Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (33 page)

Reach, dig, pull. Repeat
. He was beginning to feel now that it didn’t even matter if he died, if only he got to tell someone first what had happened. So that someone—Sam Tiptree’s mother, especially—would know.

And for that to happen, he had to reach the top of this pit.

Velvety blackness expanded all around him. It took all his will not to let himself relax into its warmth, to lie down in the all-encompassing, utterly forgiving, and welcoming dark.

But he knew how it felt, not knowing. So he kept pushing and pulling and bleeding, sliding down and crawling up again. After a while he didn’t even realize anymore that he was doing it.

That his burned, bleeding hands and feet moved, twitching in the sliding sand but accomplishing nothing. That his raw, cracked lips
twisted and his parched throat spasmed urgently with what he had to tell, making no sound.

Until he heard something, and did something. He wasn’t even sure what. Then suddenly everything was blinding light.

THE KNIFE POINT SNICKED IN JUST UNDER JAKE’S RIGHT EAR
. A hot, liquid drip began trickling down the side of her neck. Not a lot of blood. But even a little felt like plenty.

She drove slowly down Key Street with Randy Dodd hunkered behind her in the back seat, past the small white wooden houses lined up on either side of the pavement like silent observers.

Silent and dark. Most were vacant at this time of the year, their original families long migrated away for better economic prospects or more pleasant climates, the current seasonal tenants now taking their ease at their winter places in Florida.

The few houses with any lights on inside shone like beacons in the gloom, but their shades were drawn and their porch lamps turned off; there would be no help from them, either.

At the foot of Key Street, Randy jerked his head to the left. “Park downtown, near Roger’s,” he said as she waited at the stop sign.

The late school bus rumbled by, taking the high-school kids home from club meetings and basketball practice.

“Okay,” she managed, nodding while considering a variety of possible strategies. Gun the engine, shoot straight out across Water Street into the bay, for example. Lean on the horn until—

The knife point dug in again. “Don’t try to be smart.”

His voice was expressionless. She turned left past the library, the Happy Crab Bar and Grille, the glass-doored police station with its lights on inside but no squad car idling in the angled parking spot Bob Arnold reserved for himself out front.

“Pull in,” Randy said after another few hundred feet, past Wads-worth’s hardware store and the Commons Gift Shop, both closed for
the evening. The pizza place was still lit, but no customers were inside; as they passed, someone turned the sign in the door to
Closed
and the lights went out.

Jake pulled the car up under the tall fisherman statue that loomed over the parking lot in a plastic-composite yellow slicker and sou’wester, bearing a plastic cod in his arms. Ellie White’s car was already there, but there, was no sign of her.

Out on the water, the lights of a lot of small boats showed faintly like a swarm of distant fireflies, away toward Canada. On the horizon beyond, an orange glow flickered, diminishing as she looked at it. “Why are you doing this?” The question came out a tight-throated whisper. “You could have gotten away. Why are you still—”

Here
. Like a nightmare she couldn’t wake from.
Sam
, she thought. But Randy Dodd’s answer was no answer at all, or not one she understood. “I just want what’s mine.”

Out on the breakwater the sodium arc lights shed tall cones of swirling yellow-tinted mist. She turned off the ignition.

“So I came back for it,” he said. Then: “If you scream or run, I’ll catch you and cut your throat.”

Getting out of the car, she believed him. And now it occurred to her what he meant about wanting what was his.

He must’ve found out the money was fake. Which meant that despite the coincidence, Roger’s call might have been genuine and Sam might still be inside the bar.

She quickened her step. On the sidewalk he moved up beside her, put his arm casually around her, knife in hand. No one else was on the street.

The front door to the Artful Dodger was open. Randy stayed right with her as they went in; she heard the door lock behind them.

A lamp burned low behind the bar. Small red lights glowed on a few of the sound system’s electronic components in the room with the dartboard and the karaoke stage, with all the gear Sam had worked so hard setting up and testing.

The system’s ready lights were all on, the control panel a bank of red and green LEDs. Seeing them, she knew the call from Sam had been a trick.

Roger had cued up one of Sam’s test recordings and played it into the phone, and she’d fallen for it. Simple as that, she realized bleakly as Randy urged her toward the rear of the small stage.

