Again Derek started up, again slowly, but Rob didn’t have anything more to throw. He began to edge away, toward the front of the house, trying not to make any sound at all. He went into the first bedroom he came to, on the opposite side of the hall from the rooms where he’d been before. Maybe Derek would look for him in the wrong place, maybe he’d turn his back long enough so Rob could slip past him and get back down the stairs . . .
It wasn’t totally dark in any of the upper rooms that faced the street, because of the streetlights. They didn’t show much, but enough so that Rob could move without fear of maiming himself, unless there were more low stools.
Miraculously, the door opened without sound. The heat was more intense here; the room faced the west and had taken the brunt of the afternoon sun, and the smell of dust and mildew were strong.
He didn’t close the door because he wanted to see where Derek went and try to get past him. The interior hall, however, was much darker than the rooms themselves. He wasn’t sure he could see anything.
Rob paused just inside the room, uncertain what to do next.
The house was on the corner, and there were houses directly across the street both north and west, but he didn’t think he could make anyone hear him if he got a window open and yelled. The Dunbartons lived in one of the houses, and they’d already gone to bed, or were out, because there were no lights. In the other direction, the Millers had their entire house lit up, but he knew they always played a couple of TVs and a stereo.
Derek had reached the top of the stairs. Rob heard a board creak and stopped breathing. There was a clicking sound; it took Rob a moment, until Derek swore under his breath, to realize he’d tried a light switch and found that it didn’t work.
“You might as well come out, Rob. You can’t get away.”
Rob began to inch across the room. If he could get behind something, so that he wouldn’t be seen unless Derek came all the way into the room, he had a better chance. Not that Rob thought his chances were very good, no matter what he did. All the advantages seemed to be on Derek’s side. But as long as he was still living, there was reason to try.
He bumped into a bed. Dust rose in nose-tickling clouds. The bed seemed very high; Rob bent over to see if it was really so much further off the floor than usual, if there was room to get underneath it.
Out in the hall Derek was mouthing obscenities. Rob scarcely heard them, wriggling under the old-fashioned bed, concentrating on not bumping anything that would produce a sound. He had to take the jar of spiders out of his pocket, and he held it, slippery with the sweat from his palm.
A car moved in the street below, slowly, then passed by; Rob heard it without thinking about it, straining to hear any sound Derek might make.
The click of another light switch carried clearly to him, and a band of pale light appeared. Derek had found a bulb that still worked.
This seemed to give him more confidence. He moved along the hall, opening doors one after the other, making no secret of his whereabouts.
He hopes he’s going to scare me so bad I won’t be able to think, Rob decided.
He was getting awfully uncomfortable; he had to go to the bathroom, and it kept him from concentrating on his escape. Still, the fact that he wasn’t witless with fear was good, in a way.
Derek threw open yet another door, turned on another light. So far the light was all on the far side of the house, the side facing the Mallory home. Maybe somebody would notice it, especially if they were still looking for him. If they did, somebody’d investigate. There hadn’t been a light on the second floor of this house for as long as Rob could remember.
Were they still looking for him? Or had they decided he’d run off and was sulking, or hiding from the police? Cripes, what he’d give for a cop right now, he thought, sweat forming on his face and dust rising in his nostrils from the old carpet.
He felt a fleeting moment of curiosity about the success of his father’s mission; had he been able to find Uncle Ray, to do something to keep him out of jail?
Well, even jail was better than being killed by some nut so you couldn’t tell that he’d pushed his aunt out the window. If the police were looking for him because they were mad about him making what they thought was a crank phone call, what was the worst they would do to him when they caught up with him?
He didn’t remember ever seeing a movie about just exactly his own problem. There had been one about a man who made prank phone calls. They didn’t tell what the guy actually said, which seemed like a cop-out, but when they caught the caller they sent him to jail. He must have said something really terrible to the people he called, and Rob had been very disappointed not to learn what it was.
Still, he hadn’t done that, and besides, he thought now he could prove what he said was true. They might arrest him right at first, but his father would get it all straightened out. The District Attorney was an officer in the Lions Club, the same as his father, and they both played golf when they got a chance. They wouldn’t railroad him into any jail term, not when they found out the truth about Derek.
The door of the room he was in was flung back against the wall so hard that something fell . . . maybe a picture off the wall, maybe some plaster. Rob was unable to keep from jerking at the sound.
“Where are you, you crummy little runt?”
In the movies that was sometimes good, when the bad guy got so mad and shook-up he didn’t reason logically anymore. To Rob it seemed coldly terrifying, because now he could believe that Derek meant what he said; he intended to kill Rob if he had to destroy the house to do it.
He could see Derek’s feet; he wore size twelve sneakers, tan ones, and yellow socks. The wall switch crackled, but the light did not go on.
“All right,” Derek said in a low, deadly voice. “You want to make it difficult, we’ll play it that way. And it’s too late now to get any sympathy from me. I’m going to get you any way I can, boy.”
