Down the Rabbit Hole (7 page)

H
OW LONG A FALL
? That was hard to judge, but long enough for a cry to spring from Ingrid's lips despite the importance of absolute silence at a time like this. And then, crash, with a capital C, and all the other letters capitalized too.
CRASH.
A paralyzing landing and she crumpled up, the wind knocked out of her. Maybe paralyzed for real. Then came cacophony, more concentrated noise than she'd ever heard in her life: a wild multichannel soundtrack for a movie—banging trash cans, hubcaps rocketing across a resonating floor, whole glass factories shattering; a wicked symphony that went on and on. When it was over, the silence that followed was even
worse. Except for one final sound: the high window banging shut.

Ingrid got her breath back. She tried to wriggle her fingers. They wriggled. Could she move? Yes. She rolled over, got to her knees. Flashlight: still on her belt loop. Was it working? Yes. Ingrid panned the beam across the room, a furnace room full of shadows, cobwebs, newspaper stacks, junk. The trash cans she'd landed on had spilled garbage all over the place. The hubcaps were close to real hubcaps—trash-can lids; and the glass factories were smashed glass cabinets full of ceramic knickknacks, now mostly in pieces. Dust motes by the billion floated in the flashlight beam.

Ingrid rose, picked up her pom-pom hat, brushed something horrible and sticky from her hair. Other girls—smarter ones—were home in bed now, happily—

She froze. A voice spoke in the alley. She switched off the flash.

“Wha' the hell was tha'?” a man said

“Wha'?” said another man.

“You din hear nothin'?”

“Wha'?”

Then came a tiny splashing sound, maybe two
parallel splashing sounds. After that Ingrid heard a quick
zip zip
of zippering up.

“Dju see a light?”

“Wha'?”

“Light on in Katie's cellar.”

“Nope.”

“Nope?” Pause. “Don' matter anyhow. Here's to Katie.”

“Katie.”

Ingrid heard what might have been bottles clinking together.

“Hey! Wha's with the grate?”

“Grate?”

“Window grate. Lookit.”

“Stick it back on.”

Grunt. “Like so?”

“Close enough.”

Drunken footsteps moved off.

She wanted to get out of there, get back to her own bed. But the window was closed now and well out of reach, the grate back on. She had no choice but to go up the crude wooden stairs she'd spotted on the far side of the room.

Ingrid mounted the stairs, all of them creaky and coated with dust. At the top she came to a partly
open door. A calendar from the Norwich National Bank hung on it. The month was June, the year 1987. Ingrid calmed down. No one in the house, nothing to be alarmed about. Night was the same as day except for lighting. And those cleats: She had to have them. Get a grip.

Ingrid pushed the door open, found herself in the kitchen. She beamed the light around: back door leading to the alley, heaps of dishes in the sink, a half-full glass of water on the counter, fridge in the corner, humming away. Ingrid opened it. There was food inside—chocolate milk, Smucker's blueberry jam, three pink-glazed doughnuts. So weird: Kate dead, but her life kept on going a little while longer. She'd probably been looking forward to those doughnuts.

Ingrid walked down the long corridor to the purple-and-gold parlor. What had happened here? She'd taken out the red Pumas with the idea of putting them on to save time. Then the taxi had beeped and she'd hurried out. So the cleats would have been right here. Ingrid shone the light around. No cleats, nothing on the floor at all. She tried the sagging pink couch, on top and under, found cigarette butts and empty VO bottles just like
Grampy's, but no red cleats.

Where else? Maybe nowhere, maybe time to go. She'd made an honest effort, if breaking into a house in the middle of the night could be called honest. Then she remembered assistant Coach Trimble: Playing hard, an honest effort, wasn't the same as playing to win. Ingrid went into the hall, gazed at the stairs leading up into darkness, up where she'd heard a footstep although Cracked-Up Katie lived alone, up where she really didn't want to go.

Ingrid climbed the stairs. At the top was a room barred off with a strip of yellow police tape. She stood next to it, shone her light into the room beyond, a bedroom, although that wasn't the first thing she noticed. The first thing she noticed was the sprawled outline of a human body, chalked on the floor. The second thing she noticed was the pile of shoes beside the closet door. The gold lamé stilettos were there. So were the red Pumas.

