Silent Prey

The woman, whoever it was, was walking down the ramp to get out, rather than entering the stairwell or going to the elevator.
    Damn. It wasn’t working. He glanced at his watch: another ten minutes. No more . . . His mind flashed back to the Twin Cities, to an actress. He’d fooled her by dressing as a gas company employee looking for leaks, had killed her with a hammer. He remembered the impact and the flush . . . . Bekker went away.
    And came back, sometime later, with the telltale sigh. At the sound of feet below, and a woman’s voice.
    The elevator doors opening, one floor below . . .
    He picked up his bag, hurried around, went into the lobby, pushed the up button: the Bekker at the back of his mind saying no no no no, the foreground Bekker hot with anticipation . . .
    The elevator came up, lurched to a stop, and the doors opened. Inside was a dark-haired woman with an oversized purse, eyes large, one hand in her purse. She hadn’t expected the stop at the second floor. She saw Bekker, relaxed. Bekker nodded, stepped inside, waited for the doors to close. The woman had punched six, and Bekker reached for it, then stopped, as if he were also going tosix. He stepped against the back of the elevator, looking up at the numbers flashing down at them . . . .
    She had a gun in her purse, Bekker thought, a gun or tear gas. He thought about that, thought about that . . . got caught in a loop, thinking about thinking about it . . . and when he came back, groping in his collection bag for the stun gun, they were already at six.
    He glanced sideways at the woman, caught her staring at him; he looked away. Eye contact might tell her too much . . . . He glanced again, and the woman seemed to be shrinking away, had her hand in her purse again. A tone sounded, a sharp bing, and the doors slid open. For a moment, neither of them moved, then the woman was out. Bekker followed a few feet behind, turned toward her, slipping his shoes off, expecting to pad after her, catch her unexpectedly . . . .
    But the woman suddenly stepped out of her own shoes and began running, and at the same time, looking back at him, screaming, a long, shrill, piercing cry.
    She knew.  . . .
    Bekker, frozen for an instant by the scream, went after her, the woman screaming, her purse skidding across the floor, spilling out lipsticks and date books and a bottle of some kind, rolling on the rough concrete . . . . She dodged between two cars, backing toward the outer wall, a can in her hand, screaming . . . .
    Tear gas.
    Bekker was right behind her, losing his bag, going after her bare-handed, the urgency gripping him, the need to shut her up: She knows knows knows  . . .
    The woman had braced herself between the cars, her hand extended with the tear gas, her mouth open, her nostrils flexing. No way to get her but straight ahead . . .
    Bekker charged, stooping at the last moment, onehand up to block the tear-gas spray. She pressed the can toward him, but nothing happened, just a hiss and the faint smell of apple blossoms . . . .
    She’d backed all the way to the ramp wall, the lights of the city behind her, the wall waist-high, her shrill scream in his ears, piercing, wailing.
    He went straight in, hit her in the throat with one hand, caught her between the legs with the other, heaved, flipped . . .
    And the woman went over the waist-high wall.
    Simply went over, as though he’d flipped a sack of fertilizer over the wall.
    She dropped, without a sound.
    Bekker, astonished at what he’d done, panting like a dog, looked down over the wall as she went. She fell faceup, arms reaching up, and hit on the back of her head and neck.
    And she died, like that: like a match going out. From six floors up, Bekker could see she was dead. He turned, looking for someone coming after her, a response to the scream.
    Heard nothing but a faraway police siren. Panicked, he ran back to the stairs, up two flights, climbed in the Volkswagen, started it, and rolled down through the ramp. Where were they? On the stairs?
    Nobody.
    At the exit booth, the woman ticket-taker was standing on the street, looking down at the corner. She came back and entered the booth. She was chewing gum, a frown on her face.
    “One-fifty,” she said.
    He paid. “What’s going on?”
    “Fight, maybe,” she said laconically. “A couple of guys were running . . .”
    • • •
    Twelve hours later, Bekker hunched over an IBM typewriter, a