Code 61

by Donald Harstad

  “No heavy bleeding I can see,” Sally said. “You might take a look out in the hall. Just past this door. I noticed it while I was waiting. A heck of a dent in the wall, across the hall,” she said. She bent back over the small space containing Melissa.

  I went to the door and looked. The dent was very similar to the head impressions on Melissa's wall. I stepped back into the bedroom.

  “That doesn't add up,” I said.

  “How are you doing?” said Sally to Melissa. I heard a response, but couldn't make it out. Sally looked up, and said, “She says fine.” She mouthed the word “shock.”

  I nodded. “Ask her where Huck is, if you can … ” and pulled my walkie-talkie out again. “Comm, Three?”

  “Three?”

  “Yeah, how we comin' with the ten-fifty-two?”

  “Ambulance is ten-eight, ten-seventy-six your location. ETA less than five.”

  “Ten-four.” At least, when the ambulance got to us, we could move Melissa. I was about to ask if we had anybody close to escort them, when I heard a squeak of tires outside. I looked out the window, and saw the Freiberg PD car in the drive. Byng. He'd be able to help the ambulance crew.

  It took the ambulance another three minutes to make it up the drive, but it seemed like an hour. I contacted them on my walkie-talkie, and told them we were in the house, and not to come in unescorted. As I looked out the window, I could see two white sheriff's cars, and a black state patrol car around the drive.

  I tapped Sally on the shoulder again.

  “Yeah?”

  “I'm gonna look for the rest of 'em. Our boy has to be here somewhere. He's probably high on meth or ecstasy, or both. Draw your weapon. If Peale comes into the room, if you think you have time, tell him to stop.”

  She nodded.

  “If you don't think you have time, shoot the fucker. Shoot until your gun is empty. You understand?”

  “Yeah, but … ”

  “Just do it. You gotta protect her, too,” I said, mo tioning toward Melissa.

  My trip down the hall was a little tense. I entered each room in turn, and found nobody home. No evidence of a struggle. Nothing. That left the third floor.

  I hustled back down the hall to Sally.

  “Sally? It's me!” I said that very deliberately before I stuck my head in the door.

  “Okay,” she said. As I looked in, I saw that she had both hands on her pistol. Good.

  “I'm going upstairs. Nothing on this floor but us folks.”

  She nodded. “Melissa says that Huck tried to help her. She doesn't know where she is.”

  I hate going up a stair when I believe there's somebody at the top who wants to kill me. I really, really hate that. But if Huck was alive, odds were that she was up there, too.

  I figured I might as well go up in a hurry. I had my gun in my right hand, and tried the door with my left. It opened easily. A bad sign. It should have been locked, I thought, unless Dan Peale had gone up with a key.

  I took two deep breaths, and then just ran up the damned stair.

  The upper floor turned out to be just as empty as it was the day we searched it. I double checked, even under the bed and in the little slot between the refrigerator and the wall. Empty. So was the back stair leading down to the kitchen. And that door turned out to be locked.

  I went back to check Sally and Melissa, and found a real crowd.

  An ambulance crew of two women and one man were there, just getting started. We moved the bed away from Melissa while the smaller of the women EMTs wedged herself into the widening space, and began taking vitals. The only sound in the room was the puffing of the blood pressure collar.

  “Nobody on three,” I said to Sally. “Back door's locked.”

  “Where …?”

  “I don't know,” I said.

  “Okay,” said an EMT, “cervical collar.”

  She was handed one, and she pushed the bed away from the wall another foot. In a few seconds, she looked up, and said, “Backboard.”

  We shoved the bed back about five feet; they slipped a backboard against Melissa, tightened the straps, and gently rolled her over onto her back.

  She looked like hell, with her left eye swollen out almost as far as her nose, and her left ear had a vertical tear in it that split the upper portion in half. That could have been from her head hitting the wall. That hard, she had to have at least a concussion. There was a lot of blood clotted on her face, her nose looked broken, and her lower lip was split. She opened her right eye, and said something. Sally leaned in, to try to hear over the rasp of opening Velcro and the tearing of bandage packs.

