Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (19 page)

Lifted it, heaved it up out onto the deck with a groan. The anchor hit with a dull thud and a rattle of chain. The man at the boat’s wheel looked over impassively.

The guy with the chain around his leg climbed the steps on his hands and knees, crawled out onto the deck beside the anchor, and struggled to his feet once more.

“You throw that thing at me and I’ll slit your throat right here and gut you like a fish, you understand me? Now get over there with her.”

The man at the wheel spoke calmly, jerking his head in her direction. But he didn’t sound calm. Something had gone wrong, it was why she was still alive, she could tell by the way he held back, didn’t let himself get outwardly excited.

Didn’t let himself do what he wanted to do, only on account of having something more crucial to deal with first. Because on the
inside, he was very excited. When he looked at her, when he’d touched her …

Shuddering, she concentrated on not losing her balance, poised at the rail. Beneath her the boat bumped and rumbled. The air all around smelled of salt water, fish, and diesel fuel, a mix that now made her feel nauseated.

A bird flapped by invisibly, very near, with a wet-sounding rush of wings. Reflexively she flinched away, caught her breath, and nearly fell.

The chained man had made it to her side; he reached out and caught her. His accompanying grimace of pain said it had cost him something to do it. She felt a rush of gratitude for him, warmth suddenly replaced by fear as she noticed that his lip wasn’t the only place he was bleeding from.

His light blue chambray shirt collar poked out over a forest green sweatshirt with the word MAINE lettered on it in white. Between the
N
and the
E
, a small slit oozed. The cloth around it was sodden-looking and nearly black.

Blood. He grinned weakly, then staggered as his face went abruptly pale and his eyelids fluttered. Putting out a hand, he fell against the rail and leaned there.

“Okay,” he whispered. “You’re gonna be okay now. Just hang in there.”

Talking to himself, as well as to her. And that was good, that was …

But then he coughed; white foam flecked with darkness came onto his lip. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, dragged in a breath that sounded like wet cloth ripping.

Their eyes met. His look, amazingly, was apologetic, as if he knew his being hurt was terribly inconvenient for her.

From somewhere inside herself she managed to produce a weak smile. “You don’t look so good.”

His eyes smiled back, though his face wasn’t quite able to go along. “You’re no oil painting yourself.”

The man stopped what he was doing, strode over to them as if to confront them, hands on hips. “Sam, meet Carolyn.”

He turned. “Carolyn, meet Sam.”

She wondered with a fresh burst of fright how he knew her name, then realized that she knew his, the face she’d seen in old newspaper photographs popping clearly from behind all the clumsy work he’d had done somewhere on his features.

Panic made her heart flutter, because with the realization, she knew something else, too: He didn’t just want to kill her. He had to.

Because seeing his face and knowing what he’d done to her was one thing. But knowing why he’d done it was another, and now she understood that he hadn’t just taken her off the street at random, or because she was a long-haired brunette, or for any of the other crazed, obsessively personal reasons men like him did things like this to women like her.

No, this time he’d targeted her specifically, because he knew she knew—or suspected, which as far as he was concerned was nearly as bad—that he was alive at all.

It was Randy Dodd there at the boat’s wheel, she was certain of it. “Now,” he went on, “unless you want me to tie the both of you to that anchor and drop it overboard …”

He looked levelly at them. “Shut the freak up,” he said.

I
T WAS TWO IN THE MORNING WHEN JAKE HEARD BELLA
come down the hall stairs in the dark, in the big old house on Key Street. Jake lay on the parlor sofa with the dogs dozing beside her on the floor and the TV turned on, the volume set very low.

She didn’t speak as Bella passed by in the hall. The dogs looked up, then went uneasily back to sleep.

Wade hadn’t called, and there’d been no word at Ellie’s house, either. That meant either that the men had spent the night in the woods
and didn’t know what was happening here at home or that they did know and they were still trying to get here.

Neither theory accounted for their silence, or why not even a guide or warden had sent any message from them. Jake tried not to worry, instead lying there being tortured with it.

Enduring it, and waiting for the time to go by. An hour or so before low tide, she figured, was about when she should leave. She’d readied her supplies: flashlight, rain gear, warm gloves, an extra pair of sneakers since the first pair would surely get wet.

She’d thought about asking Ellie to go along, then decided against it. There was no one to care for Lee without going to some trouble about it, and anyway, Ellie had a child’s life ahead of her now, and a responsibility to make that life good.

So, Jake would do it herself. She rose and padded into the hall, then paused vexedly at the sound of Bella moving around out in the kitchen. She hadn’t bargained on Bella being up and about. Now it would be a project, trying to get out of here unnoticed.

She didn’t want anyone trying to dissuade her, and in any case she hadn’t left time for an argument. The tide paused for no man, and no woman, either, and in an hour it would be just right.

Much after that would be too late. She didn’t want to get stuck on the far side of the sandbar leading to Digby, assuming it appeared at all; even now she had only Sam’s casual word that it would.

She made her silent way to the cellar door, moved the light switch quietly, and for once got the door open with no betraying squeak of old hinges. The steps were bare wood, steep and liable to creak, but at least she wouldn’t put a foot through one.