POLICE LINE
, it said on the tape.
DO NOT CROSS
. Ingrid knew that was important, all about protecting evidence. She also knew that she wasn't Kate's killer, and therefore the red Pumas couldn't really be called evidence, were just on the wrong side of the tape by accident. What harm could possibly result if
she simply ducked under the yellow tape, like so, walked carefully around the chalked outline, and picked up the red Pumas—yes!—while touching absolutely nothing else? No possible harm whatsoever. Ingrid held the Pumas tight. Griddie: playing to win.

She turned to go, already planning her exit strategy—touching nothing, using that back door to the alley, home before you knew it—when her beam lit on a stack of playbills on the bedside table. And not just any playbills, but playbills from the Prescott Players, old ones, yellowed and beat up with age. Funny, the way she'd been telling Kate about the Prescott Players and up here in her bedroom were these playbills. The top one featured a production of
Dial M for Murder
, a play Ingrid had never heard of, and showed a photo of a young blond actress with frightened eyes facing a silhouetted man. Was there something familiar about that actress? Ingrid bent closer. Yes. Kate, even younger and prettier than in
The Echo
photograph. The very moment Ingrid made that connection, a windowpane shattered somewhere downstairs.

She cut the light at once, stood very still, listening. Had she imagined it? Or had the sound come
from the alley, not from inside the house? Ingrid listened with all her might, heard nothing but her own heartbeat, pounding in her ears. The imagination could be very powerful, plus those two drunks might be walking back, dropping bottles in the alley, so chances were—

A footstep on the stairs. Ingrid heard it, clear, distinct, real.

Those little creatures, rabbits and such, that freeze at the sight of a rearing snake and wait meekly to die: for a moment she knew what they felt, understood preferring death to terror. Then she remembered what Grampy said about the point where fear stopped helping and started hurting. She dove under Cracked-Up Katie's bed.

Another footstep, soft but closer. Then a few more, followed by silence. Ingrid pictured someone standing by the police tape. She even thought she sensed the force of a straining human mind. A narrow beam of light flashed on, arced across the floor, then up and out of her sight. She heard a soft grunt: a man ducking under the tape. Ingrid knew it was a man from the sound of the grunt.

The footsteps drew closer. The feet themselves came into view, lit by the soft edges of the narrow
beam: dirty, man-size tennis sneakers with those three Adidas stripes, spattered with dark-green paint.

The feet were still. Ingrid heard the man breathing. Could he hear her? She held her breath. The feet shifted a little. Something shuffled. A playbill fluttered to the floor, inches from Ingrid's face—the
Dial M for Murder
playbill. The man made a sound in his throat, harsh and metallic. Then came another grunt and a gloved hand appeared, long and narrow, feeling under the bed. The fanning fingers came so close to Ingrid's face that she could feel the breeze, smell the combination of glove leather and absorbed sweat. The hand encountered the playbill, settled, picked it up.

The Adidas feet moved away. A small circle of light jerked across the opposite wall in the direction of the door and vanished. The man grunted once more—that would be him ducking under the yellow tape. His steps faded away, down, down. Ingrid, her ear already to the floor, listened hard, thought she heard a door close down below—that would be the kitchen door leading to the alley. She let out her breath, what was left of it, which wasn't much.

It was cold in Kate's house, but Ingrid was sweating. She was also shaking a bit, lying there under the
bed. The house was silent now. Did that mean it was safe to come out? Ingrid didn't know. She stayed right where she was for a long time. Nothing changed. The silence went on and on.

 

Ingrid crawled out from under the bed, making no noise at all. She tied the red Pumas together, slung them around her neck. With her hand over the flashlight lens, she had a quick look around the room. Under the reddish light that escaped between her fingers she saw the stack of playbills still standing on the bedside table.
Dial M for Murder
was no longer on top. Ingrid leafed through: In fact, the
Dial M for Murder
playbill was gone.

