Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (73 page)

He stared at her in disbelief through a curtain of blood.

“You.” The word came out thickly.

He was in bad shape. He appeared to be bleeding from several spots on his head, but all she could focus on was the container in his hands. She could hear the liquid sloshing inside as he fumbled with the cap.

“Yes, it’s me,” she said. Her voice was calm and smooth despite the fear churning in her mind. “As you can see, I won’t be in court today. The judge will declare a mistrial, just like you wanted. I kept my end of the bargain. Now you’re going to keep yours, right?”

He wiped his face, one-handed, and spat on the ground at her feet. Then he chuckled. “No.”

He advanced toward her, continuing to uncap the container as he walked.

“Listen. I don’t care about the trial. I really don’t. Just, please, unlock the door and let Joe and Mrs. Chang walk away from here. You don’t want two deaths on your hands.”

“Two? I think you miscount. The number will be three,” he said as he lifted the container and swung it in an arc.

A wave of gasoline splashed over her, running into her eyes and mouth. She gasped and retched. By the time her vision cleared, he’d already struck a long wooden match.

“I suggest you step aside,” he said through clenched teeth.

He jabbed the match toward her, and its flame danced in the air.

She hesitated.

He threw the match at her feet, where the gasoline dripping off her had already begun to pool, and fire rose from the ground.

He raised a second match. She jogged backward, afraid to turn her back on him, until she reached the bushes that led into the woods, then she turned and sprinted toward the stream.

She waded out to the middle and submerged her head in the icy water without stopping to think about the effect it might have on the radio or the earpiece. Her only thought was to get the taste of gasoline out of her mouth and wash the fuel off her body.

She dragged herself out of the stream, her wet clothes hanging heavily, and trudged back up the hill.

The cabin was already surrounded by a ring of flames when she reached the top of the hill. The black car was gone.

“He started a fire. The cabin’s on fire!” she barked into the earpiece

There was no response. She had no idea if the radio was working or if Franklin could hear her.

“Franklin?”

No response.

The phone tugged at her waterlogged clothes and slowed her down. She pulled the earpiece from her ear and tossed the unit aside.

Flames leapt hypnotically, ringing the cabin. The heaps of dry wood and densely-packed leaf debris the man had placed around the small structure were ablaze and burning quickly. If her husband and an innocent old woman weren’t trapped inside, the sight would have been strangely beautiful.

Think
.

It would take time for the flames to spread to the cabin. She had to douse them now.

How?

She had nothing to use to haul water from the stream. And the fire was spreading rapidly.

She searched the ground for a long stick, something she could use to pull back the ring of debris, create a pocket of space between the fire and the structure. She saw nothing.

But as she focused on the cold earth underfoot, a small, brown shape zigzagged passed her in a blur, racing away from the back of the cabin toward the water.

She raised her eyes and let her gaze travel up the hill.

A second animal was darting down the hill behind the first. Strong thumping legs; long ears; fluffy, unmistakable bunny tail.

Her heartbeat ticked up and she combed her memory as she followed its trajectory down to the water.

The Eastern cottontail rabbit didn’t make its own burrows. It spent the winter holing up in tunnels dug by groundhogs and other burrowing hibernators.
Or by man
.

She spun back toward the cabin.

A stream of field mice and chipmunks were fleeing the fire behind the rabbits.

She sprinted toward the back of the structure. The kindling was fully engulfed now and the flames were roaring. A wall of heat hit her in the face. She stared hard at the ground, searching desperately for a way in that wasn’t cut off by the fire.

And then she saw it. A terrified vole burst out from beneath the far right corner of the structure and dodged the circle of flames.

She dropped to her belly and crawled along the hard ground on her elbows, shivering in her cold, wet clothes. When she was five or six feet short of the house, she started digging furiously.

She scooped the hard earth two-handed and threw it wildly over her shoulder for a few moments. Then she stopped and lay there panting. This would take forever.

Think like a tunnel dweller
.

Some of the animals were coming above ground, but most of them probably followed their tunnels to a ravine near the stream. She ran back to the water and squatted along its edge.

She didn’t have to wait long before a large groundhog popped up from the stream and darted into the trees.

She ran to the spot where it had appeared and there it was: Her way in. The mouth of a tunnel was dug into the bank. It was covered by the bare limbs of an overgrown tree. During the spring and summer months, it would be nearly undetectable behind its curtain of foliage. But she could see it clearly behind the skeletal winter limbs.

She waded to the opening and then plunged into the dark earth.

The tunnel was larger than she’d expected, smooth-walled and cold. She jogged forward, stumbling over rocks and fleeing rodents. She reached for her flashlight, but her pocket was empty. She’d probably lost it when she dove into the stream.

She pressed on as quickly as she could in the dark, close space. The thin light that had filled the tunnel’s mouth dissipated into blackness. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.

Use your fingers then. Use your ears. And your toes.

Six-year-old Aroostine could track a deer through a thicket while blindfolded. Grown-up Aroostine could surely feel her way through a cave.

The ground rose under her feet as she worked her way uphill. The pungent smell of fresh dirt filled her nose. The sound of the skittering rodents gave her comfort. She couldn’t hear, or smell, or feel the warmth of the fire. So at least she knew she wasn’t walking blindly into an inferno.

After several long minutes the tunnel widened and the ground beneath leveled into a cave.

