Amanda, he thought. Footsteps echoed on the next floor. He climbed the stairs, stretching his legs over gaps. A noise behind him made him pause. He turned and saw Ortega enter the building.
“Backup’s on the way,” Ortega said.
“You’re sure this isn’t another diversion I arranged.”
“The only thing I’m sure of is, I want to talk to this woman.”
Ortega joined him. Boards creaked as they climbed. The upper area gradually came into view: more strips of paint dangling from the ceiling, more exposed walls and naked joists, another staircase without a banister. At the top, they listened for footsteps, but all Balenger heard was the muffled sound of distant traffic.
“This seems to be the only stairway. She can’t get out,” Ortega said.
“Can’t she? Maybe there’s a way into the next building.”
A noise to the left made Balenger turn. He stepped across a hole and eased along a dusky corridor. Grit scraped under his shoes. They checked each opening they passed, seeing more gutted rooms.
In the gray light, Ortega examined a jagged edge on each side of the hallway. “Looks as if a wall was here and the renovators smashed through. It’s an awfully long corridor for one building.”
“But not for two,” Balenger said. “This is a couple of buildings being made into one.”
They came to a corridor on the right. It stretched deeper into the structure.
“Maybe three buildings,” Ortega said. “Maybe the university’s combining them into one big classroom complex.”
A creaking sound stopped them. It came from an area farther along. A board lay across two sawhorses. Other boards were stacked against a wall, boxes next to them. On the floor, a tarpaulin was littered with bits of wood and sawdust. A rope dangled from the upper level.
“There’s something on that sawhorse,” Ortega said.
The small rectangular object was silver and black, with buttons and a screen.
“A cell phone,” Ortega said. “One of the workers must have left it.”
“Looks different than a standard phone.”
Ortega took a step closer. “It’s a BlackBerry.”
Although Balenger had never used one, he knew that a BlackBerry could connect to the Internet and manage email. “Aren’t they expensive?”
“Several hundred dollars,” Ortega said.
“Would a construction worker, who managed to afford one, be careless enough to leave it behind?”
They stopped next to the sawhorse. Balenger reached for the BlackBerry.
“Better not,” Ortega cautioned. “If you’re right about somebody playing games, that thing might be a bomb.”
“Or maybe it’s like the video-game case, and it’ll lead me somewhere else.” Balenger picked up the BlackBerry.
“One of these days, you’ll listen to me,” Ortega said.
Balenger noted that the BlackBerry was slightly heavier and thicker than his cell phone. It had a bigger screen and many more buttons that included the alphabet as well as numbers.
“I hear voices.” Ortega turned. “Sounds like they’re coming from the entrance. Must be the backup team.” He pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll tell them where we are.”
Sudden movement caught Balenger’s attention. On the other side of the work area, a white blouse appeared in the corridor. Flushed from her hiding place, Karen Bailey ran.
Balenger shoved the BlackBerry into a pocket and chased her. He crossed the tarpaulin, and at once, it sank through a hole it disguised. His knees went down. His hips. He grabbed the rope that dangled from the next level. The tarpaulin kept sinking. His chest dropped into the hole. The rope in his hands tightened, suspending him.
Ortega hurried to grab Balenger’s hand.
“Be careful,” Balenger warned. “With the tarp, it’s hard to know where the edge of the hole is.”
Holding Balenger’s hand, Ortega leaned so far over the tarp that he needed to grip the rope for support.
The rope went slack, whatever it was attached to giving way. Ortega lost his balance. Balenger felt weightless again, groaning when Ortega landed on him, both men dropping with the tarpaulin through the hole. The rope fell with them, and something else, something that Balenger caught only a glimpse of — a wheelbarrow that the rope was tied to on an upper level.
“No!” Balenger screamed, dropping with Ortega.
The tarpaulin scraped against the hole’s edge. When Balenger hit the lower floor, the impact knocked the wind from him, as did the jolt of Ortega against him. He heard a crash, looked up, and saw the plummeting wheelbarrow strike the hole’s edge. It broke boards and continued falling.
“Lookout!”
There wasn’t time to react. The wheelbarrow slammed onto Ortega’s back. Something snapped inside him. Blood bubbled from his mouth. His face went slack. His eyes lost focus. Balenger struggled to push the wheelbarrow off him, to do something to revive him, but there was no mistaking the stillness of death.
Grieving, he stopped trying to find a pulse. In the distance, he heard distraught voices, people running toward the sound of the crash. The backup team, he thought, trying to adjust to the shock of what had happened. They’ll question me at the station. It’ll take hours to explain. The footsteps sounded closer.
He struggled to his feet. The BlackBerry weighed in his pocket as he staggered along a hallway, turning a corner just before the voices arrived behind him. He crept along another corridor, then another, feeling trapped in a maze. He passed more sawhorses, boxes, and boards. He came to a window frame, its glass not yet installed. Breathless, he crawled over the frame, dangled, and dropped to the ground.
His ribs hurt. His legs ached. His left forearm felt biting pressure. For a few steps, he limped. Then he managed to steady his pace. Following the chain-link fence, he headed toward the end of the renovation site. The sun was lower. Traffic was sparse. The few students going by hardly looked at him.
Sirens wailed in the distance. When Balenger reached another gate in the fence, he found that it was locked. As the sirens came nearer, he found a piece of tarpaulin, climbed onto a Dumpster, and draped the tarp over barbed wire at the fence’s top. The sirens stopped on the street around the corner. He squirmed over the fence, unhooked the tarpaulin from the barbed wire, threw it into the Dumpster, and climbed down to the street.
He fought the urge to run. Look calm, he told himself. Keep moving.
Students came out of a coffee shop. A young man with a knapsack asked a friend, “You want to go down and check out what’s happening?”
“I stay away from war zones.”
Wise plan, Balenger thought.
More students came from the coffee shop. Hoping they gave him cover, Balenger turned a corner. He saw his reflection in a window, did his best to smooth his hair, and brushed dirt off his jacket.
Hearing other sirens, he knew he couldn’t keep walking much longer. When word spread that a detective had been killed, the police would close off the area for blocks in every direction. All the restaurants and bars in the area were student hangouts. If he went into any of them, he’d look conspicuous.
He tried a door to what seemed an office building. It was locked. Need to get off the street, he told himself.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Karen Bailey. When she ran from her hiding place, he’d assumed that he panicked her. But now it was obvious that she wanted to make him chase her, to step onto the tarpaulin. Another trap. No, another obstacle, he corrected himself.
The words on the back of the Scavenger game case nagged at him. An obstacle race and a scavenger hunt. I survived the obstacle, and what did I get? he thought. A BlackBerry phone.
But how did Karen Bailey know where to find me?