Ingrid stepped around the chalked outline, crouched under the yellow tape, started downstairs, hand still covering the lens. Almost at the bottom, she heard a car pulling up. Then came a sound she was familiar with from
Cops
, Stacy's favorite show: the crackle of a police radio. Ingrid hurtled down the last few steps, swung around the stair post into the long corridor. A powerful searchlight from outside was shining through the parlor window.

Ingrid raced down the corridor, into the kitchen, to the back door, broken glass crunching under
her feet. She yanked the door open. At the same moment, she heard the front door opening at the far end of the corridor. A man called out: “Hey!”

Ingrid sprang out the door, ran across the alley and into the woods, faster than she'd ever run in her life. A searchlight beam cut through the night, just missing her.

The man called out: “Stop! Police!”

But Ingrid didn't stop, couldn't stop. The searchlight beam angled through the trees, momentarily revealing a path ahead. Ingrid took it. The right path? The right direction? She didn't know. She just kept running. And she could run.

“Stop! Police!”

The searchlight went out. From behind came the sound of heavy charging footsteps, ripping through underbrush, coming closer and closer. How was he doing that if he wasn't even using his searchlight? Ingrid realized her flashlight was still on, bobbing along like a lure. She snapped it off.

A tremendous crash not far behind her, followed by a cry of pain. A brief silence, except for her own panting breath, and then a police radio crackled through the woods. Ingrid kept going, slower now without the flashlight, but she left the crackling
sound behind. No one came after her, no one who made noise or aimed a light. Soon her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the path began to shine again like polished coal. She ran.

Ingrid could run. Running ran in the family. She ran until she could run no more, which must have been a long time. Shouldn't she have reached the big rock by now? Ingrid peered into the darkness, saw no sign of that looming shadow. She listened, heard nothing but a dog howling, somewhere up ahead.

Ingrid kept going, walking now and starting to feel a chill, her sweat cooling. Where was the big rock? The path suddenly split in two, two polished black tracks, forming a Y. Ingrid didn't remember any Y. Left or right? Right seemed best for no reason she could explain. Why hadn't she taken up the hobby of learning Echo Falls years ago?

Play to win, she told herself.

This path to the right had lots of twists and turns, twists and turns she didn't remember. The sound of the howling dog grew louder and louder, very near, then stopped abruptly. Ingrid stopped too. She took the risk of switching on her flashlight. There on the path, not ten yards away, stood a big dog, its eyes yellow and opaque.

“Good dog,” she said.

The dog growled.

Okay. This was probably the wrong path anyway. Her best bet would be returning to the Y intersection, trying the left-hand path. Ingrid started back. She heard the dog taking off after her.

Ingrid whipped around, aimed the flash in the dog's face. The dog froze, one forepaw poised in the air, like one of those well-trained pointers. But this was not a well-trained pointer. Close up, this dog, collarless, turned out to be kind of fat and dumb-looking, with floppy ears and droopy eyes. Ingrid held out her hand. The dog wagged its tail and came forward. She patted its head. It pressed its head against her hand. Simple as that. They were pals.

“Where's out?” Ingrid said.

The dog ran in a little circle, stopped by the nearest tree, and lifted his leg.

“You're a big help,” Ingrid said.

She backtracked to the Y intersection, took the left fork this time, the dog trotting along beside her. The left fork led down a long hill and then came to a three-way split, one path going left, one right, one straight ahead. Where was the rock? The previous left fork must have been a mistake. If so, shouldn't
she take the right-hand path now, as a correction? Ingrid took the right-hand path, the logical choice, the choice Sherlock Holmes would have made. She tried to think of any similar situations Holmes had been in and remembered none.

The right-hand path went up a rise, got narrow and almost disappeared, then came out at an opening in the woods. Ingrid found herself on the top of a hill. Down below flowed the river, silvery black. The river? Didn't that mean she'd gone in the exact wrong direction? The river was on the other side of the woods from her house, miles and miles away, so far she'd never even considered walking to it. And the falls: She could hear them, not too distant, making a sound like people going
shhhh.
That would mean…yes: Topping a hill on the opposite bank stood Prescott Hall, the old mansion that housed the Prescott Players, all its tall leaded windows dark. Curiouser and curiouser. Prescott Hall was nowhere near 99 Maple Lane. Griddie, deep down the rabbit hole.