The memory of the rotten step over at the Dodd House sent a pang through the deep gash she’d found on the inside of her thigh when she got home. A half-inch higher and she would be in the hospital now, but if that was all the injury she ended up suffering tonight, she would count herself lucky.

In the cellar she remembered to keep her head low so as not to smack it against an old ceiling beam. Crossing silently to the northwest corner of the old foundation, she paused.

A stream of water trickled down the drainpipe passing by her head: Bella, still busy in the kitchen. To the right of the pipe, a foundation stone was loose.

Bracing herself, she lifted it with both hands and set it on the cellar floor, then reached into the hole it had covered. A wooden box met her searching fingers.

Inside were two handguns: a .32-caliber semi-auto and a .22 pistol. In happier times, she’d handled them both enough on the target range to feel comfortable with either of them; it was yet another benefit of her marriage to Wade, being okay with guns.

She chose the .32 and two boxes of ammunition for it. If all went well, she would not have to touch the weapon. If not, she meant only to wound the man who’d taken Sam, to slow him down so that she could get her son and Chip Hahn’s friend, Carolyn, away from him safely. And maybe Chip, too; she wondered again where he had gotten to and didn’t like the possibilities she came up with.

So if she had to use a weapon … well, best not finish that thought now, she told herself, tucking the weapon and ammunition boxes into her sweater pocket.

It had always been this way, through the snooping she’d been doing with Ellie White in Eastport and surrounding towns, and sometimes on her own. A few of those episodes had ended badly.

Not many, but a few, and in those she’d had to face what she faced now, without liking it a bit. She replaced the loose stone and turned back to the cellar stairs, then gasped in startlement.

Bella stood there. “Good morning,” she said.

Jake leaned against the cold stone wall. “Bella, you—”

Scared me
. More startling, though, were the clothes Bella wore, and the look on her face.

Bella approached, ducking automatically under the ceiling beam,
and reached past Jake to push the loose stone into the wall a little farther.

“No sense letting anyone notice what’s there. Hidey-holes should be hidden,” she told Jake with a complicit glance.

She wore thick pants made from the kind of heavy-duty stuff men put on for cold-weather construction jobs. Over them she had on a gray sweatshirt, a blaze-orange quilted vest, and the shirt from Jake’s dad’s new set of white insulated underwear, peeping out from the sweatshirt’s heavy ribbed collar.

Her face in the dim cellar light was like a gargoyle’s, long and bony and without any friendliness in it at all, her eyes flat with purpose. “Let’s go,” she said.

Jake followed her upstairs. Bella had hiking boots on her feet. Jake hadn’t known that Bella even owned hiking boots. In the hall the smell of fresh hot coffee floated.

In the kitchen Bella poured two cups without asking, thrust one at Jake, and began drinking the other herself.

“I figure it’s about an hour from here, where we need to go,” Bella said without preamble. “And low tide is in about an hour.”

She put her cup down. “I didn’t wake your father.” Because he wouldn’t have liked this, either, and Bella knew it.

She plucked a pen from the mug full of them on the kitchen counter, a pad of paper already on the table. “If he gets up, or if Wade comes home, they’d better know where we are, though.”

Or if we don’t come back
. “Bella, now listen to me. I can’t be dragging you into—”

Bella’s hand paused on the notepaper. “If I’m not going, then you’re not, either. I can still wake him, you know.”

The words sounded implacable but her tone didn’t, her voice faint and shaky. She was frightened, and forcing herself to do this, Jake saw. Only that she felt she had to.

Me too
, Jake thought.
I don’t know what will happen, and I’m as scared about it as she is
.

Still, going alone wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. She just hadn’t been able to think of anyone else; at least, not anyone who wouldn’t try stopping her.

Bella finished the note and propped it against the sugar bowl. “So, which is it?” asked Bella. “Me or us?”

“All right,” Jake gave in. “It’s getting late.”

In the car, Bella settled in the passenger seat. “I set your cell phone on vibrate.”

Jake glanced over in surprise. She hadn’t examined the phone before tucking it into her bag.

“You don’t want it ringing at the wrong time,” said Bella matter-of-factly.

But the look on her face was anything but matter-of-fact. She looked like a Christian getting ready to meet the lions, her head high but her eyes wide, anxiously determined.

“I put some food in a bag, just snacks to keep our energy up, and the rest of the coffee in a thermos,” she added, as if she were in the habit of sneaking up on murderous men hiding on desolate islands every day of the week.

“Thank you,” Jake said, trying to keep the smile out of her voice as she backed the car out into the dark street.

Maybe this expedition was just as crazy as Bob Arnold would say it was, if he knew about it. Maybe it was insane.

But she was suddenly very glad to have Bella riding shotgun on it with her. “What’s your plan?” Bella asked as they drove out of town.

“We’ll drive up to where Sam said the sandbar to Digby is at low tide,” she began. Her own voice was as shaky as Bella’s.

Bella didn’t notice, or if she did, she decided to make no comment. “We’ll get as close as we can, maybe even right out onto the island,” Jake went on.

In the predawn hours, Eastport’s streets full of antique mansions and small wooden bungalows slumbered peacefully; only the fog and their own vehicle moving through them.

“The rocks there are probably very slippery, and it’ll be dark, so we’ll have to be careful. We can’t turn on a light, and we’ll need to be very sure we don’t—”