  “What?”

  Melissa said something again. Sally answered her with, “We will, don't worry, we will.” Melissa spoke again, and I heard the words “Huck,” and “stop.”

  Sally stood, and turned to me. “She says that we gotta help Huck. She thinks he took her with him.”

  “Did she say Dan or Dan Peale?”

  “Just a sec,” said Sally, and leaned over Melissa once more. They were just putting an O2 mask on her, and just the glimpses of her split lip moving as she tried to talk made me wince. They had a small problem with moving the blood matted hair from her cheeks and mouth on the left, finally using alcohol wipes to get it loose before securing the transparent mask over her face.

  Sally straightened up. “Yep. Dan. It's him, for sure.”

  “I'll bet he thinks he killed her,” I said. “And I'll bet he gave Huck the same treatment, outside in the hall.”

  “I agree,” said Sally.

  We were both moving into the hallway as we talked.

  In the hall, we met up with Borman, Byng, and the state trooper, who were just getting to the top of the stairs.

  “He's hurt one of the girls pretty damned bad,” I said, “and he went after another one. We think”—and I pointed to the dent in the wall—“that's from her head. He kicked in this door. I already checked up on third. Empty.”

  “You guys need help?” croaked a voice coming up the stairs.

  Lamar. He sounded like he had strep throat.

  “What're you doing here?” I asked. “You're sick.”

  “Right,” he scratched. “Don't worry about me. Maybe you should see this first,” he said. “They told me to stop at the office for this.” It was almost painful to hear him. He handed me a piece of the ubiquitous dispatch notepaper; used computer sheets with the perfs still attached.

  I read the note. Hester had phoned our office, about 12:20 A.M. Told I was busy, she left a brief message.

  “Hester says to tell you that subject Tat tells her subj DP is mad +++. He thinks subjs at Mansion have been making up lies re him and telling them to her and you. Hester says subj Tat tells that subj Huck has been snitched off. You should call her ASAP in am.”

  Written in at the bottom was Hester's cell phone number. I put it in my pocket.

  “Okay. Watch out for him,” I said. “I don't know if he's armed this time, but he's sure as hell violent. Hester says he's mad at the people here in the house, and we know he snorts and probably mainlines crystal meth and ecstasy, and he thinks he's immortal. Really,” I added, seeing the look on some of the faces.

  “You got anybody but one victim?” said Lamar, scratchy but loud, from the bottom of the stair behind us.

  “Not yet, but let's go over it again, just to be sure,” I said.

  Where the hell was Huck? The basement?

  No. The basement had been checked by the time we got back to the main floor.

  “God, Houseman,” said Sally, “Huck's as good as dead.”

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “He could have killed her right here, but he didn't. Why take her somewhere else? To keep her alive awhile.” I didn't want to think of why.

  As far as I could see, the only other route off the cliff, other than stomping down through the woods and the ravine, would be to go down that old elevator shaft we'd found out about.

  I explained to Lamar and the r
est about the possibility of an elevator shaft down into the mine. I also explained that we didn't know exactly where the shaft was. As I did so, I remembered a conversation I'd had.

  “But I know who does,” I said, with a smile. “Our man, Toby.”

  As we exited the Mansion, I was surprised to see it was much lighter. Sunrise on a rainy day can sneak up on you.

  Toby and Hanna were still in the back of Borman's car, being guarded by a state trooper. Excellent.

  As I opened the back door of the idling squad, and motioned him out, Toby said, “Are you gonna beat me again?”

  Coming from somebody with a little dried blood on his face, and a clot in one nostril, it sounded worse than it was.

  “Probably not,” I said. I shrugged at the trooper. “He hit me first.” Lame. I knew that when I said it. The trooper didn't say a word.

