The Criminal Mind
Page 20
I turned to Paul. “I saw the same posters and more stacked on the floor.”
“Damn,” Paul said. “We’re going back in, only this time we’re not just going down into that basement. We’re going down into that tunnel too.”
“And this time I’m bringing my pistol,” Charlie said.
“You’re lucky you’re coming,” Paul answered back. “And you are not bringing any pistol, especially an illegal one.”
Surprisingly, Charlie sat silently reprimanded for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “But only because it’s illegal. Otherwise…”
Paul dropped his head in exasperation.
“So, when are we going in?” I asked nervously.
“Just after midnight. I’ll lead the way, since you’ll be carrying your buddy, Charlie, here.”
Charlie looked at me, waiting for a rebuff, which I aptly delivered to him. “If my back goes out, you’d better hope that I’m not the one carrying heat.”
“Oh, but you will be,” Paul said. He then reached into his suitcase and handed me a Glock.
It’s up to me now.
No way the others can handle this.
It’s just too painful.
And Mia is too good.
That’s the problem.
She’s too good.
And she is suffering for it.
Marnie
Paul suggested we change into darker, more comfortable clothing. Charlie huffed and refused to take off his marine fatigues. “If we’re going into battle,” he said, “this is what I’m wearing.”
“Other than sewer rats, I doubt you’re going to see much action,” Paul responded.
“Then I’ll be ready for the sewer rats,” Charlie said vehemently.
Charlie and I retired to our separate rooms, but not before we agreed to meet Paul by my rented Altima in one hour. Figuring I had at least thirty minutes to rest, I lay down in bed and attempted to do just that. Then, the expected/unexpected happened. More Moon River. It was Donald Riggins calling.
“Having fun in Cartersville?” he asked in his usual carefree fashion.
“Not really, but we’re getting there,” I answered wearily.
“Just be careful,” he said. “There’s a devil behind every door the closer you get to the truth. Don’t forget that.”
“And I thought my nightmares were behind me.”
“Speaking of doors, I searched your house after you gave me the alarm code. Picking the lock on your back door was child’s play. You should change it.”
“Duly noted. So, what have you got for me? I’m trying to get some rest before we go out again.”
“Well, after you hear what I’ve got to say, I don’t think that rest is going to come easy.”
“Lay it on me, Don.”
“Your house was bugged. I found four devices. One in your kitchen, another in your den, your dining room, and your bedroom—long-term listening devices—the sophisticated kind—small and high-tech.”
“But…why?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Do you think Maureen planted them?”
“You mean, Olga?”
“Whatever the hell her name is.”
“Could be—or maybe it was the guy I caught on your cameras going in on the night of the fake assault. My money is on him.”
“Again, but why?”
“To hear what you have to say when she’s not there with you.”
“No kidding.”
“Listen, I’m not really sure. Have you checked your bank accounts?”
“I just sent money to an attorney. It’s all there.”
“And your investments?”
“I have everything with one company, and even if you knew my password—in order to withdraw—you have to put in a code that I get on my cellphone. I haven’t received any such code, and while we’ve been talking, I checked the app. All my money is still there, too.”
“Do you have any passwords written down in the house?”
“What do you mean?” I thought again. “No. They’re all in my head, mine and my daughter, Charlotte’s.”
Riggins huffed. “They were planning something. You can be sure of that. Their goal: to take your money and a good chunk of it.”
“I got it, Don.”
“Sorry, Nick. I realize this is upsetting.”
“It was, but for some reason, less so now.”
“I don’t believe you. In the meantime, watch out for yourself. From the nature of those listening devices, we’re dealing with high-level con artists, which in my view makes them all the more dangerous.”
“But why should I be concerned? If they kill me, they don’t get any of my money.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Riggins answered, and then, once again, hung up on me.
The center of town was damn near deserted; at least that’s the way it appeared when Charlie and I had driven through it earlier that day. At 2:00 a.m. in the morning, with only half the streetlights on—a fiscal directive to be sure––it looked like the aftermath of a dystopian apocalypse. Other than a slight wind filtering through the telephone lines and the sound of the Altima’s tires on the pavement, there was bone silence.
I parked the car a block away and out of the line-of-sight of the sewing shop—the inside of which was shrouded in darkness, like every other store in town. Paul and I were in dark blue sweats, while Charlie wore his camouflage jacket and pants. Since the back door of the sewing shop was bolted, and we hoped to enter and leave undetected, Paul slid open the lock on the front door with a slim jim, and we were inside. Using small flashlights that Paul provided to light our way, we moved past the narrow counter opening that Charlie’s wheelchair couldn’t fit through and used the office chair on wheels (which I had forgotten to return) to push him around.
After we passed the office and storage room, we got to the door of the rear apartment and found it unlocked with the key in the tumbler. Apparently, along with forgetting to return the office chair, I had also forgotten to lock the apartment door.
Since Paul and I were wearing sneakers, the only sound we heard as I navigated Charlie through the long dark hallway, past the kitchen and into the parlor, came from the wheels of the office chair.
