The interior stairwell terminated at the fifth floor, which was just what he wanted to see. No way to go but down. He pushed through the heavy door into the hallway, in time to see Lyle and the manager walking toward him. Lyle’s face was grim. “He’s flown.”
“How?” He frowned at LeBlanc. “Could he have cut the door alarms downstairs?”
She shook her head. “They’re wired into the electrical system, not after-market add-ons. We’d have to have a complete power failure to turn them off.”
“Then he’s got to be hiding in the stairwell on the other side of the building.”
“Or he’s on one of the other floors.” Lyle’s face creased in frustration. “The two of us aren’t going to be able to smoke him out. We can’t cover all the exits.”
“The only way out is through the lobby or one of the alarmed fire doors. We can-”
“Oh, no.” Barbara LeBlanc slapped her hand over her mouth. “There is another way.” She shouldered through the stairwell door, kicked off her heels, and scooped them up one-handed.
“What?” Russ followed her.
“The second floor.” She hiked her already short skirt up and bounded down the stairs two at a time. Russ and Lyle clattered after her, their boots thudding and echoing up and down the stairwell. “We have a collection room there,” she shouted, already a flight and a half ahead of them. “So we don’t have to haul loads of dirty linens through the lobby.”
She was out the second-floor doorway before she could say any more. Russ burst though, Lyle right behind him. LeBlanc was pelting noiselessly down the hall, the thick carpeting absorbing even the vibrations of her passage. They caught up with her as she skidded to a halt in front of an unmarked door next to the elevator. She snapped the key ring off her waist and thrust a plastic card into the flat lock pad. The door clicked.
A teen in a maid’s uniform looked up from a rolling cart, her hands full of tiny soaps. The collection room was the size of a guest bedroom, lined with towers of toilet paper and gallon jugs of disinfectant. Canvas-and-steel cleaning carts jammed end to end, filling the center of the room. In the back corner, Russ could see white-painted double metal doors. A freight elevator.
“Kerry,” LeBlanc said, “did a man come through here?”
“Yeah. Just a few minutes ago. He said he was security.” She stared at Russ and Lyle. “Did I… should I have…?”
“Don’t worry about it.” LeBlanc weaved through the carts to the elevator.
“Where does this go?” Russ asked as she jabbed at the button.
“Broadway. The main behind-the-scenes corridor in the basement. It opens onto the kitchen, shipping and receiving, the employees’ lounge-”
“Could he get out from there?” Lyle asked.
“Yes. The employees’ exit and the door next to receiving are exterior-locking only. You can’t lock them from the inside.”
The elevator doors rattled open. Unlike the wood-and-mirror-paneled guest elevators, the service car was lined with hanging furniture pads. Russ and Lyle followed LeBlanc in.
“No alarms?” Russ said.
“No, of course not.”
Russ pointed to the walkie-talkie hanging off her waist. “Check in with the departments he might have reached from Broadway.”
The manager twisted the mike off its clip and triggered it. By the time the elevator shuddered to a stop, she had confirmed that no one had seen a stranger going through the kitchen, the receiving dock, or the spa.
“He must have split out the employees’ exit,” Lyle said. They stepped out into a concrete-floored corridor, inadequately lit by long fluorescent tubes high overhead, crowded on either side by crates and canisters stacked three and four atop one another. It looked like a pessimistic paranoid’s bomb shelter.
“I don’t understand how he found the collection room in the first place,” LeBlanc said. “There’s nothing to indicate it. It doesn’t appear on any of the hotel maps.”
“He was looking for it.” Russ didn’t like the level of thought and preparation that went into Nichols’s flight. In his experience, innocent men didn’t make escape plans.
“The employees’ exit is this way.” LeBlanc led them to where the corridor T-stopped at a set of steel doors. “This is the kitchen.” She pointed. “Employees’ exit to the right, stairs to the spa and the lobby to the left.”
“This place is blown,” Lyle said. “He’s headed for his vehicle.”
Russ nodded. “Get to your unit. Have Harlene send a car to Tally McNabb’s house. I’ll take the back way.” Lyle jogged toward the stairs. “Thanks, Ms. LeBlanc. I don’t think he’ll come back here, but if you spot him, let us know.” Russ turned toward the employees’ exit.
“It’s always exciting seeing you, Chief,” she called after him.
The employees’ way out was another nondescript door, marked only by a red exit sign and a litter of papers and posters taped on either side. Russ walked into blinding sunshine-no columned portico on this side-and found himself on a gravel path wide enough to accommodate a golf cart. It curved through manicured grass until it rose and disappeared into the trees that ringed the resort. The employee parking lot was somewhere back there, he guessed, tucked out of sight of the guests whose rooms overlooked the rear of the spa.
Would Nichols have stashed his vehicle there? He doubted it. Easier and less obtrusive to park in front. A quicker exit if things went south. He jogged up the walkway as far as the corner of the building, then struck out across the grass. He stayed tight to the hotel, avoiding the rock gardens and flower beds scattered across the lush lawn.
At the front of the hotel, a solid, waist-high yew hedgerow separated him from the looping drive. It was there he finally saw Nichols, in khakis and a polo shirt, a windbreaker in one hand, a leather-and-canvas attaché case in the other. The MP had crossed the drive and the crescent-shaped upper parking lot and was striding down the steps to the lower lot. Fast but not hurried. He looked like a businessman running late for a meeting at a Lake George marina.
“Nichols!” Russ spotted a break in the hedgerow a few yards away, where a crushed stone walk led into the gardens. “Police! Drop your bag and put your hands in the air!” He ran toward the opening. Nichols turned his head but kept walking. Russ skidded though the gap in the yew, stones flying, and spotted Lyle getting out of his squad car, headed for the upper lot. Russ ran in a straight line, ignoring the steps to his right and the concrete ramp to his left, picking the most direct line toward Nichols’s rapidly receding back. He bounded over low rock outcroppings and pounded across the ground cover, leaving crushed flowers and scattered wood chips in his wake.
At the upper lot, he lost sight of Nichols. He ran across the asphalt and paused, teetering, at the top of the next set of stone stairs.
“There!” Lyle, above him, pointed. “He’s behind the blue SUV.”
Russ leaped down the stairs, knees screaming, and broke for the SUV. He was maybe ten yards away, closing fast, when a late-model Crown Vic, anonymous in government green, reversed out of the space behind a blue Explorer. It lurched forward, straight toward Russ. Then Nichols slammed on the brakes. Russ could see the man’s face though the tinted windshield, see his lips moving, and had a heart-stopping second to think: Pull my gun? Or jump?
Nichols twisted in his seat. The Crown Vic exploded into reverse, screeching backward through the lot, bumping over one of the low rock curbs. It spun in a tire-squealing half circle and surged up the entry ramp the wrong way.
“Get in the car!” Russ yelled to Lyle. “Get in the car!” He turned, back up the stairs, across the upper lot and staggered up the second set of stairs in time to see Nichols’s car disappearing down the drive. He hadn’t gone through the portico, thank God, which by now had filled up with bellhops and parking attendants and wide-eyed guests. Lyle’s cruiser pulled forward into a tight U-turn. He rolled past Russ, pointing to where Nichols had gone. Russ nodded. Lyle punched his lights and siren and accelerated after Nichols. Russ yanked the door of his own unit open, hurled himself into the seat, and was rolling in the opposite direction before he had finished buckling in.