He turned, going away, feet sounding heavily as he moved toward the stairs. He’d turned out the lights as he passed the open rooms, so if nobody had noticed them they wouldn’t now.
Rob listened, not trusting his senses that said Derek was going downstairs. Yet how could he make those sounds on the stairs unless he really did go?
In the silence that followed Rob lay for a little longer, listening. There went that same car . . . he could tell it was the same one because there was a slight miss in the engine. Hadn’t it been around the block a couple of times already? It stopped, and he could hear nothing at all.
Had Derek gone downstairs? All the way? Was he waiting down there now, listening, ready to pounce if Rob came out?
He didn’t know, but he couldn’t stay under the bed. If Derek set the house afire, the second floor was no place to be.
Slowly he began to inch his way out, not forward, toward the still-open door, but backward, just in case it was a trick and Derek would suddenly turn on a light and catch him halfway out, helpless.
He was free, and nothing had happened. He got slowly to his feet, his eyes quite used to the dark now. He was standing near a window that looked down on the side street, and he glanced down.
There was a car at the edge of the street. Hardly anybody ever parked there, because Mrs. Calloway always raised cain when anyone used what she considered her part of the curb.
A light glowed, briefly, through the windshield, and went out: the red pinprick of a cigarette.
There was someone down there, someone who might help him if he could contact them.
Rob pushed aside the lace curtains, inhaling more dust, and tugged at the window, but it didn’t move. His fingers found the catch and twisted it easily enough, so it wasn’t locked. The blamed thing was painted shut, and he had nothing to chip away the paint. And no time to do it, anyway. If he started anything that made any noise, old Derek would be down on him like Sonny on a help
less sparrow.
If he broke the window . . . which was unlikely unless he could find something small enough and heavy enough to throw through it . . . and the person below didn’t respond immediately . . . Derek would know at once where he was and decide that waiting for a fire to consume him was too slow. As he’d pointed out, if they found Rob’s burned body they wouldn’t know whether he’d been strangled first or not.
Below, on the street side of the car, the door opened and a man got out. Rob caught his breath. It was darker here than on Saraday Street, but what light there was caught the glint of a badge on the man’s chest.
A cop. The cops were out there. Still looking for him? Cripes, he had to find some way to attract attention . . .
He groped around the room, trying to find something . . . anything . . . loose enough to pick up, a chair leg might do it . . .
There was no chair in the room. Only the bed and a dresser that must have weighed two hundred pounds. All right, then, before the cop was gone, he’d try sticking his fist through the window. Maybe he’d cut himself all up, and take a chance on bleeding to death, but he didn’t think it was as painful to bleed as it was to burn.
Maybe, he thought, hesitating a moment longer, he could stick his foot through it, instead. His tennis shoes might offer some protection from the breaking glass. The cop was still down there, smoking the last of his cigarette, just standing there. He wasn’t paying any attention to Mrs. Calloway’s house.
The trouble with kicking was that the window was so high off the ground.
It was then that he heard the sounds from the lower floor; frantic scrapings and hangings that indicated frenzied activity on Derek’s part.
Whatever Derek was doing down there, he was putting everything he had into it. Maybe it would be possible to slip by him, after all, if he was really busy with something. It would be a lot easier than chancing a big cut and maybe bleeding to death by sticking a hand or a foot through a window.
Rob stuck his jar of spiders back into his pocket, further ripping the seam, and stepped to the doorway, straining to hear.
Fifteen
He was looking for something.
Rob wasn’t sure how he knew that, that Derek was hunting for something. There was the slamming of a door and a muffled curse, making Rob more certain. Money? Maybe the old lady had a treasure hidden somewhere, and Derek hoped to find it before he fired the house. Maybe she had jewels that her nephew knew about.
Rob began to move cautiously toward the head of the stairs. There was a thumping sound, as if a drawer had been jerked all the way out of a dresser and fallen onto the floor.
Derek wasn’t thinking about Rob right now, at least not with his full attention. Was there a chance? . . . No, not if he was wandering around, pulling out drawers and stuff.
He remembered that cop outside. Was it a stakeout, did they want Rob bad enough to have cops watching his house for him to come home? He’d thought they only did that with desperate criminals. Still, he was sure there was at least one cop out there. If he knew Mrs. Calloway had died this morning (only this morning?), would he investigate a light in her house if he saw one?
There was some risk in turning on the lights, because Derek might notice and come upstairs. Rob would be more easily captured if the lights were lit. On the other hand, lights could attract the attention of someone who would help him.
So Rob took the time to try all the switches, up and down the hall; he found four that worked.
One of the doors he opened squeaked so badly that he stood with the blood thundering in his ears, wondering if Derek had heard it.
It wasn’t another bedroom, however, but a curving stairway.
The tower. It went up into the tower, three tall stories above the street.
His mind raced over the possibilities it offered. Were the tower windows, too, painted shut? Or could they be opened so that he could get out onto the roof?