  I helped Toby out of the backseat, and stood him up. “Two things. Was Peale in the house when you came out, or had he been there and gone? And I gotta know where that damned elevator shaft is, and I gotta know now.”

  “What elev—”

  I really got in his face. Well, to within three or four inches, I think. It probably looked like I was going to bite him.

  “Dan Peale wants to kill you,” I said, “as soon as he's done with Huck. Got that?”

  He blinked, but didn't say anything.

  “I think the only way he ain't gonna kill you is if we find him first. Think I'm right?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  “Wonderful. Now, was he in the house, or did you hide and just get up the guts to run when you knew he was gone?”

  He kind of hung his head.

  “That's what I thought. Do you know how long it was that you hid, before you knew he had left?”

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  “Don't fuck with me, Toby!”

  “Half an hour!” he said instantly. “Half an hour. For sure.”

  “Did he have Huck with him?”

  “It sounded like it,” he said softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something bumped on the stairs. He was dragging something, I think.”

  I took a deep breath. Hell, he probably couldn't have stopped Peale anyway. But Huck had tried to help Melissa. He should have tried. I was sick of him, but I needed him. “Let's go to the elevator shaft. Now.”

  We did. A whole bunch of us, in fact. Toby, Sally, Lamar, Byng, two troopers, and me. We walked right past the tree that Sally and I had gone to when we tried to close in on Chester, and a little way into the woods, ending up less than a hundred feet from the head of the ravine we'd negotiated only a couple of hours ago. We stopped, and Toby pointed to an old foundation that was cluttered with dead leaves and some decaying branches.

  “There. That's it.”

  “That?”

  “Yeah. The door's in the wall on this side.”

  I moved around the foundation. Sure enough, standing on the bluff side of the rock-lined excavation, I could make out an old, wooden door frame, with a half dozen vertical slats and an angled crosspiece forming a door. The wood had faded to gray, and the edges were rotting, but it was a functional door, nonetheless.

  I looked at Sally. She and I had just missed it last night.

  “How do you get in?” I asked, as I gingerly lowered myself into the wet leaves on the floor.

  “Move the rock at the bottom of the door,” he said, from above me.

  I looked. There was a scraped path discernible in the leaves. There was a large, limestone block that looked as if it made that track, but it was several feet from the door.

  “You mean this one?” I asked, as I bent over and pointed to it.

  Toby took two or three steps forward, toward the edge of the foundation, so he could see me and where I was pointing. He stared for a moment. “Oooh, man … ” he said, drawing it out. “Oh boy. It's been opened…. He's down in the crypt, sure as hell.” He spun around and would have left then and there, but one of the troopers just reached out one arm and stopped him in his tracks.

  I pulled my gun, and with my other hand gingerly reached out and opened the door.

  What it revealed was pretty damned unimpressive, at least at first glance. A dark recess, about seven or eight feet into the hillside, one that would be high enough for me to stand in, if I bent a bit. Maybe six feet, or just a bit less. Just an old, wooden floor, with a hole in the middle that was about six feet square. That was it, as far as I could see, and it was quite a disappointment.

  “There's nothing here,” I said.

  “It's at the bottom,” said Toby.

  “What's at the bottom of what?”

  “The car. The car's at the bottom of the shaft, just look down the shaft…. ”

  I looked up at the assembled faces. “Anybody happen to have a flashlight?”

  The second trooper handed one down. I stooped a bit, leaned over the black square, and shined the light downward.

  Instant vertigo. The shaft descended what had to be at least eighty or ninety feet. As I lurched back I caught a glimpse of two things. A vertical, rusty track with shiny edges; and a big, rusty wheel with what looked to be a very large bicycle chain running in a channel.

  “What you got?” croaked Lamar.

  “Just a second,” I said. “I hate heights.”

  “In a hole?” asked Sally.

