Garth’s eyes widened, more in pretense than as indication that he had heard anything she said. Fortunately, Johanna gestured to us as she spoke, which I figured was enough for Garth, because he responded by smiling in our direction and waving us off in a ‘no problem’ fashion.
“Good,” Johanna said agreeably as she turned again to Charlie and me. “And you boys feel free to go in the back. There’s real history there. When I bought this place, I promised to leave it the way I found it. I believe the old woman who had it before me slept here sometimes, which explains the makeshift apartment back there. A relative was supposed to pick up her stuff, but never did…and, frankly…I just haven’t gotten to it myself.”
I couldn’t believe she was leaving two strangers like us in the store with Garth, earbuds and all, but before I could say another word, Johanna and her gingham dress were gone.
“I guess Hilda carries a lot of weight in these parts,” Charlie said.
“Yeah, either that, or she’s just the trusting type.” I tilted my head in nephew’s direction.
Charlie huffed, as Garth—with eyes closed—adjusted his earbuds and slouched back in a chair behind the front counter. “Shut-eye—instead of watching the store—seems to be on the menu this afternoon,” Charlie added. “Not that a store around here needs watching.”
“Believe it or not, there are towns in this country where people don’t even lock their doors,” I said.
“I know. Hard to believe, living in New York,” Charlie answered. “Did people lock their doors in Franklin?”
“I think so. I know I did. Put the alarm on, too. A lot of good that did me.”
Charlie suddenly became both bored and anxious. “Let’s get to that backroom before sleepy-time Garth over there comes out of his coma,” he said. “I’m curious as all hell to see just what Holcomb’s old aunt left behind.”
Charlie and I took one more look out the front door of the shop, thinking that perhaps Johanna would change her mind about both Garth’s presence and ours, and turn right around. But she was gone, having sped away in a station wagon. I walked toward the rear of the shop, and after I passed through the opening between the glass display counter and the side wall, I heard Charlie bellow: “Shit!”
His frustration was justified. His wheelchair was too wide to get through.
“Hold on,” I answered calmly.
Behind the counter and just beyond the doorway was a makeshift office with a desk, a phone, and the target of my search—a chair on wheels.
After I pushed it over to the counter, I discovered that it too was wider than the opening. After Charlie barked ‘shit’ a few more times, I laid down the bare necessity of our situation. “I’ve just got to get you onto this office chair and then I can easily push you around back here. Since the counter is too high and deep for you to get over it yourself, somehow I will have to carry you a few short feet from one chair to another to make this happen.”
“Shit,” was evidently the word of the hour, and he repeated it a few more times.
“I’ll pick you up under your arms from behind. I figure that’s the best way to do it.”
“No fucking way,” he squawked. “You drop me, and I’ll crack my coccyx. I’m getting on your back.”
“My back? How much do you weigh anyway?”
“Without legs, about a hundred and ten pounds or so.”
“It’s the ‘or so’ that I’m worried about.” Truth is, I just wasn’t sure I could do it, i.e. due the random bouts of pain running down my left side which caused my occasional limp.
“C’mon,” Charlie said. “You’re stronger than you think. Turn around, bend down a little, and I’ll climb on to your back. It’s that simple. Then all you have to do is turn around, back up against the chair, and I’ll do the rest.”
We pulled it off. Charlie was even heavier than I thought, and I was even stronger than I thought. Since there was no way Charlie could maneuver himself in a chair without a push ring, it was up to me to do it for him. But before moving another inch, I turned to check on Garth. He hadn’t budged an inch, and I do believe I heard him snoring.
Gripping the back of the chair, I pushed Charlie through the makeshift office, and then into a storage room full of boxes, before we came to our first closed door. It was made of steel, much like the apartment doors in New York City, which made it seem all the more out-of-place in this small-town sewing shop.
I tried the knob. It was locked, which would have been a problem except for the fact that the key was taped to the door.
“Why lock the door if you’re going to tape the key to it?” Charlie asked.
Like many questions about this town, and this shop, I had no answer.
The door opened into a dark and musty hallway. After I flicked on a light switch, everything about it—the wallpaper, the ornate ceiling, the thick wood molding, the feeling of confinement and isolation as you stepped through it reminded me of the hallway outside my grandmother’s third-floor walk-up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It had a natural 1950s feel to it, because that was probably exactly when it was built and decorated.
When I closed the door behind us, I noticed there was a key tumbler on the other side as well, which meant that if the door was locked, you couldn’t get in without a key, and you couldn’t get out without one either.
As I rolled Charlie toward the end of the hall, I asked how he was doing.
“How do you think I’m doing? I’m being rolled around in a desk chair.”
“See another light switch?” I asked. The more we moved forward, the darker it became.
Charlie turned on his cellphone’s flashlight. “You’d think one of us would’ve thought of this sooner,” he said, as another switch came into view, which I immediately flipped on.