At the back of it, stairs led down. When she hesitated, he shoved her. The stairwell was lit by ceiling-hung fluorescent tubes. At the bottom, a concrete-block-walled hall with a green linoleum floor stretched away.

He hustled her along it. The linoleum gave way to unfinished planks. At the hall’s dead end, the concrete blocks changed to rough wooden paneling, and a massive trapdoor with an iron ring in it was set into the planks.

The trapdoor was open. At the sight of it, a doomed, drowning feeling came over her, but it was too late to do anything about it. Randy shoved her toward the opening and the wooden ladder sticking up through it.

With trembling hands she seized the ladder and stepped onto it, noticing the slide bolt in the trapdoor as she proceeded down the rungs. He followed, kicking out with one foot as she reached the bottom to knock her off balance and away from him while he finished descending.

The room was about ten feet square, with a low stone ceiling reinforced by massive old beams, and stone walls carved out long ago from the island’s bedrock. One whole side of it facing the bay was a massive old wooden door held shut by a rusted iron bar; it was obvious even at first glance that the door might’ve moved at one time to gain access to the water.

But not anymore. Time and rust and the settling of the old building had rendered it permanently shut. More iron bars cross-hatched two high window openings in the door; through them a cold breeze
blew in off the water. She could hear the waves out there, slopping against the granite riprap that protected the shore side of the boat basin from erosion.

A kerosene lantern hung from a hook in the ceiling. Ellie White lay beneath it, bound with cord. Unconscious, her red hair the color of flame in the lamplight. Jake rushed to her and checked her pulse, which was strong but slow.

At Jake’s touch Ellie opened her eyes, tried to get up but couldn’t. Jake tore at the cord around Ellie’s arms and legs, looked around for something to cut it with.

Randy wasn’t even bothering to stop her, seeming to know there would be nothing here that would help her. And there
was
nothing, only a few heaps of discarded junk: an old mop bucket with an ancient mop in it, a heap of broken vacuum-cleaner parts, plus the vacuum attachments, piles of old stained rags.

Jake’s searching gaze fell in horror on the small stream of water leaking across the stone floor. Each time a wave hit the shore outside, some splashed in through the window openings. And it wasn’t even high tide yet … .

She scanned the stone walls, saw no high-water mark … which could mean only that when it was high tide, this chamber would be filled. Entirely filled, not even an air space at the top …

Silently, efficiently, Randy grabbed Jake’s arms, yanked them back, and wrapped a length of cord around them, pulling it tight. He leaned down and tied more of the stuff around her legs.

Then he surveyed the room again as the trickle across the floor widened to a rivulet. This was where the Dodd House tunnel must come out, she realized suddenly, the one Roger hadn’t wanted revealed because it spoiled his alibi. Its opening must be way back in the shadows somewhere, where the lamplight didn’t reach.

Once upon a time a lot of cans had come down that tunnel, on a cart or wagon. Probably it had been some poor guy’s job to haul the cart all the way back uphill again, too, to the Dodd House.

Long ago … She looked around the grim stone room again, its floor slimy and its walls greenish with algae. When the place wasn’t being used for a distribution point, probably someone cut fish down here, or did some other hard, filthy work. And then the tide came in, to clean the mess up and wash it out to sea.

As it was doing now. Jake’s throat closed on a hard lump of anguish. “What did you do to Sam?”

The nylon cord he’d used to bind her didn’t stretch at all, the way cotton or hemp would have. It bit in, cutting her. But that could be a good thing, because blood was slippery … .

Trying not to let him see her moving, she rocked her wrists back and forth. “Hey, you didn’t answer my question,” she prodded as Randy approached the ladder again.

“Coward,” she taunted. “You did something to him. And you’re too chicken to tell me what. Big man,” she mocked him abrasively.

Deliberately. She had to keep him here somehow. Because when he was gone …

“Scared,” she accused. “Scared of a woman you’re going to kill. What a loser.”

