More Perfect Union (9780061760228)

by Jance, Judith A.

  As I drove, I tried tuning in the radio. I heard a snippet of news reporting a fatal fire somewhere on the east side of Lake Washington. I switched the dial. I wanted music, not news. I was on vacation, out of town. Whatever was on the news wasn’t my problem.

  Highway 6 turned off at Chehalis and meandered west through wooded hills. Sometimes it ran under trees so thick they formed an impenetrable green canopy over the roadway. Other times it moved along near the bed of the shallow headwaters of the Chehalis River. I stopped at a wide spot in the road, a hamlet called Doty, to buy a soda and ask directions.

  “Where does Pe Ell Star Route start?” I asked the woman clerk as she gave me my change.

  “Just the other side of town,” she answered, eyeing me suspiciously. “How come you wanna know? Lookin’ for somebody in partic’lar?”

  “A friend of mine from Seattle,” I said. “She just moved down here.”

  “You must mean that crazy lady with the two little kids. Yeah, she’s up the road here apiece—five, six miles or so. It’s a blue house on the left. You can’t miss it. Looks more like a jail than the real one does over in Chehalis.”

  I puzzled over that remark, but only until I saw the house. It was easy to find. The house, just across the road from the river, was nestled back against the bottom of a steep, timber-covered bluff. It was small, as two-story houses go. All the windows and doors on the lower floor had been covered with ornamental iron bars. It did indeed look like a jail.

  A beat-up Datsun station wagon was parked near the house. On one side, two children were playing under a towering apple tree. A little girl sat in a swing with her hair flying behind her, while a boy, somewhat older, pushed her high enough to run underneath the swing when it reached its highest point.

  I drove all the way past the house once, then made a U-turn and came back from the other direction. As I pulled into the driveway behind the Datsun, the little boy grabbed the rope and stopped the swing so abruptly the little girl almost pitched out on her face. He grabbed her by one arm to keep her from falling and pulled her down from the swing.

  Stepping out of the car, I called across to them. “Hello there. Is your mother home?”

  The little girl opened her mouth as if to answer, but the boy yanked on her arm and dragged her toward the house.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I just need to ask you a couple of questions.”

  Without a backward glance, the two of them scurried away from me like a pair of frightened wild animals, with the boy urgently tugging the girl along beside him. I paused long enough to look toward the house. An upstairs curtain fluttered as though someone behind it had been watching us.

  I closed the car door and started after the children. When I rounded the end of the house, I expected to see them there, but they weren’t. The back porch was empty. I stepped up onto the porch and tugged at the iron grillwork over the door. It was still securely fastened from the inside. That puzzled me. I didn’t think the children would have had enough time to get inside the house and relock the door.

  Just then I heard what sounded like a door slamming shut on the backside of the house, the side closest to the steep bluff behind it. I walked around the corner and looked, expecting to find an additional outside entrance. Instead, the only thing I could see was a rectangular box built next to the foundation of the house. The top of the box was a full-sized wooden door. The door itself was slightly ajar, resting on an empty metal padlock hasp that had been closed inside.

  Was this the door I had heard slam, or was there another one, farther around toward the front of the house? I walked around to the front door. It too was protected by a formidable grillwork cover, the kind that give fire fighters nightmares. I tested the bars. They had been carefully welded and solidly set by someone who knew what he was doing.

  There was a doorbell next to the door, so I rang it. I heard a multi-note chime ring in the bowels of the house, but no one came to the door—not the kids, and not whoever had been watching from the upstairs window, either.

  I rang again, and again nothing happened. Linda Decker must have given her children absolute orders about not speaking to strangers. That’s not such a crazy idea. I believe in that myself, but I was sure there was someone else in the house, some adult. That’s the person I wanted to talk to. I needed some answers.

  I rang the bell a third time.

  “What do you want?” A woman’s voice wafted down to me from an upstairs window. I stepped back far enough to see. Above the front door a window stood open, but the curtain was drawn. No one was visible.

