Everyone on the elevator was silent, but a few people exchanged glances as a rushing, ticking sound began. The ticks became louder and closer together, but the elevator’s descent was smooth.
Charlie Vinson looked at Della, who returned his stare with a puzzled one of her own.
Something was wrong here.
The packed-in elevator passengers milled, moving against each other where that was possible. Someone’s breath was coming too harsh and fast. There were gasps, and whimpers, and the beginnings of curses and questions and complaints and pleadings.
The elevator picked up speed during its forty-three-floor drop.
It took a few seconds for confusion to become comprehension, but everyone had time to scream.
There were no stops along the way. The crowded elevator was doing close to a hundred miles per hour when it crashed into the basement.
Among those rushing to see if there were any survivors was a nondescript small man in a gray or green uniform. Or was it light blue? Was it actually a uniform? The man wore a blue or black baseball cap. The cap’s bill was cocked at a sharp angle, and his hair, which was dark brown or black, was worn long and combed back in wings over his ears.
He was later reported to have been seen in the building’s basement earlier that day. The building wasn’t new, and had been undergoing renovations. Workmen came and went without anyone becoming curious. This man was assumed to be with building maintenance, or a tradesman of some sort, because he was carrying a toolbox.
If he was the same man.
There was a dull thud from a distance, not enough to startle Emma Vinson, or to make her stumble in the carpeted hall.
When she took the stairs and reached the higher bank of elevators, the digital floor indicator mounted above its doors was flashing that the elevators were temporarily out of service.
Emma suddenly felt nauseated. She bent over, clutching her stomach with both hands, and slid down the wall to sit leaning with her back against it and her knees drawn up.
Her future had taken a sudden lurch and somehow changed. She knew it but wasn’t sure why.
She was terrified to speculate.
24
Within ten minutes the block was closed at both intersections, and police and emergency vehicles were inside the cordon, parked at forty-five-degree angles to the curb. The crowd and uniformed police officers were mostly out on the street. The uniforms provided a corridor for victim after victim to be brought out of the Blenheim Building on gurneys by paramedics and loaded into ambulances. All of the gurneys contained fully zipped body bags.
Quinn, who had rushed to the scene as soon as Renz called him on his cell, saw Renz’s black limo parking outside the cordon. Quinn found himself wondering if Renz would someday mount fender flags on the limo. City or state pennants that proclaimed who was in the car.
A tall man in a black business suit, whom Quinn recognized as an NYPD lieutenant and Renz ally, approached Renz and reached him when Quinn did, just after Renz had ducked under the yellow tape. The lieutenant was the only one showing a shield, fastened to his suit coat pocket. They exchanged glances, and Renz looked at the lieutenant, whose name was Willington, and said, “What’ve we got?”
Willington stepped back out of the path of stretchers and body bags. He had a solemn, hatchet face that Quinn thought made him look a lot like General MacArthur in old newsreels. Quinn and Renz also moved back out of the way.
“What we’ve got,” Willington said, “is a runaway elevator. Dropped over forty floors and crashed in the basement.”
“Passengers?” Renz asked.
“You mean casualties?”
“Victims.”
“Twelve, and still counting. They’re . . . tangled together. Dead. The inside of the elevator is like something out of a bad dream.”
“Any survivors?”
“Only one, so far. A guy named Vinson. Both legs and an arm broken—and who knows what else? He’s at Roosevelt St. Luke’s, being operated on for a head injury.”
“Only one survivor?”
“So far.”
“I thought you said—”
“Commissioner,” Willington said, “over forty stories, packed into an elevator. Those people instantly became meat.”
Quinn was surprised to see an experienced cop like Willington looking queasy.
Renz must have noticed it, too. “It’s okay, Lieu. We’ll just do our jobs.”
Willington gave a half salute to Renz, then to Quinn, and walked away toward the Blenheim Building entrance, presumably to do his job.
Quinn followed him. Taking the stairs down to the building’s basement. There was a horrible smell that he recognized. As he got closer to where uniforms and paramedics were busy around an elevator, the scene was bathed in bright light from portable battery units set on tripods. A faint buzzing sound got louder as Quinn approached the ruined elevator. He’d assumed it was the lights buzzing; now he saw that flies were swarming. Now and then someone with a clipboard or a rolled-up newspaper would swat them away. The tone and volume of the constant droning didn’t change. The odor clinging to the area indicated why. Blood had been spilled, sphincters had released, bladders had burst.
If this isn’t hell, it must be a lot like it.
Using ID furnished by the NYPD, Quinn moved even closer.
He decided to skip lunch.
Sal and Harold spent hours talking to witnesses to the Blenheim Building elevator disaster. They could furnish only peripheral statements. The lone survivor in the elevator, Charles Vinson, who had been there on the first day of his new job in the building, did help. When he regained consciousness in his hospital bed, he described a man who’d tried to get on the elevator on the forty-fourth floor but decided it was too crowded.
Vinson was in traction and wrapped with so much tape he might as well have been mummified. Harold found it hard to comprehend that they were interviewing an actual live human being.
Except for the eyes. Vinson’s eyes, which were all too human. They never ceased moving, and they were horrified, haunted. Harold and Sal knew the man would be haunted for the rest of his life.
The eyes darted from Harold to Sal to Harold. Pleading. “My wife . . .”
“She’s okay, sir,” Sal grated.
“Emma,” Harold said, knowing the mention of the wife’s name would soothe Vinson. “Emma’s right outside, waiting for us to be done talking with you.”
“She might have been in that damned elevator.”
“But she wasn’t,” Sal said. He started to pat Vinson’s bandaged shoulder, then thought he’d better not.
“Can she come in?”
“Not at this point,” Sal said. “But we’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”
“Whaddya want to know from me?” Vinson asked.
“Whatever you know about what happened.”
The dark eyes, sunken in gauze peepholes, darted. “Elevator took a dive.”
“Why?” Harold asked simply.
“Dunno. Maybe it was too crowded. Weighed too much.”
“Elevators are always overcrowded,” Sal said. “They usually don’t turn into dive-bombers.”
“How far did we drop?” Vinson asked.
“Forty-three floors.” Harold said.
“Oh, good God!”
“Where did you get in the elevator?”
“Forty-fourth floor. It was already crowded. People getting off work, I guess.”
“More than usual?”
“I don’t know. This is my first day at work.”
“Some luck,” Harold said.
Vinson said, “Luckier than some others.”
“All the others,” Sal said.
Vinson didn’t understand at first. Then he did, and the world behind his dark and wounded eyes changed forever.