Risky, like teasing a wild animal … but if he left, it was all over. Soon this room would fill with water, and that would be that. So, she had to keep him engaged, keep him—

Anger whitened the scars around his eyes and tightened his artificially plump lips. Glancing around, he spotted a loose rock on the floor under one of the window openings, and crossed to it.

Now all she needed was to actually have an idea of what to do next before he picked that stone up and bashed her with it.

“Now, now,” she temporized. “Let’s not be …”

Hasty
, she’d have finished; getting knocked unconscious with a rock before drowning might ease the latter predicament.

But neither of them was on her wish list. Before she could figure out just what was on it, though, two more events occurred swiftly, one after the other:

First, Randy Dodd bent to pick the rock up, turning his back on the doorway to do so.

And second, Randy’s brother, Roger Dodd, appeared suddenly and without warning, slipping expertly and silently down the ladder with a huge iron skillet in his hand. His raised hand …

Without a word he crossed the room in two long strides and swung the skillet down hard onto Randy’s head. Randy collapsed, sinking first onto his knees, then falling face forward into the rivulet crossing the floor.

Jake let her breath out. So she’d been wrong about him… .

“Thank you, Roger. You had me very worried, there. Now get me out of this so I can …”

She held up her bound wrists. But Roger wasn’t looking at them, or turning to Ellie. He wasn’t doing anything helpful.

“Roger?” she ventured. “Are you …?”

At last he turned, dropping the skillet. “I know you aren’t going to believe me,” he said. “But I’m sorry about all this.”

Oh, hell
. “Roger, I want you to listen very carefully,” she began. “You’re upset. I understand that. But—”

The rivulet on the floor grew to a stream. The sound of the waves outside grew louder.

Nearer. And still Roger wasn’t doing anything. “Roger?”

He returned to the ladder, scrambled up it with the ease of long practice. He hauled the ladder up behind him. The trapdoor thudded shut. She heard the bolt in it slide home.

Trapped … “Roger!” she shouted. “Damn it, Roger, you—”

Come back here
. But the only reply was the distant sound of his footsteps going up the stairs; after that, only the crash of waves and the gurgle of water sounded in the stone chamber.

Water coming in. The lantern flickered yellow, reflecting a pool spreading across the floor. Ellie had passed out again; her breathing sounded harsh, like a person deeply under the influence of some strong sedative.

Jake wondered what Randy had forced down Ellie’s throat, but it probably didn’t matter. “Roger!”

No answer. Ellie took a deep, sighing breath. She’d have expected to get home again before George did, most likely. So she probably hadn’t left a note.

Me either
, Jake recalled bleakly. The only one who knew they were down here was Roger.

And he wasn’t telling.

The kerosene lantern flickered and went out.

IN THE DODD HOUSE CELLAR, BELLA DIAMOND FOUND A
light switch, then began scanning the packed-earth floor for the earring she’d lost. Around the furnace, near the opening of the tunnel leading downhill to the old wharf … That’s where she’d been, earlier.

That was where the earring must be. But when she searched the floor there, it wasn’t. So she proceeded to the awful little corner chamber where Randy Dodd had been bunking.

Perhaps the earring had fallen in here. In a corner, or possibly under the makeshift bed. Cringing, she lifted an edge of the tattered blanket in case the earring had rolled underneath.

When she did, a curled photograph fell from it. Hesitantly she picked it up, then nearly dropped it in reflexive horror at what it showed: a dead girl. A color shot, in hideous close-up, of half-open eyes, slack lips, and fingers vulnerably curled.

Her stomach rolled. Her mouth felt dry, and her breath came in uncontrolled gasps. She had to get out of here, had to—Cross the cellar. Climb the stairs, then down the hall to the door.
All right, now, one foot in front of the other
, Bella told herself mechanically.

But at the foot of the stairs, she heard a voice raised in anger or fear, distantly but unmistakably. Jake’s voice. From …

Not upstairs. Right down here somewhere. Right over …

There.

It came from across the cellar, past the furnace in the far corner of the foundation where the tunnel opened. An instant later Bella stood at the tunnel’s mouth, peering across the stop block made of an old railroad tie.

Probably there was a block at the other end of the tunnel, too. But that wasn’t her big worry now. What worried her was what might lie between the two stop blocks. Down there in the dark …