Chapter Forty
Judy stayed as flat as she could on the top of the container. She heard the sound of heavy footsteps walking away. She spotted Carlos’s shadow turning around in the light from the door. He raised his gun as he scanned the space for her. Every muscle in her body clenched with fright.
Police sirens screamed louder and closer. Carlos must have heard them. He was running out of time and he knew it. He edged backwards toward the door. She prayed he kept going. In the next moment he turned around, faced the door, and hustled from the room.
Judy thought about staying but worried he’d come back. She had to keep moving. She had to know where he was. She got up from the container roof so quickly she bumped her head on the ceiling. She was too adrenalized to feel a thing. She got low, scrambled around like a crab, and climbed down the ladder as fast as she could, jumping to the wet concrete floor. She couldn’t go to the right because Carlos had gone that way. She turned left and ran to the open door of the vast room.
Massive industrial fans whirred in the ceiling, masking the sound of her footsteps as she raced across the concrete floor. Her heart pounded, her breath came ragged. She reached the door, squinting from the bright sunlight. The police sirens sounded closer, almost at the sandwich shop. She prayed they had gotten her 911 message from the treatment plant, but she couldn’t wait for help to come. She scanned the yard to see where she could hide.
The area was paved almost a city block, and on the left stood massive rectangular bales of hay, twelve feet tall and thirty feet wide. There had to be forty of them in the field, and beyond them rose hill-size mounds of dark brown compost, with smoke trailing from their peaks.
Judy clung to the corrugated inside of the room. The big fans whirred overhead. She had to plan her next move or it would be her last. She could run to the hay bales. She could go from one to the next, hiding from Carlos until the police came. She would be exposed as she sprinted across the concrete. But she was out of options.
She spotted Carlos pop from behind one of the hay bales, his back turned. He had anticipated her move. He was going from one bale to the next, searching them for her. She couldn’t go that way. She tucked herself from view, waiting for the right moment, keeping an eye on Carlos.
Carlos disappeared behind the next hay bale, and she made her move. She darted out of the doorway, turning left away from where she’d seen him. She ran as hard as she could across the concrete yard, dangerously exposed. Birds and turkey vultures flew overhead. Police sirens sounded at the sandwich shop.
Judy kept running, almost slipping. Filth and muddy tire tracks covered the yard. Huge trucks and equipment sat parked willy-nilly, stopped where they were when the employees had left. She skidded as she raced past a yellow truck pulling a coiled red hose, then three front-end loaders that had their buckets in the air. They offered her no place to hide, but she veered in front of them so they would block her from Carlos. She bolted to a cinderblock building that looked like an operations office. She flung open the door, but passed up the office because it had four glass windows on the other side that would show her hiding there. She whirled around.
Behind her lay a huge concrete structure as tall as a single-story house, with a heavy green rail system over the top. The structure was open on the side facing her, only a roof over six cinderblock bins. The bins had a foot-high shield at the front bottom. She could see in a flash that the four closest bins were empty, their concrete side walls brown with filth. The fifth bin had a dirty dump truck parked in front, its bed in the inclined position. The sixth bin looked closed, roped off with yellow caution tape and an official-looking safety notice.
She realized that the bins were where raw manure got dumped, but they could save her life. Carlos wouldn’t suspect she would go in that direction. The fifth bin had enough manure to bury herself in. She could hide behind the structure or run back in the woods.
Police sirens screamed louder. Carlos would be back any minute. If Roberto had driven their white pick-up truck to the plant, it would be parked in front of the office. Carlos would have to run back this way to get the truck and escape the police.
Judy had to do something fast. She sprinted behind the bin structure. The woods were on her left but too far away. She would be exposed for too long if she ran that way. Carlos would cut her down and take off in the truck. On her right was the back of the concrete structure, and it was her only hope. The back of each bin had a heavy mechanized door that closed across the middle. She ran past the first five bins because their doors were chained and padlocked. She ran to the sixth bin on the end, roped off. A handwritten sign read GEARS BROKEN DO NOT USE. The doors of the roped-off bin were open a crack but there was no chain or padlock.
Judy looked around wildly. She had no other choice. She ducked under the caution tape, wedged her hands between the top and bottom doors, and yanked with all her might, trying to open the door. She moved them six inches apart, then a foot, then a little more until they jammed, immovable. Her heart pounded with fear and exertion. The space between the doors looked almost big enough for her body. She heard Carlos running in the concrete yard, cursing in Spanish, his rage boiling over. She was out of time.
She launched herself into the opening, scrambling inside the bin, scraping the outside of the door with her legs and knees. She squeezed inside, wrenching her arm at the socket. She slid down along the filth of the door, keeping a hard grasp of the lid so she wouldn’t make a noise when she hit the bottom. She eased herself onto the floor. Raw manure covered the bin bottom.
Carlos ranted, fifty feet away. She made herself as flat as possible against the back of the bin. Her body was hidden by the foot-high rim at the front of the bin. She squeezed her eyes and lips shut. She stuck her face into the crack between the door and the floor, burrowing down into the manure and the darkness. The stench filled her nose. Her gorge rose with disgust. She had to stay calm.
Carlos was only twenty feet away, cursing in frantic Spanish. The police sirens blared louder and louder. The cruisers were coming down the road to the treatment plant. They must have gotten her 911 call. They were on the way. They were going to rescue her just in time.
Judy had to stay alive for just a few more seconds. Carlos must be looking for her, turning this way and that. She could hear his footsteps on the gritty concrete and hear the scrape of his boots. He would have to leave any second. He was cutting it so close. The police were almost here.
Judy willed herself to keep her wits about her. If she wanted to live, she had to stay still and silent.
Suddenly, in her blazer pocket, her phone started ringing.