She got up and located the canvas carry-on, crumpled and shoved to the back of her closet shelf, behind her folded sweaters. She grabbed a few clothes from the closet and stuffed them inside, ignoring the hangers that dropped to the floor. Zipped the bag closed, tearing a fingernail. She’d tend to that later.
Careful not to get Sam’s blood on her hands, she untied her jogging shoes and worked them off her feet. The blood, russet-colored now, hadn’t soaked through; her socks weren’t stained. She put on her pair of almost new Nikes, then she slung her purse and the carry-on by their straps over her right shoulder.
After a brief detour to the kitchen to poke several granola bars into the carry-on, she hurried to the front door and let herself out into the hall. She kept straining to hear approaching sirens, but there were only the normal sounds of traffic. Once, sparking a moment of panic, she heard a distant siren that was obviously moving away and quickly faded.
She was ten feet from the elevator doors when she heard the thrum of cables and the oiled metallic grinding of an elevator arriving. Fear grabbed her again.
Hoping none of her neighbors would open an apartment door and see her, she ran down the hall toward the rear fire stairs, staying up on the balls of her feet so she’d make as little noise as possible.
As she was rounding the corner, she paused despite herself and glanced back, saw the elevator doors slide open. Four men filed out of the elevator. Two of them wore drab gray suits. The other two wore the old-fashioned blue uniforms of the New York City Police Department. None of them was smiling; they had somber, anxious expressions and moved almost with the precision of a drill team. They turned right, away from Allie, and didn’t see her.
She decided against the fire stairs and rode the service elevator down instead. Didn’t the police always have someone watching fire escapes? Waiting in the shadows?
The lobby was deserted, but she could see a patrol car parked directly in front of the building. A uniformed officer was sitting behind the steering wheel, and a pulsating haze of exhaust rose from beneath the rear bumper, like life escaping.
Allie’s heart was double-pumping and her mouth was dry. Back way! Back way! Keeping an eye on the police car, she sidestepped to the oversized freight door, about twenty feet from the service elevator. She rotated the knob and pushed on the heavy door.
It opened only a few inches. She could see a glint of steel, a heavy hasp and padlock on the outside. No escape that way.
She stood there for a moment, lightheaded, then ran down the hall to a room where she knew cleaning equipment was stored.
She’d intended to hide there until the police left, but as soon as she was inside she saw a small, high window with steel mesh over it.
Standing on a square can of cleaning fluid that popped and twanged under her weight, she forced the old wooden window open. The steel mesh was ancient and rusted, but it looked strong. Allie inserted her fingers through it, gripped hard, and worked it back and forth, at first very slightly, then an inch or two each way.
It was installed to resist pressure from the outside, not designed to keep people in. The top of it gave. Then one side. Ignoring the pain in her fingers, she bent the mesh back against the window frame, then forward in wider and wider arcs.
And suddenly it broke free and dropped into the gangway alongside the building.
Allie got down from the can she’d been standing on and placed it on top of an upside down metal bucket. Stood on the can again, carefully balancing herself, and managed to squeeze her head and shoulders through the window into cool outside air. Freedom.
She thrashed around with her right leg, found leverage with her foot, and pushed herself through the window to drop and lie on the concrete pavement. Ouch! Her elbow was on the sharp steel mesh she’d broken from the frame. There was a clanging noise as the bucket and can tipped over inside the storage room.
She struggled to her feet in a hurry, brushed rust and dirt off her clothes, and made her way along the gangway to West 74th. She emerged at the corner of the building, behind the parked police car with its motor idling.
Unless the cop behind the steering wheel happened to be looking in his rearview mirror, he wouldn’t see her.
When he seemed to move his head to glance in the opposite direction, she put on a casual air, did a sharp turn out of the gangway, and walked quickly away.
Realizing she’d left her purse and the carry-on in the storage room.
Chapter 28
ALLIE had no idea what she might do. Where she might go. There was no one to ask for help. None of this seemed real to her. Even she was beginning to doubt Hedra had ever existed. She had to keep reminding herself that her world had changed. She was a fugitive. Wanted for Sam’s murder. Sam! Poor Sam. The fool she’d loved and still loved, still needed. They had both been seduced and victimized. Irony twisted her inside; now, after his death, she could better understand and forgive him.
She spent the next several hours wandering aimlessly around the Upper West Side, then walked down Central Park West and over to Fifth Avenue. A fine mist formed in the air; hardly enough to get her wet. Then the mist changed to flecks of snow that fell and disappeared magically on the wet sidewalk in front of her. She seemed to be walking toward a void that would eventually consume her, as if she were ephemeral as a snowflake. And maybe she was.
It finally occurred to her that she was cold and shivering. She stopped walking and was about to enter a small Chinese restaurant, then realized she hadn’t any money. Through the steamed-over window she could glimpse people eating in a booth. Two men and a woman, well-dressed, talking animatedly between bites. The woman, young and with a swirl of dark hair piled high on her head, smiled and broke open a fortune cookie. Allie had intended going into the restaurant to get warm; now she realized she was hungry as well as cold. There was nothing she could do about hunger. Not right now.
For a moment she considered going down into a subway stop to keep warm, but there was danger there for a woman alone. She’d read in the newspapers about robbery, rape, and killing in the subways, seen tragic tape on TV news. And all the time she’d been living with the woman who’d … done those things to Sam.
The woman who wore her clothes.
Who had become her.
Allie realized she was near Grand Central Station. It would be warmer there. But would the police be watching for her, expecting her to try to catch a train out of the city? Scenes from a hundred movie and TV shows tumbled through her mind, bureaucratic authority figures instructing their underlings to “cover the airport and train station!”
But she knew there were too many murders in New York for the police to be constantly on the alert in all the stations, terminals, and airports that provided means of escape. Besides, they still might not even know what she looked like, and almost certainly hadn’t had time to circulate her photograph. She should be safe at Grand Central for at least tonight.
Jamming her fists deep into the pockets of her blazer, she hunched her shoulders and started walking. The flecks of snow were getting larger. Heavier. She felt one settle and melt on her eyelash, another dissolve coldly on her lower lip.
She entered Grand Central from 42nd Street and took the ramp down into the cavernous main area. The place was busy but looked oddly deserted because of its vastness.
Allie ignored the stares of people who passed her. They seemed to be staring at her, anyway, as if there were something about her that marked her as different and desperate. Could they sense her terror? See it on her?
She found a clean spot on the floor, sat down, and leaned back against the wall. Letting out a long breath, she waited for the warmth to penetrate her clothes.