The young man—perhaps in panic, perhaps in pain—suddenly ran toward the back of the warehouse. There was no place to hide, as I had discovered, but he seemed more intent on support than subterfuge. Realizing that he would soon find Milt, I retraced my steps along the back wall, listened to the siren, hoped that help might converge before our paths did. But as I hastened past the storage boxes and rounded the corner near the shipping palates, our eyes met as we found ourselves standing over Milt. We were face-to-face.
My heart was racing, my hands and feet ready to react, but the young man made no move to counter his surprise, nor mine. “I . . . I,” he stammered. “You’re that funeral director,” he said finally.
“Yes,” I found myself saying. “Yes.”
“I . . . is he okay?” The young man, a bundle of nerves and disjointed energy, pointed the flashlight at Milt.
“What did you do?” I asked. I was looking at Milt, hoping that his injuries would not be made more severe due to my interference. I knew he couldn’t survive a second attack.
The young man, his hair disheveled and his hands trembling, looked quickly at us both. As the siren neared the parking lot, he offered an explanation, a passing observation. “He’ll be okay,” he said, pointing at Milt. “But we can’t . . . we can’t let her get away.”
“What?”
“She hit him. Hit him with that wrench.” He pointed to a pipe wrench that was, quit handily, lying on the concrete just outside the door of the industrial freezer. It was there all right—but I had missed it. Still, what did it matter? And how did he know that it was there?
I remained tense, my hands clenched. “Lance,” I whispered. “Please, Lance.”
The young man walked nonchalantly over to the freezer as the wail of siren carried over the railroad tracks and echoed between the shotgun houses and the warehouse. He picked up the pipe wrench with his right hand. “See,” he said. “It’s got blood on it.”
“Don’t,” I said, trying to calm him down. But he was calm—or appeared to be. Too calm. Spookily calm. His eyes were dancing with his own brand of fear.
“Put it down,” I said. “Just put it down.”
“But she’s probably . . . gone out the back,” he said, he eyes darting toward some clandestine corner of the building. “They can get her . . . if they—”
“—Just put the wrench down,” I said slowly. “You’ve done enough damage.”
The young man—probably just shy of twenty-one—was not as stocky as he appeared up close, his slight frame clad in his company coat. But his eyes began to water. “Damage? No . . . you don’t understand,” he said. “She hit him. I saw her do it. I was back there . . . back there by the loading dock . . . ready to make my deliveries.”
Suddenly, as the wail of the siren glanced high against the factory walls, the clatter of the antique machinery interceded and the conveyor chains began to move, the mechanized wonder causing both of us to jolt in our boots, our attentions wrested from each other in those nanoseconds as we turned to face the moving parts. There were shadows above us and, before we could react, a large block of ice came hurling toward us. Dangerously close, it shattered on the concrete floor near the end of the conveyor, sending us, and shards of ice, scurrying like shrapnel to the outer edges of its epicenter. My cell phone went scuttling across the floor, and both the flashlight and the pipe wrench followed, their flash and colors spiraling across the ice chips like tiny propellers, all useless and beyond our reach.
I dove onto my back and found myself pressed up against the edge of the stack of palates. The kid had dived into the shadows near the industrial freezer. Milt lay helplessly between us.
The cry of the siren bounded across the parking lot just as another block of ice came hurtling down from the rafters. It hit the concrete floor with a thud, culling a small crater near the drain, and sending a second spray of sharp ice chips across the slick floor.
I was struggling to my feet, hoping to pull Milt into the safety and sanctuary of the shipping palates, when the young man scurried toward me, grabbed Milt, and dragged him into the back of the crates next to me. Our eyes met again—kindred and fearful spirits. “She’s nuts,” he said. “Are you . . . are you all right?”
I nodded, my mouth agape, unable to surmise what was happening. I was back in the dark again, my mind racing, my thoughts as fragmented as the ice chips that lay all about my feet. Nothing made any sense, and all I could do was work to stay alive in the moment.
“You stay here,” the kid said firmly. “Stay here.”
But as he rose to careen headlong into the falling ice, I instinctively grabbed his coat sleeve. “The police are here,” I said, noting the arrival of the siren. I pointed to the chains and pulleys moving overhead. Indeed, there were other blocks of ice in the waiting—and I could see another block being lifted from the stainless steel hopper as I thought of Lance. “Let’s stay here,” I said, hoping that my immediate instincts were correct. In the moment, I feared the hurtling ice far more than the young man who had been divested of his bloody pipe wrench.
“See . . . she’s working the old pulleys,” the young man told me—the siren, at last, falling off into silence just outside the docking doors. “She’s up there, waiting for us.”
I kept my eyes on the chains, the hooks and pulleys rummaging around in the rafters overhead. The movements of the old hardware reminded me of immense snakes writhing at the ceiling, their mouths ready to spit cold venom. “Watch out for the hooks,” the young man told me. In that moment, he seemed more subdued, less threatening. We were suddenly working together, our eyes fastened to the fast-moving chains crosshatching the ceiling.
The chains squeaked; the pulleys squealed in their casings. And then suddenly the old sounds ceased and we heard the ice machine kick in—another level of new noise that had the conveyor belt moving and the ice pellets forming on their dimples. Water was flushing through the tubes—the compressors humming along with the steady whine of the fluorescent lights. There were three of us, like frightened hens, hunkered down in the corner near the shipping palates.
I didn’t know when help would arrive, but I could feel Lance nearby. I sighed, eager for him to embrace me and pull me out of yet another mess.
“She’s started the ice maker,” the young man stated. “What’s she doing?”
I studied the young man for a few seconds and then asked, “By the way . . . who is she?”
The kid looked at me, eager to answer, but he didn’t have a chance. Milt suddenly came to life, reached up and grabbed my hand. “She’s . . . she’s right behind you!”