Cam - 04 - Nightwalkers (27 page)

The waking up part turned out to be a breeze, as I bolted upright to the sound of screaming. Really loud screaming, a woman's voice, and she was being drawn and quartered by the Inquisition on a rack somewhere in the house.

I jumped off the mattress, SIG in one hand, flashlight in the other, trying to gather my wits while the poor wretch screamed, desperate, bloodcurdling screams of mortal agony. It was coming from everywhere, but it was louder downstairs. I ran down the stairs and nearly tripped over the shepherds, who were beside themselves, running around in circles and barking.

The moment I hit the lower landing, the screaming got louder upstairs, and it seemed to be coming from the lower level, too. The woman was truly shrieking now, and I had visions of babies being torn out of living wombs. I ran into the back of the house, using the flashlight now, and the screams were definitely coming from the lower level.

But also from upstairs.

I stopped and thought about that. The noise on this level was nothing compared to what I was hearing from the other two levels.

Motion detectors and speakers.

Fuck.

I ignored the awful racket and went around the rooms of the main floor until I found a small white cube sitting on a white mantel, practically invisible unless one was looking for it. The cube was heavier than I expected, and there was a tiny glass eye on the front. When I
waved my hand over the eye, the dying woman stopped screaming in my face from the embedded speaker. The shepherds backed away, totally confused by what they were hearing and not seeing.

I went back upstairs and found the second speaker, and then down to the lowest level for the third one. In each case, the speaker stopped its noise the moment I came into the room. I carried all three in my hands to ensure the eyes could detect motion, and the house went blessedly silent. I went back up to my mattress and popped out their batteries to end the disturbance once and for all.

Not bad,
I thought. Somewhere nearby there was a transmitter that had been activating these devices. It was amazing how much noise these innocuous looking four-inch cubes could generate. Once again my ghost had flushed out his quarry, and once again he'd been in the house while we'd been out beating the bushes for coal mines. His ready access to the house had to mean that he had a hide somewhere not too far away--or more accomplices. Or maybe not, given this guy's predilection for shooting accomplices who disappointed him.

I called Tony and told him what had happened. I said I was going to come back to the cottage. He pointed out that that might have been the objective of the screaming barrage: to get me to come out of the house into the darkness. I thought about that and then told him I was going to try a gambit of my own. I hung up, gathered up the dogs and my gear, and went to the front door of the house. I opened it and then slammed it again, loud enough that if someone was listening, he might think I'd gone out the front door. Then I took my buddies downstairs to the kitchen, unlocked the trapdoor, and went down into the basement. I used the flashlight freely down there until we were right in front of the escape door. It had a red lens that could be rotated over the clear lens, and I did so. Then I switched it off and pushed gently, hoping that our guy hadn't discovered our fake door latch.

The ballpoint pen dropped and the door swung open. A wave of
cool air came in from the tunnel. We stepped through, and I left the door ajar. Keeping the shepherds right behind me, we crept to the dogleg turn and then stopped and listened. There was no sound in the old tunnel, just the smell of ancient mortar, dirt, and mold. I stuck a gun around the dogleg and followed it. The red light would have been useless outside, but in the absolute darkness of the tunnel it worked just fine and also preserved my night vision. We hurried down the tunnel to the point where the fire-pit access hatch was right above us, stopped, and listened.

This was going to be the tricky part, so I decided to wait and listen for a few more minutes at the base of the ladder. My plan had been to go out the tunnel and up into the yard, where I hoped to get behind my tormentor. I'd forgotten the dogs: There was no way to get them up that ladder.

Then I heard a sound, a heavy clunk down at the other end of the tunnel.

The door had closed.

I tried to remember the bolting arrangement. There had been a black iron bar and brackets, but they were on my side of the door. The other side had been a bare wooden wall. I looked up at the trapdoor underneath the fire pit. Tony had lifted the trapdoor by pulling up on those andirons, but there'd been no latch. So either way, I wasn't trapped down here.

Or was I?

I went up the ladder and pushed on the trapdoor. It moved a quarter inch, but there was something really heavy on it, and I couldn't get the leverage I needed to lift it.

I went back down the ladder, checked my SIG, and then went back into the tunnel to the dogleg turn. I sent the shepherds around the corner, but nothing happened, so I followed them to the basement door. It was shut, but that black iron bar was still lying on the floor. I went up to the door and listened and then pulled gently on the edge board. The door didn't move.

What the hell? There had been no latches on the other side, no bars, brackets, or any other way to keep that thing shut except from this side.

Three powerful bangs on the other side made me jump and the dogs bark. I quickly retreated to the dogleg turn.

"That you in the box, Richter?"

It was that same throaty voice I'd heard behind the mask, sounding more like a prolonged cough than a voice.

"Good job on the screaming woman," I said. "Those are some speakers."

"Made you move," he said.

"So it did," I replied, still staying out of the line of fire in case he decided to put a few rounds through the door. "Now what?"

"Now you're buried alive," he said.

I wanted to say, No
I'm not. Tony will be out here at daylight.
Instead I tried to draw him out. "Why'd you shoot the biker mama?"

"She failed me," he said.

"Will you please tell me what this is all about?" I asked. "I mean, since I'm buried alive, now's the time, right?"

"I've already told you," he said.

"We've looked back. It's not true."

"True to me, and that's what matters," he replied.

"How'd you get into the house?"

"There are two bolt holes, just like you thought. Only I know where the second one is, and you don't."

"So I guess it's not the smokehouse, then."

"Remember all those bricks stacked in there? They're all oversized, handmade. Weigh about eight, nine pounds apiece. Push hard, maybe you can lift them. Except, perhaps, for that pole."

"Pole?"