  “Are you Linda Decker?” I asked.

  Instead of answering my question, she asked another of her own. “How did you find me?”

  “Your brother,” I said.

  “What did you do, promise him a ride in that fancy car of yours if he’d tell you?” There was a hard, biting edge to her words. There was also a hint that the information wasn’t news to her.

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said. “He was upset. He had missed his bus. I gave him a ride to the center, that’s all. I’m a police officer,” I added.

  “Right, and I’m the Tooth Fairy,” she responded.

  “Look,” I said. “I’ve got my ID right here. Come to the window. I’ll toss it up to you.”

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  I felt like an absolute idiot, standing out front of the little house, throwing my ID packet toward an open window. It took several tries, but finally I made it. My ID dropped inside the windowsill and fell between the window and the curtain. There was a slight movement behind the curtain as someone stepped forward to retrieve the wallet.

  “See there?” I called. “That’s me. That’s my picture. Can I come in now?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I’m investigating the death of Logan Tyree. I want to ask you a few questions.”

  “Just a minute,” she said.

  She was gone a long time, not one minute but several. I still couldn’t see her, but eventually she returned to the window and tossed my ID back down to me. “You can come in now,” she said, “but you’ll have to use the kids’ door.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Out back along the side of the house.”

  “The side!” I echoed. “But there isn’t any door there.”

  “The coal chute.”

  “That’s how they get in and out?” She didn’t answer. I was right then—the kids had gotten into the house some other way besides the back door. I couldn’t help wondering what kind of mother would make her children come in and out of the house through a coal chute. Not your standard, garden variety, cookies-and-milk type mother, that’s for damn sure.

  “I’ll meet you in the basement,” Linda Decker called down to me. “I’ll go switch on the light.”

  With a sigh I turned away from the front door of the house. The woman at the store in Doty was probably right. Linda Decker was crazy as a bedbug.

  Regretting that I was wearing good clothes, I walked back to the coal chute and lifted the door. It was heavy but not so heavy that kids wouldn’t be able to open and close it themselves. There was no squawk of protest from the hinges. Although there was still some rust showing, they had recently been thoroughly oiled.

  I paused long enough to run my hand over the padlock hasp on the outside of the door. I wondered if sometimes Linda locked her children inside the house when she was away. If she did, she wouldn’t be the first mother who made that sometimes fatal mistake in houses with barred doors and windows. They lock the doors to protect their children, and the children die of smoke inhalation or worse. The idea made me shudder.

  I peered down into the coal chute. The top of a ladder was visible, coming up out of the darkened depths of the basement. It leaned against the inside of the box close enough that the top rung was within easy reach. A light switched on in the basement below me. I heard Linda Decker’s voice again.

  “Just step over the edge of the box and cli
mb down the ladder.”

  Beneath me, the ladder seemed to be set firmly enough on a bare concrete floor. I put one hand on it and tested it for stability. It didn’t wobble at all. If Linda Decker trusted the ladder enough to let her children climb up and down it, I supposed it was good enough for me. Not only that, the coal chute itself looked as though every trace of coal dust had been carefully scrubbed away. That must have taken some doing.

  Swinging one leg up and over the side of the box, I found the top rung of the ladder with one foot and stepped onto it. Before starting down the ladder, I took one last look around outside. I was half afraid some neighbor would see me and think I was breaking into Linda Decker’s house. There was no one in sight.

  The ladder was solid and steady beneath my feet. I started down, one rung at a time. As my shoulders and head descended into the basement, I could see that the room was nearly empty, except for a scatter of boxes and a few odd pieces of discarded furniture. The room was lit by the glaring glow of one bare bulb dangling from an ancient cord in the middle of the raw plywood ceiling.

  One foot was on the floor and the other was still on the bottom rung of the ladder when suddenly the heavy door to the coal chute slammed shut over my head. At the same instant the light went out, plunging me into total darkness.

