After School Special
1
It rained earlier that night. The air felt damp and cool, almost clean. John ran down the narrow alley steadily, feeling the oxygen fill his lungs. Feeling confident. The man he was chasing was still forty yards ahead, but desperate, stumbling with exhaustion. John had closed the lead to thirty yards when his prey skidded abruptly and turned a corner. A few more strides and John turned the corner, too.
The street was deserted. But rhythmic thumping escaped from a metal door carved into the side of the warehouse to John's left.
John noted the cars lining the block as he moved toward the noise. None of the rusty clunkers dockhands might drive to the nightshift. They were fancy SUVs, yuppie station wagons, even some exotic sports cars.
"He's ducked into some kind of club, Finch. North side of the street."
Finch pulled up structural and property information for the block. "The NYPD has shut down numerous under-the-table businesses in that neighborhood in recent years, Mr. Reese. Perhaps our killer has a connection to one of them."
John paid a bouncer in a makeshift vestibule twenty bucks and was allowed to step through the door into the club, the swell of music drowning out Finch's words. The space was cavernous and dark, spotted with cheap strobes, heaving with a mass of sweaty, dancing kids.
John stood on his toes and squinted over the crowd. Their target would be running, panicking. He would try to move through the club quickly . . . John spotted a narrow passage at the far end of the room. He headed for it, pushing through the crowd.
The corridor was smoky and dim, lined with battered couches and strung out kids. In his neat suit John stood out like the outsider he was. The few alert enough to notice his presence eyed him warily. Smaller rooms branched off the hall, some lit with strobes, filled with music and more writhing bodies, some pitch black and populated with god knew what.
Searching them all wasn't an option. John paused in a relatively quiet corner and flicked up the volume in his earpiece. "Finch, I'm looking at a needle in a haystack situation here."
"Our elusive Mr. Reynolds has been picked up for dealing in the area before, he likely knows the building."
"Exits?"
"There are four exits, the east and west leading out to 10th and Greenwich Ave. You entered from the south on Broome Street. The north . . ." Finch peered at his screen and the faded blue pixals, blown up 20 times their original size " . . . looks like it leads to a loading area bordering Grant Street."
Finch sat back and waited. John was the hunter. He would know what to do.
John backtracked to a hallway he'd passed, the one that looked like it headed north. The avenues would be busy and bright even at this time of night. From what John had observed, their drug dealer turned murderer was a skulker, avoiding crowds whenever he could.
"I'll check the exit on Grant," he said. "But if he's decided to hide in the building a visit from the cops will smoke him out."
"Understood," Finch murmured.
As the music faded the crowd thinned. John stepped past couples groping each other in rusty doorways, over groups of stoned kids slumped unconscious on the floor. One thin man sat propped against a peeling plaster wall, needle still embedded in a grimy arm, eyes tracking John's movements. When John's gaze rested on his for a moment the empty face shifted and the addict smiled, bleak as a ghoul.
The Grant Street exit was just beyond, in a room with scattered couples slouched against the walls. It was quiet except for the distant rumble of the dance floor, dark except for a lone brass lamp set in the middle of the floor, fed by an orange electrical cord. The lamp threw red light from a bare, red-tinted bulb.
When he reached it he didn't have to try the handle to know the door wouldn't open. It was padlocked shut.
John turned to a figure leaning against the door frame. His eyes were closed, pants around his ankles. Another man knelt at his feet, head bobbing over his groin. "Did you see anyone come to this door?"
The man opened his eyes, looked John over lazily, and shook his head. John glanced past him and then to the other side of the door. Another man stood there, eyes gleaming in the poor light, already watching him.
"How about you?" John stepped closer. "See anyone try this door?"
The man grinned, thrusting forward into the mouth on him even as he stared at John.
John waited.
"You're pretty," the man said softly, sighing. "For a cop. You want a go?"
John looked around the room again. Maybe the killer had come here, encountered the locked door, and decided to hide here. Maybe all of the doors were locked. Whoever was throwing this party would want to collect their entry fee.
The man next to him shuddered in orgasm, moaning contentedly. Then he drew in a breath and shouted. "Party's over!" He leered at John. "Got cops here!"
The room erupted into movement and curses, men and a few women scrambling to finish, to toss their drugs or just to pull together their clothes.
Only the figure at John's feet was different. He sprang up and sprinted toward the door.
Panicked.
John caught him by the shoulder before he'd made it ten feet and spun him with the force of the grab. He registered the hands - empty, no weapons - before he recognized the face in the dim light. A shock of tall curly hair over smooth brown skin, the familiar wide, fearful dark eyes.
It was Taylor Carter.