Only a little of this roof was slanted, as opposed to his own at home. The very top of it was flat and had a little iron railing around it, a captain’s walk sort of thing. If he could get onto that . . . he could yell bloody murder and surely someone would hear him . . . Derek wouldn’t murder him in cold blood, with help coming on the run, would he?
He had a momentary vision of being shoved off that tremendously high roof, of plunging some forty feet to the ground.
This was followed at once by an even more vivid image: that of a burning house, with himself trapped above the flames. It was a few seconds before he realized that he could smell smoke.
Had Derek already fired all those newspapers?
Newspapers didn’t burn awfully fast, he remembered from trying to dispose of them in the incinerator. Not unless you pulled the pages apart so the air could get between them. So even if something was on fire now, he had a few minutes before it could get up here. If he could get his family, or the cop, to call the fire department, they could rescue him with one of those big ladders . . . he knew they had one that would reach the tower, because he’d seen them use it to paint a church steeple once. Still, his mouth was dry and he wiped sweaty palms on his jeans.
The stairway looked good. He wondered if the light worked up there.
He found the switch; it lit another of the forty-watt bulbs. Mrs. Calloway couldn’t have had any money or she wouldn’t have been so stingy with the light bulbs, he reasoned.
Rob took a step into the hall below the steps and nudged something with one foot. Pausing, he saw that it was a small packet wrapped in a brown paper bag.
He remembered that Derek had looked into the cupboards in the kitchen, opening a paper bag he saw there. And now it sounded like he was tearing the first floor apart, still looking for something.
Was this what he wanted? Something the old witch had hidden?
Unable to restrain his curiosity, even now, Rob picked it up and opened it, holding the bag under the hall light to examine its contents.
This was disappointing, because it seemed to be no more than little packets of some kind. Far too small to be money or jewels or any kind of treasure.
He remembered a show he’d seen on TV a couple of weeks ago. Drugs? Hadn’t they packaged drugs something like this?
His breath escaped in an involuntary whistle. Cripes, he’d bet that’s why Derek came over here tonight, to find this stuff! Derek hadn’t gone into the other room and picked up the .22 shells, although he’d said that was what he came for.
If he burned the house, the shells would vanish, along with the one person who could identify Derek as a murderer. Naturally he wouldn’t want to burn up the drugs, if that’s what it was, not if he could save them. How much would they be worth, a little bundle like this? Heroin, he knew, was pretty valuable. A million dollars worth, maybe? Boy, what he’d have to tell the guys . . . if he ever got out of here in one piece.
The angry sounds from below had stopped.
Suddenly chilled, Rob realized he hadn’t been paying enough attention. Where was Derek?
“Robbie? Hey, Robbie, you hear me?”
Still downstairs, then, but just at the foot of them. The moment Derek put one of his size twelves on the bottom step Rob began to move, easing the squeaking door closed behind him, hoping it would be a few minutes before Derek realized which door it was. He climbed the curving stairs, the paper bag and its contents in his hand.
Why didn’t anybody notice anything? That whole houseful of people next door, you’d think one of them would look out the window and realize there were lights in what was supposed to be an empty house, or that the cop would.
He came out into the tower room.
Any other time, he’d have been delighted with it. It was the only part of Mrs. Calloway’s house that had ever interested him, but he’d never planned to see it with a killer at his heels. By some miracle, the light here worked, too.
It was a larger room than he’d expected it to be, circular, some fifteen feet in diameter. It had windows all around, with no curtains on them, and the view was so spectacular he wondered why Mrs. Calloway hadn’t sat up here even if she did have to climb the stairs.
You could see darned near the whole town, even without binoculars.
Not that it did him any good, because he didn’t see any people to yell at. There were lights all over in his own house, and cars in front . . . yes, his father’s car was there, too . . . but no people within shouting distance so far as he could tell. Of course if they had any windows open they might hear him, if he could get outside.
The one place he couldn’t see was where the police car had been parked, up close to the other side of the Calloway house. Was the cop still there, smoking his cigarette? Would he hear if Rob yelled from the tower?
There was nothing in the tower except dust and spiders. Cripes, he could have let his own go and got plenty more spiders up here, he thought. He supposed they’d lock the place up, though, so he wouldn’t ever be able to get in here again . . . that is, of course, if he managed to get out of it now.
So far he didn’t hear Derek behind him, but it didn’t give him any false sense of confidence. It was only a matter of time before Derek figured out where he was, and not much time, at that.
The first window he tried stuck like it was never meant to open, and Rob felt the beginnings of panic. If Derek cornered him here, he was done for.
The second window, after a heart-stopping moment of resistance, opened. He put his head out to look straight down at the front yard below. It didn’t make him dizzy, but he knew a fall would kill him. He could yell from here, but then Derek would know where he was . . . and he couldn’t be sure the cop was still down there.
Better to open a window where he could get out onto the roof, if he could. Once he was out there, he’d yell, and it would take Derek a few minutes to get to him. If he was brave enough to climb around out on the roof. Lots of grown-ups were really chicken about such things.
The View from the Cherry Tree Page 13