“Did you hear that?” I asked.
There was a second, more drawn-out sneeze, definitely female, followed by an unforgettable grinding of large gears and winches. That cacophony of midtwentieth-century machinery could only be coming from the out-of-service elevator — and it was on the move.
I ran to the elevator, mashed the button, but the car didn’t pause. Burns had told me that the only entrance to the freight elevator was right where we were standing and that the elevator emptied out onto Turk Street, three floors up.
Conklin beat on the elevator door with the butt of his gun, yelling, “SFPD! Stop the elevator!”
There was no answer.
I tried to make sense of what was happening.
No one could have gotten into that elevator since Conklin and I had come to Quick Express fifteen minutes before. Whoever was inside it had to have been inside it before we arrived.
Conklin and I stared at each other for a fraction of a second, then took off in tandem across the garage floor, heading toward the stairwell door.
I was right behind my partner as we raced up the stairs toward the light.
Chapter 105
THOSE SNEEZES had given me hope that Cindy was alive.
But Conklin and I had been unprepared for the elevator to start moving. If the car stopped between floors, if we got to the top floor and then the elevator descended, or if whoever was in the elevator beat us to the exit on Turk Street, we had very little chance of stopping him.
Conklin and I took the stairs two at a time, using the banisters to launch ourselves around corners. Conklin stiff-armed the NO EXIT fire door to Turk Street, and a piercing alarm went off.
I pounded behind him out onto the sidewalk, where I saw an assortment of law enforcement vehicles screaming onto Turk and Jones: fire trucks, cruisers, plainclothes detectives, and narcs pulling up in unmarked cars. Every law enforcement officer in the Mission had responded to the call.
I yelled out to two beat cops I knew.
“Noonan, Mackey, lock this garage down! No one comes in or goes out!”
Conklin was running up Turk toward the elevator exit, and I had to put on speed to catch up with him. He’d just reached the freight bay when the elevator door began to roll up.
A yellow cab was revealed by inches inside the mouth of the elevator. Conklin took a shooting stance square on the opening and was gripping his 9-millimeter with both hands when the cab rolled out of the elevator.
It was dark, but the driver and the backseat passenger were lit by headlights and streetlights. I could tell the passenger was Cindy from the light limning her curls.
The cab’s headlights were full-on.
There was no way the driver didn’t see Conklin.
Conklin yelled, “Police!” He shot out the left front tire, but the driver gunned the engine and the car leapt forward. Conklin was lit by the headlights, and yet the cab kept rolling, driving straight at him.
Conklin yelled, “Stop!” and then fired two shots high into the windshield. He jumped away in time to avoid being run down, but the cab kept moving, out of control now. It sideswiped a squad car on the far side of Turk, caromed off it, and plowed into a fire hydrant.
&
nbsp; The cab rocked, then tipped, hanging on two wheels before settling down on all four. Water spewed. People screamed.
Conklin pulled at the passenger-side door, but he couldn’t get it open.
“I need help here!” he shouted.
The fire crew came with the Jaws of Life and wrenched open the back door. Cindy lay crumpled on the slanted floor of the cab, wedged between the backseat and the divider. Conklin leaned all the way in, calling her name.
“Rich, is she okay?” I yelled to him.
“She’s alive,” Conklin said. “Thank God. She’s alive.”