The Jamisons’ apartment was in a twelve-story building on a cross street
that hadn’t yet been plowed. The street was mantled with six inches of
snow. Jack drove slowly forward and had no trouble for about twenty
yards, but then the wheels sank into a hidden drift that had completely
filled in a dip in the pavement. For a moment he thought they were
stuck, but he threw the car into reverse and then forward and then
reverse and then forward again, rocking it, until it broke free.
Two-thirds of the way down the block, he tapped the brakes, and the car
slid to a stop in front of the right building.
He flung open the door and scrambled out of the car.
An arctic wind hit him with sledgehammer force. He put his head down
and staggered around the front of the car, onto the sidewalk, barely
able to see as the wind picked up crystals of snow from the ground and
sprayed them in his face.
By the time Jack climbed the steps and pushed through the glass doors,
into the lobby, Rebecca was already there. Flashing her badge and photo
ID at the startled doorman, she said, “Police.”
He was a stout man, about fifty, with hair as white as the snow outside.
He was sitting at a Sheraton desk near the pair of elevators, drinking
coffee and taking shelter from the storm. He must have been a day-shift
man, filling in for the regular night-shift man (or perhaps new) because
Jack had never seen him on the evenings when he’d come here to pick up
the kids.
“What is it?” the doorman asked. “What’s wrong?”
This wasn’t the kind of building where people were accustomed to
anything being wrong; it was first-class all the way, and the mere
prospect of trouble was sufficient to cause the doorman’s face to turn
nearly as pale as his hair.
Jack punched the elevator call button and said, “We’re going up to the
Jamisons’ apartment. Eleventh floor.”
“I know which floor they’re on,” the doorman said, flustered, getting up
so quickly that he bumped the desk and almost knocked over his coffee
cup. “But why-”
One set of elevator doors opened.
Jack and Rebecca stepped into the cab.
Jack shouted back to the doorman: “Bring a passkey!
I hope to God we don’t need it.”
Because if we need it, he thought, that’ll mean no one’s left alive in
the apartment to let us in.
The lift doors shut. The cab started up.
Jack reached inside his overcoat, drew his revolver.
Rebecca pulled her gun, too.
Above the doors, the panel of lighted numbers indicated that they had
reached the third floor.
“Guns didn’t help Dominick Carramazza,” Jack said shakily, staring at
the Smith & Wesson in his hand.
Fourth floor.
“We won’t need guns anyway,” Rebecca said.
“We’ve gotten here ahead of Lavelle. I know we have.”
But the conviction had gone out of her voice.
Jack knew why. The journey from her apartment had taken forever. It
seemed less and less likely that they were going to be in time.
Sixth floor.
“Why’re the elevators so goddamned slow in this building?” Jack
demanded.
Seventh floor.
Eighth.
Ninth.
“Move, damnit!” he commanded the lift machinery, as if he thought it
would actually speed up if he ordered it to do so.
Tenth floor.
Eleventh.
At last the doors slid open, and Jack stepped through them.
Rebecca followed close behind.
The eleventh floor was so quiet and looked so ordinary that Jack was
tempted to hope.
Please, God, please.
There were seven apartments on this floor. The Jamisons had one of the
two front units.
Jack went to their door and stood to one side of it.
His right arm was bent and tucked close against his side, and the
revolver was in his right hand, held close to his face, the muzzle
pointed straight up at the ceiling for the moment, but ready to be
brought into play in an instant.
Rebecca stood on the other side, directly opposite him, in a similar
posture.
Let them be alive. Please. Please.
His eyes met Rebecca’s. She nodded. Ready.
Jack pounded on the door.