Paul went right to the framed movie posters stacked upright in the corner of the room. Just as I recalled, The Lady Vanishes was up front. Six others were behind it. Paul recited the movie titles as he flipped through each of them: The Man Who Knew Too Much, Notorious, Dial M for Murder, Family Plot, Spellbound, and Frenzy. He then pointed his flashlight at the walls where posters of Hitchcock’s oldest films were hanging: The 39 Steps, The Pleasure Garden, Sabotage, Blackmail, and The Lodger.
“I hope we’re not pissing in the wind here,” Paul said. “None of these are movies that Lauren mentioned. None of these have female characters with the same names as the alters.”
“So what?!” Charlie exclaimed. “There’s enough posters here to fill a Hitchcock convention.”
Paul turned to the door with the three deadbolts on it that led to the basement. “The keys?” he asked begrudgingly.
I went over to the loveseat and reached under the cushion.
No keys.
“I put them back. I know I did,” I said anxiously, as I stuck my hand in deeper and frantically felt around until my index finger scratch against something metal. Apparently, I had left the keys farther under the cushion than I thought.
Either that, or someone else did.
“Are you sure about this woman, Johanna?” Paul asked.
“She said she bought the place like this,” I said. “And I believe her.”
“She also left us here with her dumbass nephew to explore as we wish,” Charlie added. “So I believe her, too. She’s clueless. I’m convinced of that.”
By the time Charlie and I got to the bottom, Paul was alternating the beam of his flashlight from the rock-laden walls to the dirt floor. “I thought you said the hatch was hidden,” he said. “I can see the metal quite clearly.”
“I didn’t see any metal when we left,” I replied, as I knelt down and Charlie lowered himself off my back.
“Me, neither,” Charlie added. “Our hands were filthy from covering that plate back up.”
“Maybe when we went to leave, we disturbed it somehow,” I added.
Paul looked around. “What is this place anyway? Cave walls, cave ceiling, dirt floor with a hatch in it—and why build a basement so deep?” He shined his flashlight up the staircase, then back at the walls and floor. “My guess? This basement predates the shop, and the building owner wasn’t the one who put it here. This was a municipal dig that was done a long time ago—and by hand—probably by miners. You can see the chisel cuts.”
“So, what does this mean?” I asked.
“Aside from the timing of the dig, hell if I know, but look.” Paul pointed his flashlight at the stairs again. “If this area was dug up fifty-plus years ago, those stairs were put in long after. Check out the wood.” Paul ran the beam of light up and down the steps. “It looks no more than twenty-to-twenty-five years old. It barely creaked as we came down.”
“I can vouch for that,” I said.
“This metal hatch, though, is quite old,” Paul said. “Look at the hinges, and the turn latch that locks it. It’s ancient. By the way—did you turn it to the locked position when you left?”
“No,” I answered. “I didn’t even know it could turn. I just lowered the hatch down.”
“Well, it’s turned and locked now,” Paul said.
“Holy shit,” Charlie mumbled, then turned to me. “Maybe you locked it when you closed it.”
“I couldn’t have locked something I didn’t see or know about. No way. And I’m also sure that we covered this hatch with a lot more dirt than this before we left.”
“Yeah, we did,” Charlie said definitively.
“So, you’re telling me that there was either an earthquake that moved the dirt and locked the hatch, or someone else did.” Paul spoke with an unsettling seriousness. He then reached down and turned the latch back to the open position. He needed two hands to do it. “I think you would have remembered turning this thing,” he said to me.
“I do remember…and I didn’t turn it,” I repeated.
Paul nodded in acknowledgment, while Charlie sat nearby on the dirt floor. I reached for the Glock Paul had given me, and snapped into place in a holster at my side. It was a reflexive move that both comforted and frightened me.
“You both go back to the hotel,” he said. “I think it’s best if I take it from here.”
“Bullshit,” Charlie howled. “No way, and unless you want a wheelchair ass-kicking, you’d better forget it.”
“I’m not leaving you either, Paul,” I said. “I didn’t leave you in the basement of that kill house eight years ago and I’m not leaving you here. If this is just a municipal sewer access, we’ll find out soon enough. If not, we’ll deal with it.”
“You have one less kidney thanks to that Long Island caper, plus a limp to show for it,” Paul said.
“I don’t have a limp. I just carried this crazy bastard down a hell of a long flight of stairs. I don’t have a limp,” I repeated—not sure why I was suddenly denying it.
“Sorry, buddy,” Charlie said. “You do have a slight limp.” I glanced at him. “But it’s hardly noticeable,” he gently added.
“All right,” I said. “Now are we going down into this sewer or not?”
“Let’s go,” Paul said, as he pulled open the hatch cover and light from the tunnel poured into the basement.
We immediately shut our flashlights, looked down, and sized up the iron stepladder bolted to the sewer wall below.
“How are we going to get Charlie down there?” I asked Paul.
