It took Allie a few seconds to realize what he’d meant.
And its significance.
It was Hedra he’d seen. Hedra wearing her Allie wig. Wearing her Allie clothes. Inside Allie’s blue coat. Walking her Allie walk.
Within a couple of minutes the switchboard buzzed urgently and a tiny red light began blinking. An insistent code:
The Hispanic woman drifted toward it. Her eyes were brown pools of fear. The desk clerk shuffled over to stand by her. He leaned over with his gray hair near her dark hair, as if he wanted to hear firsthand what was being said on the receiver pressed to the woman’s ear.
While they were standing facing away from her, Allie fled from the lobby and into the street.
Chapter 27
SHE didn’t realize until she was inside and had shut the apartment door that this wasn’t shelter. She’d been stupid to come here. Sam might have something on him that would tell the police where she lived. Hedra might have seen to that.
Hedra! Would Hedra have returned here?
A few feet inside the door, Allie stood in darkness, listening. The apartment was silent.
Even if the police learned her identity and address, she was sure she had
There was her empty cup where she’d left it on the folded
Everything seemed to be exactly as it was when she’d hurried out of the apartment.
She switched on more lights and moved toward the hall to the bedrooms. In the glow cast from so many sources, a dozen dim shadows moved with her. Her legs felt rubbery but she wasn’t tired. There was an engine in her chest; she was running on adrenaline.
She glanced in the bathroom and felt a sudden nausea, remembering the bathroom at the Atherton Hotel.
At the door to Hedra’s old bedroom she stopped. She reached around the doorjamb, into the room, and groped across rough plaster for the plastic wall switch, found it, and flicked it upward.
The overhead fixture winked on.
Allie almost expected to find something hideous inside. Some further manifestation of Hedra’s madness. But this room, too, was as she’d left it. There was, in fact, a special kind of blankness about it, as if, like Hedra, it yearned to be imprinted with personality.
Knowing her time inside the apartment was limited, Allie decided to pack some of her clothes in her carry-on and then get out fast. She’d fetch her red-and-white TWA bag down from her closet shelf and quickly stuff it with whatever seemed appropriate. She wanted only to get clear of the Cody Arms before the police arrived, to run and hide somewhere so she could take time and try to think this nightmare through, figure a way out.
Allie was having difficulty breathing, as if she were being crushed in a vise. She knew there was nothing of Hedra anywhere in the apartment. She felt like screaming, but she covered her mouth with her hand and willed herself to be silent. Slumped on the mattress, she sat with her elbows on her knees, meshing her fingers so tightly they ached. She sat paralyzed, still trying to fully comprehend what had happened, what it meant. On the opposite wall she saw a spider racing diagonally toward the molding up near the ceiling, seeking shelter in shadow.
Then something deep in her stirred to life. A quiet rage and a primal determination to survive. Ancient voices speaking.
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.
