Thin gloves, clean and black, dug their way into a crack between floorboards worn with age and felt for a grip. The gloved figure, hooded as always, was in Ditch's house—Ditch, whose name kept popping up in association with Hugh McWrait's favored drug ring. The figure had tracked him for the past three weeks until he knew the man's movements well enough to infiltrate his home an hour before daylight with some hope of searching it before Ditch returned from his nightly dealing.
The figure wasn't looking for money, but for something—drugs, evidence, clues—that would guide him deeper into McWrait's ring of dealers…and then let him tear the whole thing down. For McWrait's part in Zach's past, the figure intended to strike him fast and hard, make him regret what he'd done. Ditch could be the key.
So far, in all of three minutes inside, he hadn't found much. The home was a mismatched assortment of grime and dilapidation juxtaposed against high-priced furniture and entertainment systems, in the plural. Ditch apparently liked screens and speakers. A separate system was mounted in the living room and each of the three bedrooms.
The figure's fingers found a hold, and he lifted the floorboards. They pivoted on a hinge tucked beneath the floor—a hidden door. It was well camouflaged here in the second bedroom, but a minor oversight—it was the only place in the house where the floor didn't creak—had given it away. A quick check had revealed subtle lines in a square, and now…
A hole. A ladder. The figure activated the light on his phone and lowered it and his head through the hole. The light exposed an old cellar dug directly into the ground. Dirt walls encompassed an area maybe a third the length and width of the house, far enough across that his small light barely reached the farther edges.
There were crates there, along the farthest wall. Two, maybe three dozen of the basic grocery store type were stacked imperfectly from floor to ceiling. There it is, the figure congratulated himself. Every criminal, like every person of wealth, had a secret stash somewhere. Did this one conceal money or drugs, or perhaps some new evidence he could use to get Ditch—maybe even McWrait—convicted?
With a quick check for sounds of Ditch returning home—there were none—the figure lowered himself feet-first into the hole, found the ladder, and descended into the musty darkness. Quick steps under a low ceiling brought him to the crates, and he combed through them. The ones on top were disappointingly empty of everything but cobwebs. He removed them and checked the next layer. It was empty, too, as was the next. He moved on to the bottom layers, but still—nothing. Dust and webs, nothing more.
The figure swung his light around the cellar. There was nothing else here. But there were shoe prints on the dirt floor, besides his own. Someone had been here, and recently. Why, though? What would Ditch do with a dirt cellar that—
He was home. Ditch's loud laugh carried through the front door as it opened above. There was no time for escape. In an instant, the gloved figure scrambled up the ladder and pulled the secret door closed, tugging its top flush with the wood floor. Then he listened.
Heavy feet—Ditch was a large man—lumbered into the kitchen. Smaller feet followed, tapping after Ditch, stopping across the room from him.
"Time for me to move on, that's all," a woman's voice said.
Ditch laughed again. "No, baby, you're too valuable. You gotta stay with me. And you ain't got no place to go. I don't want to see you out on the streets. Bad things happen out there." Through a crack between floorboards, the figure saw Ditch directly above him—heavy and fair-skinned, with a ball cap covering light brown hair that was thinning to near baldness on top. "Hey, Belinda, don't look at me like that. You know I don't—"
Ditch's words muddled together as they moved beyond the bounds of the cellar, into the living room, making it impossible to eavesdrop. The figure glanced at his watch, then up at the cellar door, then sat down on a crate. It wouldn't do to climb out while Ditch might see him; better to wait until after sunrise, when Ditch typically slept. Just an hour…
The conversation continued, barely beyond the edge of comprehensibility, for another half hour until a pounding on the front door interrupted it. Ditch spoke some low command. His feet pounded out to the front as the woman's feet tapped quickly toward the bedroom with the cellar door.
The secret door opened and a shaft of light shot into the cellar. The figure froze—there was no place to hide here, except in the darkness. He slipped into the farthest, blackest corner.
