other through walkie-talkies that blared static intermittently. Metro Building security guards and city police stood at the front and rear doors, as well as at the desk where Charles had kept his lonely vigil only an hour or so earlier. Near the Church Street door, through which I was about to be pushed to a waiting ambulance, stood Detective Diaz and Sergeant Donovan. He seemed to be reading the Miranda rights to a bedraggled Ingrid
Torvaldson
, who stood in handcuffs before him. Catching sight of me, Donovan paused long enough to give me a broad smile and a thumbs-up.

Diaz came to stand over me and glower. “What were you thinking?” she demanded angrily. “You could have gotten yourself killed! We’ve been tracking Ingrid all weekend. I tried and tried to get you on your cell phone,” she said, then gripped my hand tightly in both of hers. Her soft eyes belied her hard words, and I tried to smile beneath my mask.

“Yeah, said
Strutter
, patting Diaz on the shoulder, “we were plenty scared, too.” Diaz backed off, and the paramedics moved me smoothly through the door and into the waiting ambulance, where
Strutter
and Margo were allowed to accompany me for the short trip to Hartford Hospital. As we moved away from the curb, sirens wailing, I turned back to
Strutter
questioningly.

“You called me,” she said, “but when I picked up, you weren’t on the line. It was dead. I tried your cell phone number, but there was no answer. Then I checked my caller ID, and it displayed BGB’s number, and I about went crazy. I tried your desk, but there was no answer. I tried
Quen
, but she hadn’t seen you. I called Margo, but she didn’t know what was going on. Then I thought of Charles, and I called the security desk. He said he’d seen you go upstairs, but you hadn’t come back down, and I thought Karp must have gotten home early and figured out that we were onto him …” Poor
Strutter
stopped and covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes welling with tears.

Margo put an arm around her waist and picked up the story. “We didn’t know what else to do, so we came on down here and told Charles we were
goin
’ upstairs to look for you. We told him to call the police and gave him my cell phone number. We looked on thirty-seven to see if you were at your desk, but there was no sign of you. So we went down the stairs to Karp’s office, and then we heard Ingrid
talkin
’ to someone. Her voice was different, cold. So we tippy-toed around the back way and came out behind the partition that separated the pod you two were in and the next one. We heard
everythin
’, Sugar, but she had that gun.” Margo stopped and swallowed hard.

Strutter
chimed back in. “All we could do was follow the two of you to the emergency stairs, where we saw her put on that gas mask. We wanted to jump her, but she still had the damn gun, and we knew the police were on the way. We couldn’t hear what else she said, but then all hell broke loose, the sirens screaming and all, and she shoved you out into the stairwell and went out after you, and we knew she had something to do with that fire, and the mask was to help her escape. We gave her a few seconds to clear out, and then we pushed open the fire door, but you weren’t there. We couldn’t use the elevators, so we had to run up to thirty-eight. Charles was already there, and when we opened that fire door, you were there, and Charles got you, and, well …” This time, she didn’t even try to stop the tears that overflowed her eyes as the ambulance slid to a stop at the emergency room entrance.