Free Michelangelo's Notebook by Paul Christopher

fire escape. She could just see the top of the black helmet. She stood and ran, keeping to the center of the girder, drawing in her breath sharply as the Coolidge roof suddenly disappeared and she was four stories above the sidewalk.
    Every now and again she ran into a vertical girder and had to stop and edge around it. The farther out over thin air she got the harder her heart beat and the more unsure of herself she became. The empty space under the bridge was mostly a repository for abandoned cars, and if she fell now that’s what she’d hit first. She risked a look back and to her horror saw Raptor Head playing acrobat on the girders as well, except he didn’t seem even remotely nervous as he deftly made his way around the verticals, barely slowing down.
    He was gaining, and Finn knew she didn’t have a hope of reaching the far abutment to the bridge where she could finally climb down. It took him five minutes but he was eventually only a dozen yards behind her and moving fast. At the next vertical she’d have to slow down again and she’d lose even more time; they’d wind up being on the same girder. She heard a faint clicking sound from behind her, and terrified, she turned. She’d heard the sound before—last night, just before Peter had died.
    Behind her the blank-faced man in the black helmet and skintight bicycle shorts was moving, poised and perfectly balanced along the girder, a long thin knife in his right hand, held between thumb and forefinger like a portrait painter’s sable brush. He moved easily toward the last vertical between them and started to swing around it, one-handed. She heard a giggling, shallow laugh echoing from inside the helmet and something in her snapped. Instead of running from the dark, sinister figure in his obscenely revealing outfit she did the exact opposite, rushing back along the girder, stripping off her pack with one hand, her fiery hair blowing wildly in the wind as she swung the pack as hard as she could, catching Raptor Head right between the legs as he swung around the vertical.
    He screamed as the knapsack connected with his groin, losing his balance at the worst possible moment. He lost the knife, the blade twinkling in the sunlight as it twisted and turned its way toward the ground, bouncing off the broken windshield of an old car before flipping off into a thin stand of weeds beside a tire. Raptor Head held on for half a second more before he found himself too overbalanced to pull himself back to the safety of the girder.
    He fell, doing a slow half gainer with a twist, screaming all the way down and hitting the same windshield as his knife, going through it instead of bouncing off. The impact cracked the visor on his helmet like a black egg and she saw his face, a young bloody horror, Asian—either Chinese or Vietnamese. He wasn’t moving. Sobbing, half with fear and half with relief, Finn stared down at him, wondering how her life could have changed so quickly and so completely. She slipped the pack on her shoulders again then turned away and headed back along the girder and to the street.
     
     
     

13
     
     
    Lieutenant Vincent Delaney stood on the sidewalk with his hands stuffed in his pockets, looking up at the building on the corner. The street in front of him was littered with fire trucks, paramedic units and squad cars. Lights were flashing everywhere. There was crime scene tape all over the place and a lot of people in bathrobes and slippers behind it. Most of them had been there for several hours and they weren’t looking too pleased about it. Sergeant William Boyd, his partner, rolled around the corner, two Styrofoam cups of coffee in his hand and a greasy bag held between his teeth like a St. Bernard. He reached Delaney, handed him one of the coffees, then transferred the paper bag to his free hand. He popped the top off his coffee, shook the bag open and offered it to Delaney.
    “Doughnut?”
    “Sure.” Delaney peered into the bag, found a