“I can get down myself,” Charlie answered defiantly.
“And how is that?” Paul asked.
“Just watch me,” he said.
“Wait, I’ll go first,” Paul said. “This way I can spot you.”
“Fine,” Charlie said. “But I won’t need any spotter.”
Paul turned and stepped down the ladder. I then stood next to Charlie and watched as he slid backward on his belly. Then, using his arms, slowly and carefully lowered himself onto each rung until he reached the tunnel floor. As he swatted the dirt from his clothes, I turned and stepped down the ladder.
When I reached bottom, I noticed Paul eyeballing the hatch. “Something I can’t figure,” he said. “Why is the lock to the hatch only on the basement side? Why is there no way to way to lock or unlock it from the tunnel side?” Paul went back up the ladder and examined the hatch more closely. “Ha. Look at that. There was a lock latch on the tunnel side, but it was broken off. So, if the hatch is locked from the basement side, there is no way someone in the tunnel can get out this way.”
“I suppose once this tunnel was abandoned that made some sense,” I said. “If I was the owner of the sewing shop, I wouldn’t rest knowing someone that down here could creep up into my building.”
“You would think the three deadbolts on that parlor door upstairs would be enough,” Charlie said.
“Not enough for me,” I said.
“Or there’s another explanation we haven’t thought of,” Paul added.
“I’m not liking where this is going,” Charlie said.
“You’re not supposed to. That’s why we’re here.” Paul turned and examined the wall of rocks about a dozen feet away that closed off the side of the tunnel leading into town.
“What do you think?” I asked, as I stamped my feet to rid my sneakers of the dirt from the basement floor.
“Definitely man-made,” Paul said.
We each looked up and down at the wall of dark stones the size of footballs, then turned and stared down the opposite side of the tunnel, which was lit by a series of ceiling lights in small metal cages. I looked down. The floor below us was curved like a basin to allow for the easy flow of sewer water. Dry as a bone, it was covered with a thin layer of caked-on dirt, while the oval walls consisted of dingy yellowed tiles that were probably a bright white when installed. We could only see about a hundred feet or so before the tunnel turned to the right. Otherwise, it looked like any other underground sewer that provided passage for water or waste. And the longer we stayed there and took in our surroundings, the greater the queasy feeling in my gut became.
We were below the surface of the earth in a place we’d never been before, having no idea who or what we might encounter around the bend of the tunnel. Was it just more of the same that led deeper into the woods, or to a culvert, or simply somewhere underground and far removed from the civilized world—some desolate place no one knew or cared about?
I imagined how Charlie must have felt—boots in the jungle mud, insects in his hair, his heart beating to the danger beyond every patch of brush, every tree, every clearing—every step forward a potential precursor to suffering and death.
I was certain that no one was more nervous than I was as we stepped deeper into the tunnel. With Paul leading the way, Charlie was on my back, his chin on my shoulder and breathing as calmly as if we were bicycling through Central Park on a sunny afternoon.
And it was at that moment that the memory of Eleanor and I, doing just that, returned to me.
&n
bsp; “Sad, isn’t it,” I said to Charlie. “That we don’t appreciate all the beautiful moments in life until we experience the horrible ones.”
“And hard for decent people to truly understand the depths of depravity in the underbelly of our existence,” Charlie said softly. “It’s why the world needs men like us to fight on.”
Taken aback by Charlie’s philosophical musings, all I could think of to say was: “You continue to surprise me, Charlie. Now, that was deep.”
“I read a lot, too,” he replied. “I was saving that one for the right moment.”
“Or the wrong one,” I answered.
From a distance it looked like the turn in the tunnel was sharper than it actually was, but in fact, it was barely a turn at all. I do believe I had suffered from a bit of self-inflicted vertigo (excuse the Hitchcock pun), as the tarnished yellow tiles seemed to morph into a dizzying blaze of tiny squares and the blurry visual began to strain my equilibrium. I also broke into a sweat that I was certain would have occurred with or without Charlie on my back. It was that warm and unsettling in the tunnel.
After two hundred feet or so, we could no longer see the ladder we had dropped from, or the wall of rocks behind it. Apparently, as we moved forward, we were turning—but ever so slightly. To make matters worse, the number of working lights along the ceiling was dwindling.
I had no gauge on how far we walked until my back and legs began aching to such a degree that I had to stop. “Paul, you’ve got to take him,” I said, as I knelt down and lowered Charlie to the floor.
“I can walk on my thighs,” Charlie announced, and proceeded to do just that in the semi-darkness. “It just hurts like hell if I do it for too long.”
“No, I’ll carry you,” Paul said, and Charlie got on his back. “You okay, Nick?” Paul asked.
“I am now,” I said.
As expected, we came to a point in the tunnel where we were engulfed in total darkness but for the use of our flashlights. At first, we figured that the nonworking cage lights were either broken or just didn’t have electricity running to them, but a closer look revealed a more obvious explanation—the lights had no bulbs in them.