was the cargo area in back. Couple issues of
Finished with the driver's side of the wagon, Andy decided to go around and check the left side. That's what they taught you to do in security school, anyway. Check both right and left; check both up and down. Because you never know.
Stuffed into the well between front seat and firewall, he found the body, or at least what was left of a security guard named Petry.
Andy had missed this the first time because he hadn't' bothered to shine his light on the front floor.
Now, he stood cursing himself for his incompetence and staring down at the ugliest sight he'd ever seen.
Petry's throat had been cut so that his entire raincoat was soaked with blood. His eyes had rolled back so that now only the whites stared up at Andy. The security guard shivered. My God, this would give him nightmares for years. Petry's arm was extended in such a way that it looked as if he were grasping for a lifeline. His arm and hand blended in with the dark dashboard and seat covers because they were soaked with his own blood.
Then Andy heard the cry.
For the first time since he'd come down to the garage, he felt real fear, something Andy didn't readily admit to. He thought of himself as a competent, rational human being who could meet virtually any challenge life put in his path, and meet it with optimism and courage.
But now there was a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach and an embarrassing twitch in his gunhand. He kept thinking of Petry's white eyes and red bloody face. It made Andy feel as if he were ten years old and in bad need of his father's reassuring voice. The old man was fourteen years dead now (heart attack, the way he'd wanted to go anyway) and there wasn't a day Andy didn't think about him.
Andy hoped the old man was with him right now. Somehow. Somewhere.
'Jeff?' Andy called out, shining his light into the cavelike darkness of the huge, echoing garage. 'Jeff, are you all right?'
But there was no response.
Andy moved, inch by nervous inch, to the back of the garage.
And then he saw the elevator door roll open. The elevator car was a yellow rectangle in utter blackness.
A man got on and turned around to face Andy. At first Andy was under the impression that this was Jeff. He even relaxed a little. It was Jeff and Jeff was fine and everything was going to be all right, despite the way Andy had found Petry.
Andy, cognisant of the extra rolls of weight on his belly, hips, and thighs-and certainly cognisant of his high blood pressure- started running toward the yellow rectangle.
'Jeff! Wait for me!' Andy shouted in the echoing gloom.
But then as he drew closer-breath searing through his chest now, his head a little dizzy-he saw that the man standing in the elevator car was not Jeff at all.
It was Dobyns.
The elevator door rattled shut.
Andy was left alone in the darkness.
And then his left foot kicked against something. Andy angled the flashlight beam down on Jeff's face.
Laid out on the floor, Jeff looked like a corpse in a morgue awaiting his turn under the autopsy knife.
Dobyns had done pretty much the same things to Jeff that he'd done to Petry. Throat slashed, defence cuts all over the hands and arms from where Jeff had been trying to defend himself, blood and pus and excrement pooled around Jeff's hips. The kid smelled pretty bad.
Then Andy's beam lingered a moment on Jeff s ear, on the silly goddamn little earring that his friend Ric had given him. And Andy felt like shit. Who was he to make judgements on how other people lived? He was just this silly fucking middle aged fat man who was still playing at cops and robbers. Hell, he'd never even been in the armed forces.
'So long, kid,' Andy said softly, there in the gloom of the garage.
It was then that he became aware of the elevator door opening again, of the yellow rectangle glowing like a hole in the ebon wall of night.
Dobyns stood in the door of the elevator car.
What the hell was he doing? What the hell did he want?
Andy killed his flashlight.
Stood there breathing so heavy and so ragged he was getting scared. The old man just pitching over one night on the back porch, dead. With a family medical history like that, it sure could happen to Andy easy enough.
Andy had to be careful.
His heart was just as much a threat to him as Dobyns.
Andy put his head down, seeing the vague outline of Jeff s body on the floor. Andy wanted to be respectful, not brush against the corpse. He took small, precise steps, moving around the body, then starting to walk away from it, toward the elevator door.
By now his gun hand was twitching badly and the Magnum was as heavy as a bag of cement.
He raised his head again to glance ahead to the elevator car.
Still there. Still open. A glowing yellow hole.
But there was one thing wrong. Badly wrong.
Dobyns was no longer in the elevator car.
He had come out here to the garage.
Given what he'd already done to Petry and Jeff, could there be any doubt what fate he had in mind for Andy?
It was then that the pain, like a piece of jagged summer lightning, crossed Andy's chest right to left and forced him to slump against the wall.
My God, he was having a heart attack.
And a sociopathic butcher named Dobyns was somewhere nearby with a knife.
And getting closer.
In the damp darkness of the garage.
Andy could hear Dobyns breathing every once in a while; hear his foot scraping, scraping against the concrete floor.
Getting closer.
Andy rubbed the area just above his sternum, where the pain had last been. The tightness in his chest was beginning to disperse, and the dizziness was gradually leaving his head.
Andy narrowed his eyes, scanning the gloom surrounding him. He felt as if he were a tiny life raft adrift on a chill, fogbound ocean with no possible hope of rescue.
He wanted to run to the elevator, but he was afraid that the exertion would cause a heart attack.
Or he could run out of the garage through the doors at the other end.
But somewhere behind him lurked Dobyns. Waiting.
The scraping sound again.
Dobyns moving.
Andy started to crouch next to the car and that was when he saw the keys in the ignition of the Dodge. Or thought he saw them.
Andy was filled-with the happiness of a biblical prophet discovering the light and the way and the truth-with a wonderful idea.
What if he got in the car real fast-like, locked the door, turned on the ignition, and then drove out of there?
Dobyns couldn't do a damn thing about it.
Except get out of the way.
Andy would be safe. And he could go to a nearby hospital and have them put him on an EEG and see if there'd been any heart damage or not.
Of course the tricky part would be getting inside the car.