  Above me, I heard somebody struggling with the hasp. The padlock! Someone was trying to fasten the padlock!

  Scrambling hand over hand, I raced back up the ladder only to crash head-first into the door just as the lock clicked home.

  “We got him, Mommie,” a child’s voice crowed in triumph. “We got him.”

  They sure as hell had.

  CHAPTER

  12

  Reeling from the self-inflicted blow to my head and afraid of falling, I clung desperately to the ladder as tiny pinpricks of light exploded around me. Unfortunately, the stars flashing before my eyes did nothing to lighten the inky blackness of Linda Decker’s basement.

  My legs shook uncontrollably. Fighting vertigo, I made my way back down to the floor. I counted the rungs on the ladder. Seven in all from the point where I’d banged my head.

  I stood on the floor holding the side of the ladder for several minutes trying to get my bearings, waiting for the shaking and dizziness to stop, hoping that somehow my eyes would adjust to the darkness. Eventually the trembling diminished, but I still couldn’t see my hand in front of my face when I tackled the ladder again. I didn’t know what was going on, but one thing was clear: I had to try to get out.

  Careful not to damage my head further, I counted the rungs as I climbed, inching my way up the ladder far enough to brace my back and shoulders against the door. I grunted with exertion, pushing against the resistant wood as hard as I could, but the pressure wasn’t enough. The hasp, the hinges, and the wood all held firm.

  Giving up, I stood for a moment hunched under the door, listening for any sound of voice or movement outside or inside. There was nothing—no footsteps in the room above me, no whispered deliberations outside—only the dull interior thud of my own pounding heartbeat.

  I was over being surprised and scared. Now I was angry. Pissed. I was certain the childish cry of victory had come from the little boy as he slammed shut the coal chute door. What the hell were they up to? I could picture the three of them, Linda Decker and her two children, standing somewhere just out of earshot, gloating over my having fallen into their little trap.

  They’d trapped me all right, but we’d see who had the last laugh on that score. Assaulting a police officer is no joke. Kidnapping one isn’t either. Linda Decker hadn’t figured that out yet, but I fully intended to show her, just as soon as I got the hell out of her goddamned basement.

  Cautiously counting the rungs, I made my way back down to the floor. In the instant before the light had gone out, I could remember glimpsing a stairway on the other side of the basement. Now, with my eyes finally accustomed to the dark, I could see a faint glow that had to be daylight leaking into the basement through a crack under a door at the top of the stairs.

  I attempted walking toward it, only to stumble over an invisible box on the floor and crash, nose-first, into a solid upright timber. A quick spurt of blood told me I’d done something to my nose—something bad, something that would add another lump to it and give my face more character. Just what I needed.

  Maybe I’m not too bright at times, but at least I learn from my mistakes. I dropped to my hands and knees and began crawling toward that tiny sliver of light at the top of the stairs. The concrete floor was cold and damp beneath me as I groped my way across it, creeping along like an overgrown baby. The basement was musty and reeked with the smell of long-resident mice. The house had probably stood vacant for some time before Linda Decker and her children moved into it.

  I made slow progress. The actual distance across the basement couldn’t have been more than twenty feet or so, but in the dark it was one hell of an obstacle course. What had seemed like a relatively empty room with the light on was actually a jumble of wood and boxes, furniture and tools.

  Along the way I jammed my knee down on something sharp, a piece of broken glass or a loose nail that my scouting hands had missed. There was a sudden telltale wetness on my knee and leg, unmistakably warm and slick. The texture of rough concrete on lacerated skin told me I’d torn the hell out of both my knee and my pants. The knee would heal; the pants wouldn’t. And this was one pair I wouldn’t be able to voucher. I’d never get Seattle P.D. to agree that tearing my pants in Linda Decker’s treacherous basement ought to qualify as a line of duty mishap.