She reached out and touched the side of a wall. She ran her hand along the wall and stepped slowly, waiting to kick an old potato bin or canning jar, proof that she was in a cold cellar.

For several agonizing seconds, she felt nothing but bare rock under her fingers and smooth earth under her feet.

Then her hand connected with a dowel of splintered wood. She reached above and felt another. Then another. Rungs to a ladder.

She gripped the sides of the ladder and hoisted herself up, feeling for the bottom rung with her foot. She slipped once, her hands sliding down the sides of the ladder and her chin butting against the cold bare wall of dirt.

She steadied herself and continued to scrabble upward until her head bumped up against something solid. She ignored the stinging pain and reached up one-handed to touch more wood.

If she was right, she was under the floor of the cabin. And if some long-dead cabin dweller had dug out a cellar for vegetables or cold storage and gone through the effort of putting in a ladder, there had to be a trapdoor that opened into the house somewhere.

She clung to the ladder one-handed and ran her other hand along the wood overhead, searching for a hinge, a latch, something.

She felt nothing.

There
had
to be a way in. She stopped and inhaled slowly.
Calm down, slow down, and you’ll find it,
she promised herself.

She started again, moving her free hand slowly across the wood. Her right arm, wrapped around the ladder’s rail, began to ache.

She felt nothing to indicate there was door leading into the cabin.

Maybe the wood had been replaced and the trapdoor removed?

Surely by now the fire department should have arrived anyway.
If
Franklin had heard her message and called them.

Her competing thoughts, hopeful and defeated, swirled through her brain. She’d gotten so close. She’d thrown the trial. She’d let the man escape, focusing instead on reaching Joe and Mrs. Chang, and for what?

She was hanging from a ladder, unable to help Joe and Mrs. Chang who were just feet above her.

She pounded the wood overhead in frustration.

Thud.

The sound echoed through the cellar.

She made a fist and knocked against the wood again. And again.

Thud. Thud.

Her fist ached. She stopped to listen, but heard no movement coming from above.

She punched again, harder.

Thud.

Dirt shook loose from the wall.

Tears stung her eyes.

As she pulled her sore hand back, ready to strike again, the floor above her head creaked and light flooded the dark space, momentarily blinding her.

She blinked up to see Joe and an old Asian woman with rags covering their noses and mouths. They stared down at her wide-eyed.

Behind them, the small room was hazy with smoke.

“Come on!” Joe urged her.

She extended her hand and Joe gripped it. His hand was warm and callused. Just like she remembered. He hoisted her up through the trapdoor.

“You must be Aroostine,” Mrs. Chang noted, her tone polite and friendly, given the circumstances.

“I am. I’d love to chat, but don’t you think we should get out of here?”

Joe stared at her, his mouth slightly agape. She was sure she looked like someone who’d spent the night sleeping on the ground, been doused with gasoline, and had then stumbled through a dark cave. But she couldn’t exactly find it in herself to be embarrassed by her appearance.

What was
with
these two?

“Are you in shock?” she asked Joe carefully. Did shock victims even know they were in shock?

A slow smile broke across Joe’s face.

“I think we’re a little stunned, is all. How’d you get in?”

“There’s a cellar dug out beneath the cabin. A tunnel leads from the cellar down to the stream. Let’s go, already.”

She looked around the smoky room.

Mrs. Chang followed her gaze. “The cabin’s not on fire. Yet. Joe says these old logs will withstand a lot. I mean, don’t misunderstand, I’m not interested in becoming human barbeque, but we don’t seem to be in imminent danger.” She smiled sleepily.

Aroostine wasn’t sure she agreed with that assessment. Their weird behavior triggered a memory and her mind flashed back to a time when her biological parents had still been alive.

She must have been five or six. Her parents had been out partying and had driven their old car into her grandfather’s barn to keep it out of an impending rainstorm. After her father had parked, he’d passed out with the engine still running. Her mother had stumbled into the house and crashed on the couch.

When her grandfather found her dad still in the car, he was already suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. She could see herself, standing barefoot in the rain in her green and pink nightgown, watching her grandfather try to coax and carry her uncooperative, dazed father out of the barn. She ended up dragging one arm, as they managed to move him to the house.

“Smoke and carbon monoxide are smart predators,” her grandfather later explained. “They lull you to sleep and wait until you’re defenseless to attack.”

She swallowed around a lump in her throat and spoke in a calm, measured voice.

“We need to go. I’ll help Mrs. Chang down the ladder and come back for you.” She stared hard at Joe to make sure he was listening.

After a moment, he nodded slowly.

“Okay. Stay right there.”

“Roo—” he began in a slurred, affectionate voice.

“Not now, Joe. We can talk later.”

She turned and looped one of Mrs. Chang’s arms around her shoulder. Then she walked the woman to the edge of the trapdoor and considered her options.

“Okay, I’m going to climb down first. Then I need you to take my hand, okay?”

Mrs. Chang grinned lazily.

That wasn’t going to work.

“New plan.”

Aroostine lifted the frail old woman over her shoulder and turned and backed into the trapdoor. Mrs. Chang hung limp and nearly weightless. Her arms dangled over Aroostine’s back as Aroostine carefully worked her way down the ladder.

Mrs. Chang’s feet bumped against Aroostine’s knees in a rhythmic motion with each step Aroostine took.