An open doorway appeared at the end of the hall. We quickly moved toward it and into a small, sixty-plus-year-old kitchen that included an old Frigidaire refrigerator and a Welbilt stove. Once an overhead light brightened the room, a metal trashcan with a foot pedal lid came into view, along with a chrome-rimmed red-and-white Formica kitchen table with matching stuffed vinyl chairs. All were resting in peace on a linoleum floor.
“Wow, now this takes me back,” Charlie said.
“Me too,” I added, then rolled Charlie through the kitchen and into a small parlor, where I flipped on another light switch. There, surrounded by wallpaper patterned in vines and faded pink strawberries, was a vintage thirteen-inch Philco television set on a rolling TV stand. It was positioned in front of a green velvet loveseat. A shag carpet covered the floor, similar to one in the shop. Most interesting and unusual though, were the framed vintage movie posters that hug on each wall: The Pleasure Garden, Blackmail, The Lodger, and The 39 Steps. More framed posters were stacked upright against the back wall. The Lady Vanishes was facing front. All were films directed by Hollywood’s ‘Master of Suspense,’ Alfred Hitchcock.
We moved straight ahead, over to another door that had glass panes on its upper half, and lead to what Charlie called a mudroom.
“What exactly is a mudroom, anyway?” I asked, not entirely sure of its purpose.
“It’s a foyer where you hang up your coat and leave you dirty shoes or boots before you go in the house,” he answered.
“Then why is this one in the back?”
“I suppose the old lady who had this place came in through the back sometimes. What the hell do I know? Everything about this place is strange.”
On the other side of the mudroom was an exterior steel door with two double bolts on it. A shovel was leaning against the wall next to it.
“What do you think is back there?” I asked.
“Can only be woods,” Charlie answered.
Inside the parlor and just beside the door that led to the mudroom, was another interior door with three deadbolts on it. It, too, was made of solid steel.
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Charlie and I looked at each other.
“Could this lead to the old lady’s bedroom?” I asked.
“Nah,” Charlie said. “This loveseat in the parlor here opens into a bed, like an old Castro Convertible. Remember those?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Three deadbolts,” Charlie mused. “But where are the keys? Got to be somewhere around here. Nobody’s carrying three deadbolt keys around with them. Try this room first.”
“There aren’t too many hiding places in here,” I answered as I checked the drawer of a small table beside the TV stand. I then looked behind the framed movie posters, under the loveseat, and behind it.
“Flip up the cushions,” Charlie commanded.
I did but found nothing.
“I heard something—like a clink,” he said. He pointed to the loveseat. “Take that left cushion away.”
When I did, a ring holding three keys came into view. Taking a closer look, I also confirmed that the loveseat was a pullout twin bed.
Opening the deadbolts, though, took some doing. The locks were as old as the keys. Once I got all three turned and released from their casing, I pulled the door open by a handle that was large enough to fit both my hands around. It took two pulls to free the door from its frame. When I hit the light switch on an inside wall, I looked down a long steep stairway, the bottom half of which was engulfed in darkness.
“Maybe we’ll find Jimmy Hoffa down there,” Charlie joked.
As he leaned over to look, I grabbed the inside handrail and stepped down onto the first step.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Charlie asked indignantly.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I got on your back once, I can do it again.” Charlie was adamant, and inasmuch as I wanted to tell him to go to hell, when I looked down at him in that office chair, I just couldn’t.
“Fine, but if we fall down these steps, know this: We’re never getting out.”
“You’re stronger than you think. Now, c’mon.”
I reluctantly stepped back through the doorway, turned my back to Charlie, and crouched down. And just as he had done before, he put his arms around my shoulders and pulled himself on to my back.
Taking it slow and steady, I stood back up, stepped through the doorway, then down into the stairwell while firmly gripping onto the handrail for dear life.
What remained of Charlie’s legs, amputated above the knee, were straddling my waist, which took some of the pressure off the hold his arms had around my neck. I was managing the carry, but it was no easy task stepping down a staircase with a seventy-two-year-old veteran on my back. Maybe I should have insisted he remain in the parlor, but the truth was, I wanted his company. I didn’t want to go down into that basement alone.
“Now tell me,” I said to Charlie. “Are you carrying the pistol on you or not, because if you are, I can’t tell.” While descending into the dimly-lit stairwell, dampness and mustiness filling my lungs, I was actually hoping he was.
“I’m not,” he said. “But even if I was, you still wouldn’t be able to tell. And stop worrying so much. I can feel your heart racing. What are you worried about anyway? You’re the one who can run the hell out of here if you need to.”
“Like I would leave you down here.”
“Enough already. It’s a basement, plain and simple. What’s there to worry about?”
“Really? Last time I went into a basement like this, I barely made it out alive.”
“Then get some therapy, but for now, keep moving. This is starting to get uncomfortable for me too, you know.”
“The conversation, or riding me like a mule?”
“Both. I’m trying hard to keep a tight grip around you with my legs, so I don’t drop down and choke hold you to death.”
“And I am oh so grateful for that,” I said sarcastically, as I wondered if this staircase was ever going to come to an end.
“Can you see anything?” he asked.
