her was thousands of dollars worth of complex machinery and gadgets, the purpose of which she couldn’t hope to decipher. Along one wall, storage cabinets stretched from floor to ceiling, and a huge metal box took up a quarter of the 30 foot by 20 foot room. Jumbles of cable connected many of the devices together, and she almost tripped on one as she searched for a telephone. Because there was so much electronic equipment, it took her several seconds to realize that there wasn’t even a desk in this laboratory, let alone a phone.
As she frantically hunted for a hiding place, she noticed that a door on the metal box was slightly open. On a table next to it sat a heavy-duty padlock with the key still in it. The box’s door had three steps leading up to it, putting the bottom of the door at mid-thigh level. She examined the door’s handle mechanism, trying to ignore the fact that Watson was going to be pounding at the laboratory door any second. The thick steel handle had an eyelet that lined up with a similar eyelet in the door when the handle was closed. The padlock was big enough to go through both eyelets and lock the door. Erica opened the door wider and climbed the steps to look inside.
She’d seen a room like it once before, while she was taking introductory physics. It was called an anechoic chamber, used to study sound in an environment which was almost completely free of any echo. Large foam wedges covered the floor three feet below. A wire mesh was suspended above the wedges for walking and mounting equipment. Only some of the wall and none of ceiling was covered by the sound-absorbing wedges. In the far corner, construction materials and a sheet of plywood leaned against the wall. Apparently, the chamber wasn’t finished.
Erica examined the inside of the door, hoping she could lock herself in the chamber until whoever was using the room returned. The door was actually composed of two sections, one that swung into the outer room, and a second insulating door that swung into the chamber. It was covered on the inside by more of the foam wedges. Both doors had handles on the inside, but neither had eyelets for a padlock. She could close the doors, but there was no way to lock them from the inside.
Faintly, she heard pounding outside the chamber.
Franco had stopped at the top of the stairs, seeing the door slam on the room at the end of the hall. He removed the walkie-talkie while wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket and repeatedly pressed the button calling Wilson.
“Wilson here. Go ahead.”
“It’s her. Goddammit! The bitch maced me!”
“What! You idiot! I told you not to contact her without me.”
“She made me when she came out of the library,” Franco had lied. “She started to run. I had to go after her.”
“Did she get away?”
“No, I’m in the physics building. I’ve got her trapped in one of the rooms on the second floor, but it’s going to be tougher getting her to the car now. Get over here and help me out.”
“On my way.”
Franco had run down to the room, pulling out his Glock 19. With the automatic raised, he gently pushed down on the lever. He heard the click of the latch disengaging and pushed the door slightly. No deadbolt.
He threw the full weight of his body against it, ready to crouch and duck another mace attack. He’d shoot her, but not to kill, much as he’d like to. Expecting to hit a yielding door, he wasn’t ready for the sudden stop almost immediately after the door had begun to open. His head smacked against the steel with a resounding thud, and he almost fell to his knees again.
Holding his head, he shook out the stars. Maybe his aim would be off just this once, and there would be a fatal accident. Lobec wouldn’t like it, but tough shit. Franco had had just about enough of Erica Jensen.
He threw his shoulder against the door, this time anticipating the shock. On the third try, the door gave slightly. Three more times and it flew open.
He crouched as he’d originally intended, but no mace came. A quick look around the room. She wasn’t in sight.
Then he heard it. A faint, almost nonexistent, beeping. It was coming from the direction of the open door of a large metal chamber in the opposite corner of the room. The sound of a doctor’s pager. It abruptly stopped, and he realized the hospital must have paged the med student. Tough luck for her. It didn’t matter, though. He would have found her anyway.
He eased over to the door and opened it wider. He peeked around the corner. The chamber was faintly lit, but he could tell that the Jensen woman was not in view. He crept up the stairs, his back to the door, the Glock held at arm’s length.
As he stepped onto the wire mesh, he still couldn’t see her. But he knew where she was. A 4 by 8 sheet of plywood leaned against the far corner, plenty of room for someone to hide behind.
“Miss Jensen, why don’t you come out? I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. And if you spray me again, I
No response. This bitch was tougher than he thought. He slowly walked over to the plywood, then hooked his foot under it and kicked it aside.
The woman wasn’t there. Only two things sat on the wire mesh: a pager and a key.
Shit!
He whipped around to see the door swinging shut.
Erica pulled on the chamber’s outer door as hard as she could, but the enormous metal frame was as heavy as it looked and only with effort started to shut. She didn’t dare look into the chamber, but she heard the police impersonator curse as he realized what happened. The lock in her hand poked her skin, but she pulled harder.
The door was almost closed, traveling at a tremendous rate, when a hand shot through the opening. The man’s weight fell against the other side of the door, but it wasn’t enough to halt the inertia of the door’s massive bulk. His hand was crushed as the door slammed it against the jamb. He let out a scream, and the weight momentarily lifted. The hand disappeared into the chamber.
Erica used the opportunity to latch the door. As she tried to thread the lock through the handle mechanism, gunshots rang out, and she almost fell from the stairs in surprise. She looked down and saw with relief that the bullets, unable to penetrate the thick door, only made small protrusions on her side. Her fumbling hands finally got the lock in place just as the man began pounding on the other side, and she closed it with a satisfying click.
Suspecting that she didn’t have much time before his friends arrived, she collected her purse and headed for the exit. The impersonator’s muted curses faded quickly as she ran down the hall.
CHAPTER 12
Clay Tarnwell leaned into the drive, never taking his eyes off the ball, following through with the form he’d learned at Pinehurst. As soon as the ball left the tee, he knew he’d sliced it. The ball curved gracefully away from the center of the fairway and toward the stand of ashes lining the right side of the rough. It bounced once and then came to rest a good 200 yards from the green. He’d be lucky to make a bogey on this hole, let alone par. It was a perfect shot, exactly where he’d wanted it.
A white-haired gentleman sporting a straw hat, lime green pants, and a well-rounded paunch started laughing as soon as the ball hit the ground.
“If I didn’t know you any better, Clay,” said the sweating man as he took his driver from the bag in the back of the golf cart, “I’d say you shanked that one on purpose.”
“You’re right, Rex,” said Tarnwell, trying to sound disgusted. “And the next one is going in the left sand trap if I can make it. What do think? Would a 3 iron do it?”
Rex Hanson laughed again, and then lined up at the tee. After taking sufficient time to level his swing, he drove a beautiful shot at least fifty yards past Tarnwell’s directly down the fairway.
Tarnwell shook his head as if to curse his luck, but he could have easily beaten his companion, probably by at least eight strokes. He played a four handicap but he had intentionally been missing the harder shots on the previous 12 holes. Now he was coming even with Hanson again and saw a good chance to stay behind for a while,
