I heard the awful metallic sound of the locks clicking. Of tumblers opening. It was so loud I thought I was going to go deaf. There was no other sound in the world but the key unlocking the door. There were two keys. There were two locks. But there was a chain. I’d put the chain on.
Giving up on Cleo’s hands for a minute, I gripped a corner of the tape covering her mouth and ripped. She grimaced, and as the tape came away, her scream erupted, growing louder and louder, so loud I couldn’t hear the keys anymore.
“Get a knife,” she said fast. As if she had been waiting to say it. “The kitchen is behind you.”
I didn’t look back, but ran into the kitchen and flung open one drawer, another, a third, and then saw a knife.
She smiled at me when she saw it gleam. It was such a hopeful smile that for a moment I actually believed we’d be all right. He wouldn’t be able to push the door open. The chain would hold. The police would get here.
Of course he wouldn’t be able to push the door open. It was a strong chain.
Slashing at the duct tape, trying to stay clear of Cleo’s skin, took more time than I had. But at last I freed her hands.
“Can you do your feet?”
She nodded.
I gave her the knife.
He was still on the other side of the door, his fingers trying to work through the space. But it wasn’t wide enough. We were safe. For a minute more.
Cleo had worked her way through the tape and was on her feet.
I ran into the kitchen again, to the intercom. I lifted it from the receiver.
“Hello,” the doorman answered slowly.
“Don’t come up here. Don’t let anyone up here except the police. Call 911. A woman is hurt. There is a killer loose in the hallway.”
“Who is this?”
“Just do it. We need help.”
I let the receiver drop and ran out to the living room. Cleo was looking at me, eyes wide with terror. My gaze swung to the door. The fingers were gone. I knew he wasn’t there.
“Where is he?”
She shook her head.
“Can you talk, Cleo?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
And then I heard the click again. Loud in my ears like gunfire.
“Where is he?”
“There’s a back door. In the kitchen.”
I looked around. Where were we going to go? How much could he hurt us? There were two of us. Couldn’t we overpower him? I hoped so, but I didn’t know.
“Come,” I whispered, and took her by the hand.
56
The terrace off the living room was about fifteen feet long and six feet deep, and filled with heavy, wrought-iron furniture: a table and four chairs. There were also dozens of plants in terra-cotta pots.
We were both in black. It was night. Maybe he wouldn’t see us. Maybe. Maybe we could hide in the darkness. As long as he didn’t look for us here. As long as he didn’t think of the terrace.
“Lie down,” I whispered.
Cleo did.
I lay down next to her. And we waited. To hear the sirens coming up the block. To see Elias come into view after entering through the kitchen.
He looked like a victim of a violent crime. His eye was swollen shut. His face, his shirt, his neck and his hands were covered with blood. It dripped from him, sprinkling the ground.
I held my breath even though there was no way he could hear me from inside the apartment.
He was circling the room, crazed, knocking over vases and books as if somehow we were hiding there. He was almost unrecognizable, rage and blood and his injury having altered his face.
“What’s he doing?” Cleo whispered. From where I had pushed her she couldn’t see him.
“He’s looking around. Searching for us.”
“He won’t think of the terrace.”
“He won’t?”
“No, he won’t.”
Our words were prayers that I hoped would come true.
Until I heard the door handle turn.
“Stay down. Whatever happens stay down. The police will be here any minute. They have to be here. It hasn’t been more than five minutes even though it feels like hours.”
The door opened. Don’t look up, I thought. Sending the thought out to her. Hoping she would keep down, keep hidden. He didn’t love me; he wouldn’t want to kill me, but he would want to kill her.
“Dr. Snow. You hurt me.” His voice sounded childlike.
I didn’t say anything.
His feet were inches from my face when I felt him reach down and pull me up by my hair again. Even in so much pain, he was strong. He was going to break my neck, just as he had broken those other women’s necks.
Was that a police siren I heard, mixed in with the other traffic noises? Even if it was, it was too far away. He’d kill me and Cleo and still get out before the police arrived.
“Elias, if you let me go, I will talk to the police. I will convince them not to put you in jail but to get you help.”
My eyes were locked on his one good eye. He had no idea what I was saying. He couldn’t understand.
He stood me on my feet. Then one of his hands moved up to my neck. Then the other. The siren was closer but not close enough.
And then, fingers digging into my neck, he fell down and pulled me with him, so that I was on top of him. He was lying on his back and I was on my stomach. His body was hard underneath mine. I could feel his muscles and his bones. His breath was on my face. I could feel everything, despite his hands tightening around my neck. I knew it was only a matter of seconds.
Because everything was turning black.
57
“Dr. Snow. Get up.”
Cleo was standing beside him. The wind whipped around her legs and blew the nun’s habit up into the classic Marilyn Monroe pose. How could I be thinking this?
She held out the knife, glistening in the little bit of moonlight shining down on that part of the terrace. Drops of blood slowly ran down the blade.
Below me, he groaned, but they were watery groans, diluted and weak.
With my fingertips I pried his hands off my neck, and then slowly, as if I had never done so before and wasn’t sure I knew how, I got to my feet.
The sirens were below us now. The police would come up. Just a little too late.
I walked to Cleo and put my arm around her, and she put her arm around me, the hand with the knife at my back. Her body did not move. I barely felt her breathing. She was as still as a statue atop a tombstone in a graveyard. For one second. And then she shattered. Her crying was dry at first and deep in her throat, as if her body, her torso, was weeping, but not yet her heart, not yet her head.
Suddenly more lights blazed on in the apartment. Bright and too white. Four policemen in uniforms, guns drawn, and preceding them, Detectives Jordain and Perez.
Through the window, Cleo and I watched them looking around for a body, for people, for the perpetrator, for a victim. It was as if they were on a stage.
Neither Cleo nor I had any strength to move, to summon them.
Noah was the first one to see us. He put a hand out. As if he could reach me through the glass. He called out and I heard my name. Then the terrace door opened and all the cops came out. One dropped to his knees and put his finger to Elias’s throat.
“He’s still breathing. He’s got a pulse.”
Someone else called out, “He’s got a pulse.” And two paramedics ran out onto the terrace. And efficiently and wordlessly got a blood-pressure cuff on him and began talking his vitals.
I was sorry about that.
58
After I was finished giving a statement at the precinct house, Nina took me back to her apartment, put me in her bed and sat next to me, waiting for me to fall asleep. But I couldn’t.
In the morning I called Dulcie and told her only as much as I had to so that it wouldn’t alarm her that I was asking her to stay with her father for a few more days. And then Nina and I took a long walk to Central Park and continued walking. All the way up to the reservoir, and then we worked our way down, stopping at our favorite spot: the Conservatory Garden, which was ablaze with flowers-roses and delphiniums, foxgloves and begonias. We sat and watched birds pecking at the dirt, but we didn’t say much about anything that mattered. Not yet.