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Rudy
looked for stairs. Until this point, he had felt confident. Now, while
navigating uncharted territory, sweat moistened his palms. During his
preparations, he had not ventured into the restricted ground floor of
the terminal building. He knew the door security code. However, weighing
the involved risks and asking himself: how difficult can it be to follow
any stairway up one floor? he had decided not to trespass.
Waiting
for or riding an elevator in a controlled area was treacherous. A
separate I.D. system could limit its users. Also, standing still in
front of people or security cameras was risky.
Rudy
bypassed the elevator and continued down the corridor from which the
worker had come. Just keep moving, he told himself. He pulled off the
work gloves and stuffed them into his coverall pockets.
The
corridor had no doors until it made a 90-degree turn, beyond which
several doors were open to what appeared to be supply rooms. He passed a
niche with vending machines. Ten feet ahead of him, a middle-aged woman
moved across the corridor. Overweight, she waddled on thick legs. A
moment later Rudy passed the two doors of her path. One led to a small
office, the other to a copying room. A couple of doors were ahead of
him, but neither a continuance of the corridor nor a stairwell presented
itself. He slowed, then stopped, realizing he had walked into a dead
end. The last two doors, which he was across from, led to supply rooms
full of cardboard boxes labeled with the airline's logo.
"You lost?" someone said from behind him.
Rudy
turned around. The fat woman was back in the corridor.
He
tried to respond, but only a grunting sound came out. Even at the second
attempt, his vocal cords failed to produce a normal sound. The woman
stared at him and slowly moved closer, almost filling up the corridor.
"Who are you?" She was taller than Rudy. A bright yellow skirt
and a beige blouse bulgingly contained her body. From the short sleeves
of the garment, her arms hung fat and white.
Rudy
had collected enough spit to swallow and clear his throat. "I'm
from Quality Control. Going up to the terminal," he managed to
rasp.
"What quality? Maintenance Control, you mean?"
Rudy
nodded.
"From Denver?"
He
nodded again.
"Didn't you see the elevator?" She pointed over her shoulder.
"Little wonder with those shades on."
Rudy
tried to reply, but his voice still gave him trouble. He was easily
interrupted.
"You're not non-reving back to Denver in that suit, are you?"
He
had no idea what she meant or how to respond. It had to be some kind of
airline lingo. The woman stared him down.
"How come you don't have a Denver I.D.?" Six more feet of
waddling brought her right in front of him. She fingered his fake badge.
Rudolph Vasquez had been in tight spots many times. This was a
developing scene, a snowball that had begun to roll. In his view, the
inertia of a developing situation was a law of nature. Like domino
pieces, human thought processes were irreversible when set in motion.
Even the sharpest answer would not get him past this woman. She was onto
him and not about to let up.
He
considered his chances. The risk of the woman exposing him, he weighed
against the probability of somebody walking into the corridor within the
next ten seconds. Within a time span that lasted no longer than a
disoriented hesitation, his mind was made up.
With
a rigid snap of his arm, he smashed his tightly curled three fingers
into the woman's throat. A gristly sound, not loud, resulted. Her knees
buckled. With both hands clutching below her double chin, around her
larynx, the woman's astounded face, with a mouth that silently opened,
started forward and downward. Rudy could have sidestepped the slumping
dead weight, but instead he braced himself against the wall and pushed
the woman toward the door on his left. As he failed to completely alter
the momentum of the mushy body, the woman crashed face-forward into the
door frame while letting go of her throat in an attempt to protect her
face. With her head rammed inside the opening, her arm slid down the
wall and hit a light switch, extinguishing some of the overhead
fluorescents. Like a melting snowman, the bulk sank, rather than fell,
to the floor, giving off a chafing sound as the nylon pantyhose on the
obese legs rubbed together in the collapse.
Rudy
stepped over her body into the storage room, slipped the gloves back on,
clasped his hands around her wrists, and, with difficulty, dragged her
next to a wall. A whimpering sound emanated. Her legs kicked. He placed
one knee on her right shoulder blade, one hand around her chin, and the
other on the back of her head. A practiced two-handed twist snapped her
skull to the right. With a bony crack, her body went limp.
Rudy
stood and listened. A distant drone of jet engines was all he heard.
The
room was full of cardboard boxes, stacked on shelves and on the floor.
Swiftly, he piled up a row of boxes, like building blocks, in front of
the woman.
He
stepped to the door opening and paused. A telephone was ringing. In
between the loud chimes, the background airport bustle appeared like
silence. Rudy was slightly out of breath and sweating. The bag was still
on his side. He adjusted his baseball cap and glasses, stepped into the
corridor, flipped the light switch back on, and walked toward the
elevator hallway.
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