A Heartbeat Away

CHAPTER 37

The alley behind the Sechuan Hop smelled of rotting vegetables. Frozen towers of cardboard boxes, stacked taller than Angie stood, abutted two Dumpsters overflowing with garbage and refuse. Dense overcast and the buildings themselves obscured any moonlight, and steel fire escapes protruding from the buildings made the narrow passageway seem even more foreboding.

Angie pulled the red knit hat she had bought from a street vendor down over her ears to shield them from a biting wind. At precisely eleven o’clock, as instructed, she knocked three times on the cold steel of the restaurant’s alleyway entrance. On the second knock, the door budged. On the third, it swung open several inches, grating on rusted hinges. Angie took a cautious step inside and glanced about the basement, which was minimally lit from a source ahead and to her right. No one was there to greet her. She was unwilling to close the door any further.

“Sylvia?” Angie called out.

Nothing.

She was forced to clear her throat to speak again.

“Sylvia, are you here?”

But for the wind down the alley, the silence was absolute.

Floor-to-ceiling metal shelving, stocked with dried goods and restaurant supplies, created the feeling of claustrophobia that Angie had recently found so disturbing. Ahead of her, the shelves split to form three narrow aisles, two of which were dark. Angie took a tentative step down the center one, then another. Ahead, she could now make out a bare, low-wattage bulb, suspended on a short cord. A shaft of light from the bulb cast a long, distorted shadow across the cement floor. Angie’s heart was hammering now. She sensed another presence in the basement. She wanted to leave—to simply turn and run. Instead, she took another step forward.

“Sylvia? Sylvia, please. Are you there?”

The shadow ahead seemed to waver slightly. Angie could make out the shape of long arms and fingers. As frightened as she was, she was also transfixed.

“Please?” she said, her voice now little more than a whimper.

She took another half step toward the shadow, then another, pausing to listen and to check between the shelves on either side, as well as behind her. She had reached the end of the aisle. The shadow extended almost to where she was standing, although a shelf blocked her from seeing the source. Jaws and fists clenched, she peered around the shelving. Then she gasped. Sylvia Chen was hanging by an electric cord wrapped around her neck. The toes of her black work shoes, pointing down, were several inches off the concrete. The other end of the cord had been tossed over an exposed pipe, and then secured to a nearby steel support column.

The scientist’s head was bowed, obscuring her face. Angie moved numbly to Sylvia’s side and took her hand. Her skin was warm.

Could she still be alive?

She lifted Sylvia’s head using two fingers underneath her chin. Immediately the flash of hope gave way to anguish and revulsion. Angie recoiled at the sight of the dead woman’s tongue protruding out between her lips. Sylvia’s face was swollen and dark, and even in the gloom, Angie could see that her bulging eyes were spotted red with burst capillaries—a sign, she knew, of strangulation. She swallowed back a jet of bile and allowed Sylvia’s chin to drop back against her chest.

Calming herself with deep breaths, Angie examined the method used to hang the woman. The overhead pipe supplied the leverage to hoist her off the ground. The knot around the pipe seemed expertly done. Was she strangled before she was hung?

Two thoughts occurred to Angie at that moment. First, that this was murder, not suicide. There was no chair or box Sylvia could have used. Somebody powerful had to have pulled on the cord to lift her off her feet. The second thought sent a chill through her. When she first stepped into the basement and listened she’d had a strong sense that she was not alone.

Instantly, Angie was overwhelmed by the need to get out of the building and into the alley. She whirled and dashed back up the aisle.

She had made it halfway when the heavy steel door ahead of her swung shut.