Code 61 - Donald Harstad [3]
I swung my feet back into my car, started the engine, shut the door, and said, “I'm on my way.”
“Uh, Three … You might want to check ground level … Can't figure why she'd go to the roof.”
“Ten-four.” I couldn't, either, but people do strange things when they're scared. I sure as hell wouldn't go up, but then I have a thing about heights.
I had to go almost another block before I reached a side street. Freiberg is located between two big bluffs, and is only four streets wide at its widest point. Spaces being at a premium, cross streets are few and far between. The fact that the cross streets all required a bridge to span the open drainage “conduit” contributed to their scarcity. The so-called conduit was about thirty feet wide, ten to twelve feet deep, with limestone banks and a concrete floor. It was dug in the 1890s to accommodate the vast drainage that came down off the bluffs during heavy rains. It ran the length of the town, and emptied into the Mississippi. It was not, as they say, kid-proof, and offered a nearly invisible path for burglars as well. I bumped over the bridge deck, and took a sharp right, doubling back on the other side of the stores and apartments above them. I stopped as close to the bridge as I could, and opened my car door for the second time. “Comm, Three's out'a the car,” I said, mostly to let Byng know I was now behind the buildings.
“Ten-four, Three,” said Sally. She was monitoring the conversation between Byng and me, and was starting to sound a little concerned.
The conduit was, unfortunately, between the buildings and me. The fire department had fits over that all the time, but there was just no way to put a road in behind the stores on the other side of the big ditch. Not without tearing all the buildings down and moving them into the street on the other side.
Without a road or alley directly behind the buildings, most of them had constructed their own little footbridges across to their loading areas. Easy access, as they say, but easy for burglars as well. For that reason, I had gotten very, very familiar with the area over the years.
The lighting sucked. One yellowish orange light at the road bridge, and one about a block away. Not much room for them, either, because of the hundred-fifty-foot limestone bluff looming up on my left. It was sheer, naked rock for about fifty feet, and then brush and trees began sprouting all the way to the top. The builders had to squeeze the road in, and the whole area was a sandwich of necessity. Bluff, road, conduit, buildings. No room for anything else.
I squeezed the rubberized transmit button of my walkie-talkie. “Which one you in, Byng?” It was really hard to differentiate the various stores from the rear. Looking up, most of them had some light visible in the second floor. Most third floors in this block were empty, mainly because the heating in the winter was so expensive. Even as I spoke, I saw him at one of the windows on the second floor.
“Up here, Three,” he said. Very faint. I'd forgotten to turn my walkie-talkie volume back up.
I looked closely at the back of his building. A poorly maintained external wooden stair led up the back, to a very narrow platform at the second floor. From there an iron ladder that was bolted to the brick wall rose up to the roof. Great. If the victim had fled upward, this particular cop was going to have to meet her when she came down. I really do hate heights.
“Byng, you got a location for the suspect?”
“Negative, Three. All I got is what your office said. White male with teeth.”
“Okay. I don't see the victim here. You got any better ideas where I might—”
I was interrupted by a female voice. “Help!” It sounded like it was coming from the building, but there was something odd about it.
I played my flashlight along the rows of windows, hoping to see her. Byng stuck his flashlight out the window where he was, and played it down