Belinda, wiry and of average height, climbed down the ladder expertly, shutting the floorboard panel above her. In the darkness, the figure heard her step to the crates, pull one from the top, and settle herself on it with a sigh. He listened to her breathing as Ditch greeted the person at the door above and their feet clomped into the living room together, their conversation diminishing to an indistinct mumble.
The figure held perfectly still for a minute, then two… He had no escape route. Brilliant, he thought. I broke into McWrait's mansion, found his secret stash, and escaped unscathed only to die in this drug dealer's cellar.
After half an hour of keeping absolutely motionless, his gloved fingers began to twitch involuntarily. Slowly he flexed them and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, back and forth.
After a full hour, the woman suddenly spoke. "You might as well come out." In all that time, she had barely moved. "You're in the corner. I can see you moving."
"You can see me?" the figure asked. The room was totally dark. The barest seepage of light through the floorboards above almost let him see her silhouette, as if it were an apparition he couldn't be sure was fully there.
"Uh-huh. Saw you scurry away like a rat when I opened the cellar, too," she replied. "First time Ditch has ever sent me down here when he already had someone else hiding. You must've been here a while."
"You work for Ditch?" the figure asked.
"Not much longer, sweetheart," she said. "I'm gonna get my own place, an honest job… He's tied me up too long. It's time to be out on my own. Besides…" She blew out a long stream of air and clicked her tongue. "Have you ever had something you would do anything for?"
"Like what?"
"Like freedom. I've been Ditch's delivery girl since I was fourteen. I'm ready to be free. And I'm gonna be free. I'm gonna make Ditch let me go."
"How will you do that?"
"If he doesn't, I'll turn him in." She stood and moved around the room, suddenly restless; the figure heard her pace from one dirt wall to the other. "So what's your thing that you would do anything for? Everyone's got one."
The figure hesitated. He didn't care to get drawn into revealing conversation. "Revenge," he said at last.
Belinda stopped her pacing. The figure could feel her looking his way, assessing him. "Ditch doesn't know you're down here, does he?" she said. "You here to get revenge on him?"
"Not on him. It's complicated. Would you mind not telling him I'm here?"
She grunted. "If I did, he'd kill you. He's a loveable guy, likes everybody, but he'd as soon shoot you as hug you." She stepped into the corner where the figure stood. Her voice dropped to a near-whisper. "But if you don't tell him I'm turning him in, I won't tell him you're down here."
"That works for me."
"He doesn't know this, but I'm about to give him his last chance. He lets me go, or else. I have lots of dirt on him."
"Maybe I could help you," the figure said. Heavy footsteps sounded overhead; Ditch's guest was leaving. "I could use some dirt to—"
"Belinda!" It was Ditch, on this side of the house again. "He's gone. You can come on up."
Belinda patted the figure's chest in the darkness. "Gotta go. Sorry. Anyway, looks to me like you have plenty of dirt down here. I hope he doesn't catch you."
She climbed the ladder and departed through the cellar door. "You need to do something about those rats down there, Ditch," she called as she emerged into the bedroom. "There's a really big one…"
The figure grimaced, but Ditch just responded with some wisecrack that the figure didn't catch.
"Was that Albert K. again?" Belinda asked.
"Yep," Ditch replied.
"When are you gonna let me meet him?"
"He's not your type. He's a big-time buyer over in Issaquah. All business. Doesn't like distractions… Unlike me…"
"You're a creep."
"Hey, I got a delivery for you to take to McWrait's man downtown."
"I'm quitting. I told you that."
"Not until you find a new income. I'm not leaving you out on the street."
"You're not leaving me anywh—"
"Your birthday's in three weeks. Help me out 'til then. I got a friend who can get you a good job, something you'll like. It'll be a birthday present…" They moved into the living room, again out of earshot.
The figure seated himself on Belinda's crate to wait. She would leave on Ditch's errand soon, then Ditch would hit the sack, and then he himself would silently crawl out of this hole and sneak away.
Everything went according to plan—she left, he went to bed. But just before Ditch lay down in his room, he let in a friend, markedly drunk, who crashed in the second bedroom, right on top of the cellar door, and began to snore.
*****
The Boy Who Appeared from the Rain Page 51