"Yeah. The one that wedges the trapdoor shut. It'll move about a quarter inch, enough to give you some air when you need it, and you are going to need it. Got your dogs with you, do you?"

I still wasn't too worried. This was a big tunnel, relatively speaking, and there was plenty of air. "Always," I said. "We captured yours."

"They were useless when it really counted," he said. "You're welcome to them. I had high hopes, but you can't find good help these days."

"I've got lots of good help," I said.

"You think so?" he said, and those were the last words I heard from him.

I did try to lift those bricks, and he was right--I managed about a quarter of an inch before the dead weight of several hundred pounds pushed back. I'd tried the door again, but it still wouldn't move--and, of course, there was the pole.

You think so?

Had he done something to Tony? Had we missed a bug and somehow revealed that I'd be in the house and Tony would be alone in the cottage? I'd called Tony and he'd answered immediately, which meant he'd been awake. I'd left Frack over there, so he should have had some warning if someone hit the house.

The shepherds were worried and showed it. I'd turned off my flashlight to conserve the batteries. Daylight up above would not do anything for the absolute darkness down here. Assuming I couldn't force my way out of this tunnel, I'd be dependent on one of the guys, Tony or Pardee, who knew about this tunnel. I couldn't remember if I'd told the sheriff about this place. Carol knew, I reminded myself. Would any of them think about the tunnel if I disappeared? The only one I'd told I was going to try something had been Tony.

You think so?

That didn't sound so good.

"Okay, guys," I said. "Time to go night-night. See what happens in the morning."

I went back to the basement door and lay down on the cold earthen
floor. The shepherds curled up beside me. The air still seemed serviceable, and the tunnel was at least a hundred feet long.

Some water would have been nice. Some Scotch would have been better. Some frantic tapping on the door from the other side would have been best.

I woke up and checked my watch: seven thirty in the morning, not that it was morning down in the tunnel. My watch light looked like a tiny night-light in that blackness. The shepherds stirred but didn't get up. They were completely blind in that darkness.

I pulled out my cell phone and opened it. It still had battery, light on the screen, and, of course, absolutely no signal. Tony should have been over here by now, so the fact that he wasn't led me to believe my ghost had either attacked him or somehow diverted him. I turned the phone off to conserve its battery and then used the flashlight to explore the tunnel. It hadn't changed much over the night: earthen floor, brick walls, curved, arched brick ceiling, which dusted my face with old mortar each time I looked up. The ladder at the far end was about ten feet high, and the ceiling was maybe seven feet from the floor. Had they dug a long trench, built the walls and arched ceiling, and then just backfilled it?

When I went back to the door I tried to move it again. It budged, but not much. I stubbed my foot on the iron locking bar. Four feet across, three inches wide, a half inch thick, forged iron, and weighing about twenty pounds. I thumped the door with it and made a suitably loud noise. Maybe I could batter the door down with the bar, except that the door was made of two courses of oak boards running cross-grain with one another and reinforced with iron strapping material. Then I remembered the smokehouse trapdoor, and the fact that I could move it just a little.

"C'mon, muttskis," I said. "Let's try the world's simplest tool."

I climbed the ladder, leaving the flashlight, on white beam now,
on the floor pointed up. The dogs looked up expectantly, tails wagging in encouragement. I positioned the edge of the bar up against the crack, spread my legs on the ladder, and pressed my upper back against the boards. Then I heaved upward with all my strength. The trapdoor moved maybe a millimeter.

I relaxed, did some deep breathing, and this time repositioned the bar into one corner of the trapdoor. I'd tried to lift the whole thing the first time. Maybe I could lift one corner. All I needed was a half inch in which to wedge that iron bar.

One more deep breath, and push. The rung of the ladder on which I was standing cracked and then broke, nearly dumping me off the ladder and down onto that hard earth floor. I dropped the iron bar trying to stay on the damned ladder and only narrowly avoided beaning one of the dogs. Fortunately the next lower rung held, but I was now too low on the ladder to get much pushing leverage.

I went back down and retrieved the bar. The shepherds were giving me reproachful looks for throwing heavy objects at them. Back up I went, and this time to the next rung up from the new gap on the ladder. This had me bent way over, but it was the best I could do. I positioned the bar into one corner and then, using my legs this time, tried to stand up.

The hatch moved and the bar slid into the resulting crack, just barely. I heard that familiar cracking noise, so I took the strain off before I broke another rung. I relaxed with my head up against the rough bottom of the trapdoor and did some more deep breathing. There was no fulcrum on which I could use the bar as a lever, but I felt the tiniest wisp of air coming through that crack. Progress.

I went back down the ladder and did some back-straightening exercises. I had a feeling I was going to hurt in a little while. The dogs were looking at me with their good-job, now-what expression. Good question.

I turned off the flashlight and turned on my cell phone. When the screen lit up, I went back up the ladder, put the phone up against
the crack, and, lo and behold, there was a single bar of signal. The bar was probably acting as an antenna. I dialed 911 and hit send. A badly garbled voice answered me, and the call went dead the moment I spoke. Then I remembered what a deaf paralegal had taught me: You can text to 911 if for some reason you can't talk.

I crouched on the ladder and thumbed in a message. Then I redialed and sent the text. Fifteen seconds later message received appeared on the screen.

I exhaled in relief and went back down the ladder. Now it was just a waiting game.

Thirty minutes later I heard someone banging on the wooden door from the basement side. I yelled back and then waited for them to do something on the other side that involved cutting metal. Finally the door pushed open in my direction and light blazed in the doorway from two powerful flashlights. As fresh air flooded in, I realized that our air supply in the tunnel had not been as good as I thought it was. The dogs went through while I was still getting my wits together.