  “It's a high damned hole,” I replied, irritated. “Just give me a minute.” I took a deep breath, and got down on my stomach, and crawled forward, toward the edge of the shaft. As I did, I heard Sally wondering aloud how you could have a high hole.

  Being so solidly supported, I could look down. Sure enough. The wheel, chain, and rails were part of the elevating mechanism. As I looked all the way down, I thought I could see something at the bottom. Probably the car Toby referred to. I also noted that the chain seemed to be oiled. I backed out.

  “It goes way down, there's rails and a chain, and I think I can see some sort of car or box thing at the bottom.”

  “That's it,” said Toby.

  “Can we climb down there?” asked Lamar.

  “No,” I said emphatically. “No way.” I simply wasn't about to try a climbing descent to the bottom of that shaft. Not at any price.

  “Use the box,” suggested Toby.

  “What box?”

  “Inside the door, to the left.”

  I looked in again. Sure enough, in the corner was a dark gray electrical box, labeled “Square D,” with a lever on its right.

  “How does it work?”

  “Just pull the lever up or down … whatever way it ain't now,” advised Toby. “It'll bring the car up for you.”

  The problem with simple solutions is that they sometimes hide complex problems just under the surface. That was the case here. First, I wasn't sure that I wanted to alert Dan Peale that we were coming after him. If he heard the elevator, and if Huck was still alive, that could easily cause him to kill her. Second, I had no idea what we would find at the bottom, so I didn't know how many of us should be going.

  We stationed Borman and Byng at the top of the shaft, as the rest of us backed off and questioned Toby.

  We were in a hurry, but we really needed the basic layout of what Toby called “the crypt.”

  He said the elevator shaft went to a section of the sand mine that had been closed off for years. There were five big chambers, and Dan had appropriated two of them.

  “They're both on your right as you get off,” said Toby.

  “Dan got any guns down there?” asked Lamar.

  “Guns? No way. He doesn't need guns. You'll see.”

  “Knives, though?” I asked.

  “Yeah. He's got knives.”

  I wanted to ask why the knives if he didn't need guns, but didn't. Time was short.

  “How do you see down there?” I asked.

  “Turn on the lights,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah. I mean, nobody uses the mine,
but it still has power. For inspections, I guess. We just tapped into the wires in the main part of the mine. That's all.”

  Well, sure. “And that's what powers the elevator?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How loud is it?” asked Lamar.

  Toby looked bewildered. “I don't know … compared to what?”

  “Can Dan hear it coming down, Toby?” I asked, as patiently as I could.

  “Oh! Oh, I think so. Yeah, unless he's in the far chamber, and then if he has the music on, probably not…. ”

  “Music?”

  “Yeah. Dan plays the music really loud when he gets into a mood. Hey,” he said. “He's got all the comforts of home. You're gonna be surprised at what's all down there. It's beautiful!”

  “I expect I will,” I said. Then I tossed him a tough one. “Is that where Edie was killed? Is it the crypt?”

  He went pale. I think he'd been getting into the whole pursuit thing, and had lost his sense of the real situation.

  “Is it?” asked Lamar.

  Toby nodded, but didn't speak. That was probably just as well.

  “Well,” I said, “let's get going.”

  Lamar called one of the troopers back at the house, and had him collect flashlights from the assembled cop cars, and bring as many as he could. They were all rechargeable, and good for at least three hours each.

  Lamar took me aside. “You sure he's down there?”

  “Nope. But Huck's gone, and didn't have to be if he wanted to off her on the spot. Okay … and she's not anywhere in the house. So that would either leave here, or he's got her to some transportation, and they took off.

  They didn't go by us last night at the gate. Nobody did. So the egress point to the house is here. The elevator's at the bottom, but that doesn't mean much. They seem to be able to get out the main entrance, too.”

  “Okay.” He really sounded horrible.

  “I think he got into the mine last night, or at least yesterday sometime. We were trying to track his progress with stolen car reports, but they could have lagged a couple of hours or more.”