followed it as it seemed to find a groove. And then it was as the crayon had a will of its own, scribing with such authority that her hand seemed barely more than a support.
Still thinking of his father, Janek stopped the car before the entrance to Richmond Park. The wrought-iron gate, rusted now, was closed and hooped with padlocked chains. Richmond had been shut down ten years ago, closed by the state after its roller coaster crashed. The crash had been a major tragedy-seven children killed, forty- six seriously injured.
Richmond had never reopened, yet no one had bothered to tear it down.
And so it stood, rotting slowly, almost, Janek thought, magnificent in its decay, surrounded by an automobile junkyard, a warehouse especially constructed for storage of industrial wastes and a single street of decrepit blue- collar homes.
A pack of wild dogs, it was rumored, roamed its grounds. A dismembered human female body had been discovered there a couple of summers before.
The killing, Janek recalled, had not taken place at the park; the body parts had just been dumped there. But that was enough to create an aura of menace and fear. Now Richmond was the sort of place one kid might dare another to enter on Halloween.
Thinking sadly of his father, Janek drove on.
Gelsey had no idea what she was drawing until, after fifteen minutes of work, she let her hand drop and stepped back from the wall to look.
And then, when she saw the form, she felt despair. She had drawn the head of a monster, the Minotaur.
I am still a prisoner of the maze.
She was about to rip the paper off the board when she heard a sound and turned. A car had driven up outside and stopped. She went to the window to look out.
When Janek found the building, he couldn't believe he had the right address. A flat-topped, windowless concrete structure with an industrial steel door, it looked more like a garage than someone's home.
He sat in Aaron's car studying the place. The number matched the one on the piece of paper in his hand. He got out, walked across the street, peered in through the eastern perimeter fence of the amusement park. He could make out some of the wreckage of the crashed roller coaster through the weeds. Then, when he turned back, he was surprised. A wooden structure with a pitched corrugated metal roof was perched on top of the concrete building, set too far back to be seen from the street.
He walked along the side, found an exterior wooden staircase leading up to the house.
Sure, she must live up there.
He began to ascend when a young woman appeared at the top of the stairs.
He couldn't make her out. The sun was behind her; she was just a silhouette. But he was certain she was his quarry.
Gelsey stared at the man below her, standing on the bottom step. She recognized him at once-the detective she'd seen on TV, the middle-aged man with the searching eyes. Her hunter. Her enemy.
'Who the hell are you?'
'Name's Janek,' he said. 'I'd like to talk to you.'
I bet you would! 'What about?'
'You're Beth Gelsey, right?'
She didn't respond.
'Look, I know-':'Who told you I was here?'
'Efica Hawkins.'
Erica-shit! But he must be pretty good if he found his way to her.
Gelsey didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. She knew she had to stall him until she figured out what to do. Escape was impossible.
She supposed she could invite him in, offer him coffee or a Coke. But even if she put him to sleep and ran, she had no place to go.
Then an idea came to her, a way to weaken him, get the upper hand.
'What do you want?' she demanded.
He pulled out his shield, displayed it.
She placed her hands on her hips. 'So, you found me.
Big deal.'
'Can I come up?'
'No.' Her answer was sharp. 'Go around to the front. I'll let you in.'
Janek stood before the steel door for several minutes. Funny how they all talk so tough. Finally the door creaked opened. Ahead was blackness.
He hesitated.
'Where are you?' he asked. 'Behind the door?'
No answer. He advanced. He felt like he was entering a cave. Then, suddenly, several things happened at once the door closed behind him, the place went pitch-black, then bright lights came on, and then everywhere he turned he saw himself.
He was surrounded by mirrors.
So, she likes to play games. This one seems harmless enough.
As he moved forward he quickly discovered that he was in a mirrored corridor with a mirrored ceiling. And then he had to smile, for the deeper he penetrated, the more distorted his reflections became. He found himself fattened, thinned, twisted, dwarfed, stretched, bent, split in two, hourglassed. In one mirror the lower half of his body was miniaturized while his head suddenly quadrupled in size. Concave, convex and irregularly bent mirrors deconstructed his bodily integrity.
The effects were funny. The only i trouble was that he was alone; there was no one with h m to point and hoot.
Gelsey, standing on the catwalk beside the switchboard that controlled the door and lights, watched silently from above.
Gotta gii, e hi),n credit, she thought. He doesn't hesitate; he moves straight in.
Now that she had him in the maze, she would run him through her hoops.
She had changed from her working garb of shirt and jeans into something a little more… seductive. Wandering below, he was an unwary traveler; in the endless mirrored galleries, she was queen. She stepped softly to the thick white rope, then silently lowered herself to the floor. She moved into the blue chamber, then seated herself on the stool to wait.
Janek turned a corner and found himself amid a sequence of mirrors set at angles to the perpendicular, some bending toward him and some away.
At first the effect made him dizzy, but then he began to enjoy it. Feels like I'm inside one of those 1920s German films.
He could not move quickly-the corridor was narrow and because there were so many mirrors he wasn't always able to distinguish between open space and mirror space. Also, the corridor was sharply angled, full of diabolic turns. After negotiating a few of these he had the feeling he had doubled back on his route, possibly twice.
He passed beneath an arch. On it the words CHAMBER OF UNSUSTAINABLE ECSTASY were written in archaic Old English script. He remembered the archway at the police headquarters in Havana, the word HOMICIDIO elegantly inscribed above.
The corridor widened, and then he was surprised again. He saw Gelsey, in a slinky black cocktail dress, smiling at him, sitting on a high stool against a brilliant neon-blue background. She seemed to be just a few feet ahead, but when he moved toward her he realized he was looking at a reflection. He turned around to look for her but she wasn't behind him either.
He turned back, moved closer to the mirror. Maybe it's a reflection.
Maybe I'm looking at her through a pane He couldn't be sure. She seemed to be sitting in limbo. The bare blue chamber offered no points of reference.
Chamber of Unobtainable Ecstasy: Was she, then, the unobtainable object?
Evidently she thinks so. She's positioned herself like a lure. She was, he recognized, most certainly that,