  Had the lights been on, I’m sure I would have made quite a sight. The bloodied nose and the torn knee created a symmetry of sorts, the top and bottom halves of a matched set. An ugly matched set.

  At last my fingers touched the far wall. I inched my way along it until I located the bottom of the stairs. They were made of roughhewn cobweb-covered planks open at the back end. My hands searched in vain for a handrail on the outside. There wasn’t any. Running my hands up and down the wall I located a two-inch pipe that had been bolted to the wall as a make-do banister. Clutching it gratefully, I eased my body up the stairs, feeling my way one step at a time, clinging to the pipe with one hand while sharp wooden splinters from the steps bit into the palm of my other hand.

  Being blind must be hell, but real blind people have canes and seeing-eye dogs. I only knew things were in my way after I ran into them. That’s a little late.

  On step number twelve I barked a knuckle against something metal—something round and metal and cool. It was another grill, more of the ornamental iron bars I had seen on the outside of the house. Beyond the bars was the smooth finished surface of a wooden door.

  Suddenly, I heard swift footsteps coming toward me. The light came on and the wooden door fell open beneath my hand. When the door gave way, it took me by surprise and I lost my balance. I had to grab hold of the metal bars to keep from pitching ass over teakettle back down the stairs.

  When I righted myself and looked up, I found myself staring into the barrel of the biggest pistol I’d ever seen. From where I was, it looked a hell of a lot more like a cannon than a handgun. I was only dimly aware of the woman behind it, but her words came through loud and clear.

  “Let go of the bars. Now!”

  I let go and retreated down the stairs a step or two.

  Her voice was steady even though the gun wasn’t. “Mister, if you’ve got a gun on you, you’d better shove it under this rail right now before I blast you into a million pieces!”

  There was no doubt in my mind that Linda Decker meant what she said. Even if she didn’t, I couldn’t afford to call her bluff, not with a gun pointed right between my eyes from some three feet away. A shaking gun at that.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “Take it easy.”

  Cautiously I eased the Smith and Wesson out of my shoulder holster. I didn’t want to do anything to alarm my captor. She was nervous enough already. Her finger was s
till poised on the trigger while the barrel of the gun trembled violently. It scared the holy crap out of me.

  I slipped my gun, handle first, through a flat, clear space at the bottom of the metal bars. With a quick, deft movement she kicked it behind her, sending it spinning away across the linoleum floor until it came to rest against the bottom of a kitchen cupboard.

  “Now take off your jacket and push it through here, too,” she ordered.

  “Look,” I began. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “Shut up and take off the jacket.”

  I did. “What’s going on? You already saw my ID. You know I’m a cop.” I finished poking the jacket under the bars and glanced up at the gun. It was still pointing at me, still shaking.

  “I don’t know anything of the kind,” Linda Decker answered. Without ever taking her eyes off me, she kicked my jacket away as well.

  “Call my partner, Detective Lindstrom at Seattle P.D. He’ll vouch for me.”

  “Cop or no cop, you’re still working for them,” she retorted.

  I took a deep breath, summoned my most conciliatory tone, and tried again. After all, I’m supposed to be trained to talk my way out of tough situations. “Linda, I already told you, I’m investigating the death of Logan Tyree. I thought you’d want to help.”

  She winced when I mentioned his name, but she didn’t back off. “Cut the bullshit. You tried that line already. I called Seattle P.D. just a few minutes ago. You’re not assigned to Logan’s case, so what the hell are you doing here?”

  There was no point in trying to explain that I was on vacation and looking into Logan Tyree’s death on my own because I felt like it, because I didn’t like the way the official investigation was going. She wouldn’t have believed that in a million years. Actually, I hardly believed it myself.

  “I just wanted to talk to you, to ask you some questions.”

  “You went to a hell of a lot of trouble. I figured you’d show up today. I warned the kids to watch out for you, told them to come inside the minute they saw a strange red car.”