have the painting with her in the car. Lots of cash, enough jewelry to make a splash at our lunch-he was entitled to keep those things, under our agreement-but no Vermeer. Now, between you and me, Ms. Cooper, this is still a point of contention between me and my old pal Anthony. He’s not beyond pulling a sting on me, either.
“So he was angry with her. And then-well-you know this better than I do. What makes a man decide to rape a woman? Anger? Lust? Control? Or the Willie Sutton theory of robbing banks-just because she’s there?”
I had been doing this work for more than ten years and I had never seen or heard any satisfactory explanation of what motivates a human being to force another into an act of sexual intercourse, the most intimate contact two people can experience. The only factors that were the same in every case were the vulnerability of the victim at a particular moment in time and the opportunity that this presented to the assailant.
Wrenley stepped forward and moved closer to me, passing behind me and putting his left arm around my back, ready to lead me to the staircase going down to the street level.
“Bailor denied assaulting Deni at first. Made up a whole story about Omar being along for the ride, and blaming the rape on him. That’s actually why he killed poor Omar-so that dumb con artist couldn’t tell me otherwise. Worked fine with me until I read the newspaper story about the DNA eliminating Omar. Not so tense, Alex. C’mon. I’m telling you all this so that you don’t waste the government’s money trying to hunt me down. I don’t have the damn paintings after all. I got screwed out of the Vermeer, and the Rembrandt was never actually in my control.”
I pulled away from Wrenley and walked alongside him.
“So Anthony and I had another meeting. That’s when he told me about getting mad at Deni for not having the painting. He knew I’d understand that, since I wanted it so badly. What he couldn’t make me understand is why he made her get in the back of the station wagon and, well… He said he never meant to get rough with her. He just didn’t expect her to resist, especially since he had a gun. Thought just the threat of it would make her tell him where the Vermeer was. But he couldn’t scare it out of her. Said she fought like a tiger. Claimed he had to hit her in the back of the head with the gun to shut her up.”
I was biting the inside of my cheek so hard that I tore through the thin membrane and could taste blood in my mouth. I put my right hand in my jacket pocket and began to play with the case of Jake’s razor blades, sliding one out the open end of the container and squeezing it between two fingers. I thought of Preston Mattox’s description of Deni, so feminine looking but such a fighter, and his sorrowful certainty that she would have struggled against her attacker. For some women, resistance saves them from the completion of the assault, but for others it causes the attacker to use even more force to accomplish his goal.
“There’s an object lesson in all this, Ms. Cooper.” Wrenley held his revolver up for a moment for me to see, as a reminder. “I’m going to tuck this back in my waistband during my short freedom ride, but I know you’re clever enough to understand that it’s not smart to make me angry.”
Frank Wrenley was standing at the top of the stairwell, lowering his arm from in front of my face as I took my fingers out of my pocket. With a single stroke, I sliced at his hand with one of the sharp cutting edges of the razor blade. The gun fell onto the steps beneath him and clattered to the floor below. Wrenley grabbed his wrist and howled in pain.
I ran as fast as I could go, in the direction of the double glass doors that surrounded the Hi-Line Railroad ties and opened out onto the antiquated structure leading downtown, several stories high above the streets of Chelsea. Wrenley had been at the top of the stairs, blocking my way to the patrol car in the rear of the building. I didn’t waste time; he might have reached the gun before I did, which would have been deadly. I knew I had temporarily disarmed him, but I also guessed the wound had not disabled him completely.
The bolt affixed to the exit yielded easily to a twist of my hand. I yanked it back and was met by a blast of the hot August air as I escaped onto the tracks. For once-I prayed silently-don’t let Chapman’s stories be full of their usual exaggeration. I was trusting his brief oral history of the neighborhood to make my dash away from this callous killer, and I needed Chapman’s facts to be right.
The rusted iron frame of the deserted railway rose on thick beams over Twenty-second Street and stretched out ahead, cutting through the center of the buildings opposite me. The track bed was wider across than most small tenements in the city. Looking down at the littered ground, I chose a path directly between the parallel lines that were vestiges of old track, hoping to avoid tripping over pieces of wood and steel that were obscured by weeds and garbage of all sorts.
I screamed for help. I was headed south, and Brannigan and Lazarro were parked on the north side of Caxton Due. I knew they couldn’t see or hear me as I ran, but I was sure I could attract the attention of someone who would call for assistance. “HELP! POLICE!” I yelled as I crossed to the far side of Twenty-second Street, looking down for signs of life amidst the vans that had congested the entire block since before I had arrived at the gallery. I gasped for breath, holding on to the edge of the building adjacent to the tracks, but could see no people on the pavement below. Wrenley was charging at me from the open glass doors of Caxton Due.
I started jogging again, slowing somewhat as I zigzagged around holes in the skeleton of the trail, afraid I would catch my foot and wedge myself in a crevice from which I’d be unable to retreat. There were shards of broken glass and dirty hypodermic needles, discarded sneakers and dead pigeons, and I danced around objects on the obstacle course, wanting none of them to bring me down in flight.
Racing through the valley of warehouses that rose above the tracks on either side of me, I emerged onto Twenty-first Street, stopping to peer down and repeat my cries for help. Kids were playing ball at the far end of the block, near Eleventh Avenue, and they stopped to look as one of them heard and pointed up at me. “POLICE!” I shouted to them, not knowing if they could make out my words. I glanced back to see Wrenley gaining on me, so I ran again.
There was open iron grillwork on the side of the guardrail at the next intersection. I gave a fleeting thought to climbing over and trying to lower myself down from it. I was still too high off the street to jump, but perhaps I could cling to a ledge until police arrived. Then I saw the rolls of barbed-wire fencing directly below me, spitting their jagged edges upward, so I propelled myself on.
Wrenley was getting closer. His route was a more reckless one than mine, straightforward and relentless in pursuit. Taller buildings rose around me as I followed the next strip of tracks, the intense glare of the sun briefly lost to the shade of the brick walls.
I heard a grunt from behind me and ignored my own directive not to look back. Wrenley had tripped on something and fallen to the ground. Taking a deep breath, I surged ahead and ran on past the giant warehouses, onto a long open stretch of track. I must have been below Nineteenth Street by now. In the distance I could hear the faint wail of sirens. I had no idea how remote they were, or any hope that they would reach me in the maze of one-way streets.
Lowering my eyes to the pavement below in search of the blue-and-white patrol cars that might be on their way, I saw only the tall traffic signs on the nearest corner, their bright red flashers urging me on. don’t walk.
The length of the run had not been enough to slow me down, but the dense humidity and August heat were oppressive. I was gasping for air and felt like my body was running on fumes, trying to find oxygen in the stillness of the stale afternoon.
Wrenley was closing in again. I didn’t have to turn my head to see him, but I could hear his labored panting over the noise coming from my own chest. We were somewhere below Seventeenth Street, and the entire structure of the railroad lay out before me, curving slowly around to the east, away from the surrounding buildings.
I felt the tug on the tail of my jacket a split second before Wrenley pushed me down from the rear, landing with me in a tangle of legs and arms. My knees slammed against the metal tracks as I tried hopelessly to break the fall. The palms of my hands stung as they landed on pieces of rusted metal, rocks, and debris I couldn’t identify. I pushed up and kicked one leg out back behind me, smacking it against Wrenley’s chin or chest-I couldn’t see which-drawing a groan as his head snapped back.
As I raised myself up on my feet, I grabbed at one of the empty beer bottles scattered along the path and carried it in my hand as I resumed my gallop, heading to the section of the Hi-Line that crossed out over Tenth