“Not anymore.”
“Use your cellphone.”
“Right,” I said. I let go of the handrail with one hand while steadying myself on the wall with the other.
After using my thumb to turn on the phone and its flashlight feature, I gasped as the light brightened up a dozen more steps before we would reach bottom and a hard dirt floor.
“You okay?” Charlie asked.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this place, that’s all.”
“It’s a dark and musty basement. You’re not supposed to get a good feeling.”
Charlie adjusted his position on my back, which I was grateful for. I was getting sore from his legs clinching against the same pressure points.
“We’re almost there,” I said, breathlessly.
“Just keep moving,” Charlie answered, true to form.
As we got closer to the bottom, the area around us was looking more like a cave than any basement I had ever seen. The first thing I did when my feet finally hit the dirt floor was look around for another light switch. I immediately noticed a string dangling in midair, several feet away. With Charlie still on my back, I walked over and pulled it. A bulb lit directly above my head. I then knelt down and let Charlie slide off. Surprisingly, I felt fine when I stood up, except for that recurring pain in my left leg. As I waited for it to pass, I took in my surroundings.
I estimated the area around us to be about twelve-by-twelve inside walls made of large cut stones and a ceiling comprised of thick wood joists held up by even thicker beams buried into the floor.
“There’s nothing here,” Charlie said. “It’s just a hole in the ground.”
“Deep in the ground,” I added. “So deep, who would want to store anything down here in the first place?”
“Well, somebody used it for something. Otherwise, why the three deadbolts on the upstairs door?”
I hadn’t turned off my cellphone’s flashlight yet, so I used it to enhance my view of the dirt floor and stone walls. There was nothing I could see that gave this basement—or hole in the ground, or whatever the hell it was—any purpose.
Charlie then turned on his own cellphone’s light and put it in his mouth. Pivoting off his hands, he moved himself about.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Why is it cold over there, and there?” He pointed as he spoke. “But warm over here where I’m sitting now?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Of course, you don’t. You’ve got shoes on, while I’ve got my ass on the floor.”
I put my bare hands on the areas that Charlie had pointed to. He was right. Almost the entire floor was as cold as you would expect a basement floor to be, but where he was sitting, the area was warm.
We proceeded to push aside the dirt next to him with our hands until a steel plate appeared. I could feel its ridges and its hard surface, along with its ring handle.
“Remember that shovel against the wall in the mudroom?” Charlie asked. “You noticed it too, right?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Maybe this is what it’s used for—to get to this plate.”
After we finished moving most of the dirt away, I stepped to the side of what was apparently a hidden door hatch in the floor. Charlie and I looked at each other quizzically. Without saying another word, I reached down and pulled the door up by its handle.
A thin cloud of dirt and dust wafted into the air, and the wider I opened the hatch, the more light filtered up into the basement from below. When the air around us cleared, and we looked down, a ladder beneath the opening in the dirt floor came into view.
It was a much shorter set of steps.
I counted seven rungs to the floor on what appeared to be an iron ladder bolted to the wall of a tunnel, big enough to stand in.
“I’m g
oing down to take a look,” I said, as I shut the light on my phone and slipped it into my pants pocket. “Seems bright enough down there to begin with.”
Charlie dropped to his belly, stuck his head in the hole, and looked down the tunnel. “No way you’re leaving me here,” he said curtly.
“I’m not going anywhere beyond the bottom of this ladder. You won’t lose sight of me.”
“I’d better not, or I swear I’ll crack my head open coming after you and you’ll have one bloody mess on your hands.”
After Charlie sat back up, I slowly and carefully lowered myself into the hatch opening and down the ladder. When I reached the bottom, I was standing between arched walls in a bowl depression for the passage of water or waste.
“It’s a sewer!” Charlie shouted.
“I’m right here. You don’t have to yell. The echo down here is deafening.”
“Looks dry as a bone. Must be abandoned,” he added.
“Then why is it so warm. And why are there working ceiling lights every thirty feet or so?”
“How far can you see down the tunnel?” he asked.
“Only about a hundred feet, and then it turns.”
“What about the other direction?”
“There are no lights on in the other direction.” I took out my cellphone again and turned on its flashlight to get a better look. “It’s been filled in, Charlie. About ten feet in front of me is a heap of rock, sand, dirt, you name it. The tunnel is closed off on one side.” I turned to look back in the other direction. The ceiling lights were set inside little cages that were probably as old as the abandoned tunnel. Their bleak light against the curved, dingy tile walls appeared to cast a green hue. “I’ve seen enough,” I said. “I’m coming up.”
After I picked myself up out of the hatch opening, I slowly lowered the plate cover onto the basement floor. Charlie and I then used our hands to cover it back up with the dirt we had pushed aside.
Before we ventured up the long flight of stairs and back into the apartment behind the sewing shop, we each slapped our hands together a few times to rid them of excess dirt. Having laid on his belly to see into the tunnel, Charlie also repeatedly patted his clothes.
The Criminal Mind Page 17