L is for Lawless (Kinsey Millhone 12)

My footsteps chunked softly, the sound blunted by the rubber tread on my Reeboks. I had to guess that this was a service corridor, bordering a banquet room, a circle within a circle with access to freight elevators and the kitchens one floor down. A short flight of stairs led upward. I grabbed the handrail and pulled myself along, skipping steps as I ran. The shoulder bag made me feel like I was dragging an anchor, but I couldn't part with it. At the top, the corridor continued. Here, stacked against the walls, were various seasonal decorations: Christmas angels, artificial spruce trees, two enormous interlocking comedy/tragedy masks, gilded wooden putti and cupids, enormous Valentine hearts pierced with golden arrows. A grove of silk ficus suggested a small interior forest bereft of birds and other wildlife.

Behind me, I heard a door hinge squeak. I picked up my pace, following the deserted corridor. A metal ladder that looked like an interior fire escape scaled its way up the wall on my left. I let my eye take the journey first, uncertain what was up there. I glanced back, dimly aware that someone was coming along the corridor behind me. I grabbed the first rung and headed up, Reeboks tinking as I climbed. I paused at the top, which was some twenty feet up. A steel catwalk stretched out along the wall ahead of me. I was close enough to the ceiling to reach up and touch it. The catwalk itself was less than three feet wide. Below me, through the yawning shadows, the floor looked like a flat still river of concrete. The only thing that kept me from falling was a chain rail supported by metal uprights. As usual, when confronted with heights, my greatest fear was the irresistible urge to fling myself off.

I slowed to a creeping pace, hugging the wall. I didn't dare go any faster for fear the catwalk itself would be loosened from the wall-mounted brackets that secured it. I didn't think I could be seen, cloaked as I was by the darkness up here, but the corridor itself functioned like an echo chamber announcing my presence. Somewhere behind me, I heard hard heels on concrete, a running step that slowed suddenly to a stealthier pace. I sank to my hands and knees and crawled forward with care, the metal surface beneath me buckling and trembling. I had to hump my shoulder bag in front of me as I progressed. I was trying not to call attention to myself, but the rickety catwalk rattled and danced beneath my weight.

I spotted a small wooden door in the wall. With infinite care, I eased the latch back and opened it. Before me was a dimly lighted, musty passageway about six feet high, rimmed along the top with a continuous series of hand-cranked window panels, some of which were standing open, admitting artificial light. The floor of the passageway was carpeted and smelled of dust motes. I felt my way forward, still on hands and knees, now hauling the bag after me. The silence was punctuated only by the sound of my ragged breathing.

I turned and eased the door shut behind me, then crept over to the nearest window and lifted myself gingerly to my feet. Below was one of those vast meeting rooms meant for banquets and large assemblages. An endless pattern of fleur-de-lis proceeded across the carpeting, steel blue on a ground of gray. A series of sliding doors could be drawn across the space at the midway point, effectively dividing the one room into two. Eight evenly spaced chandeliers hung like clusters of icicles, throwing out a flat light. Around the periphery, up near the ceiling where I was, the continuous rim of mirrored-glass windows concealed the space where I hid. I peered back across my shoulder. Through the gloom now, I could see the looming apparatus for a lighting system that must have been called into play on special occasions, floods and spots with various colored gels.

By the light coming through the windows, I hunkered down and opened my bag, taking out my wallet. I removed my driver's license, PI license, and other identification, including cash and credit cards, all of which I stuffed in the pockets of my blazer in haste. I snagged Ray's car keys, my birth control pills, the key picks, and my Swiss Army knife, cursing the fact that women's suit jackets aren't constructed with an interior breast pocket. I plucked out my toothbrush and tucked it in with the other items. My blazer pockets were bulging, but I couldn't help myself. In a pinch, I'm willing to suffer tatty underpants, but not unbrushed teeth.

I became aware that the floor beneath me was vibrating ever so slightly. In California, I'd assume that a 2.2 magnitude temblor was lapping through the earth like an ocean wave. I whipped my head around toward the door. I set my bag aside, sank to a hunkering position, and duck-walked across the narrow passage. I felt the perimeter of the door, fingers searching for the latch bolt on my side. On the far side of the wall, someone was making shaky progress, just as I had, along the catwalk. I found the latch and, ever so silently, pushed the bolt through the eye.