When she finished, she joined Zimmerman and watched him from the master bedroom doorway before she entered. He neatly stacked piles of clothing back into dresser drawers, and was he still whistling? An opened and empty coffee can lay on the quilted bedcover.
"You are not obligated to tidy up," she reminded him, rapping her knuckles on the inside wall. "We don't work for Molly Maid."
"It's a habit," he confessed. "My mom taught me to clean up after myself." He stopped stacking as she moved from wall to floor, tapping her knuckles against wood. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for false walls, hidden floor hatches," she said. The skeptical expression never left his face so she explained. "This house was built a long time ago, there is a lot of history here and people who did not always obey the law needed places to hide stuff." He gave a pessimistic shrug and continued searching and repacking drawers. She finished her knocking and proceeded to the other rooms. Striker ignored her, as if her actions were completely normal.
She had just finished Lily's room, the only one in the house that looked like it was inhabited by a young girl, when Zimmerman loomed in the doorway, Striker right behind him.
"There are clothes all over the floor," Erin told them. "It looks like she packed in a hurry but I can't find anything to suggest where they've gone."
Zimmerman waved an opened envelope at her, and she crowded close to view the contents with him. There was no address or mailing label on it, indicating that it had been hand delivered. "We've been wondering why Derek has been hanging around out here," he said, his voice tense. "How is he going to explain this check he wrote to Gunther?" He pulled out a personal check, showed it to them, and Striker photographed it.
"Perhaps he bought something from the old man?" Striker didn't sound like he would even buy this story himself. "Maybe it's a loan, or…" His voice trailed off and he lowered his eyes. "You're right, I like the guy, but this looks bad."
"Is the check for $650?" Erin asked. Striker's head popped up from behind the camera's viewfinder and she didn't need to see it to know that it was. Zimmerman nodded warily and she held up the evidence bag with the bank statements.
"Derek paid the same amount to Gunther on the same date for the last four months, and probably longer. These are all the statements I could find." She waved the plastic bag like a flag. Her phone chirped and she handed the bag to Zimmerman, who stowed it with the check. She turned away from both men to check her text message. It was her girlfriend again.
Allie: R u there?
Erin: Got your caps lock fixed?
Allie: Just did an update. Did you find Gunther yet?
Erin: Not at house. Finishing search now.
Allie: No, he's there.
Erin: House empty. Shed empty.
Allie: Check again. I feel he's there. Pls.
Erin: OK. Will keep looking. Headache better?
Allie: Ice helped. Called in sick anyways. Going to watch old movies today.
Erin: LOL. Such luxury. Take it easy.
Ignoring inquisitive stares from the men, Erin turned the volume off and tucked the iPhone back into her pocket. It was unheard of for Allie to take a day off work, and if she was skipping her daily workout, she must really be having a bad day.
"Something doesn't sit right," she announced, as if it were her idea. "I think we should take another look around the property before we call this done." She headed out the back door, leaving Zimmerman and Striker to exchange a look.
Striker lifted a shoulder noncommittally. "Chicks," he said, and followed her. "I'll take the bush side by the dock. I think there might be a few thistles down there I haven't got on my pants yet."
"Okay," replied Zimmerman. "I hate to say it but look for old wells, root cellars, you know what I'm talking about. Erin is headed past the driveway to the north end so I'll take this area by the house." Striker tromped off through the brush and Zimmerman pulled a broom from the back porch, using the handle to probe through the shrubbery growing wild against the house. He walked all the way around but there was no hidden access to the foundation. Erin did the same with a stick over by the shed.
She flattened the grass near the side of the wooden structure, knelt down and directed her flashlight into the dark spaces underneath. As far as she could see, it appeared to be sitting on a collection of cinderblocks. The moist dark earth had been home to many small critters over the years but none were in residence now and grass had grown thickly all around the building. She could not see through to the other side and poked her stick at gaps in the cinderblocks. At the side furthest the door, she found no gaps at all. The foundation was continuously solid. Why had the builder had expended more effort here? To take more weight? To conceal something?
She laid on her belly in the grass but weeds obscured her view ands she poked into the darkness, with the stick. A spirited grasshopper whizzed into her shirt collar and she jumped to her feet, trying to dislodge it with body contortions. It scrabbled down her back and lodged somewhere above her belt line, twitching its legs. Untucking her shirt, she vigorously flapped the fabric until the hopper escaped out the bottom and turned to see Zimmerman regarding her with interest.
"Rain dance?" he asked, poker-faced.
"Grasshopper dance," she deadpanned in response.
"Did you save it for me?" Zimmerman looked genuinely interested. "Merlin would be highly appreciative."
"Yes, I have a whole pocketful of grasshoppers," she retorted sarcastically. "Right alongside the half dozen mice I caught for my cat." Did she say my cat? Now she was taking ownership of that ornery feline!
"You seem fascinated by this end of the shed," he said. "Let's have another look inside." This time, he did the wall thumping and Erin stomped her way across the floor. It reverberated with a dull thud until she reached the far side, when the sound became hollow.
Erin's iPhone silently vibrated in her pocket and she covertly viewed the text message on her screen.
Allie: Old man thinks enemy is here. Afraid to die.
Erin texted back: Maybe he hears me.
She quickly stuffed the phone into her pocket when Zimmerman joined her. He stomped one heavy boot onto the floorboards and a fine plume of dust escaped the cracks of a loose one. Then he leaned over and tugged a couple of soft cotton threads trapped in the wedge.
"These aren't even dirty yet," he stated. "They're fresh." He handed them to Erin who looked more closely. She twisted the light blue threads between her fingers.
"Lily was wearing a light blue cotton nightgown," Erin blurted. "Get something to pry this up."
"How do you know what she was wearing?"
Allie told me. She dreamt it. My girlfriend is psychic. Or something. The words sounded ridiculous in her head and would sound more implausible if Erin said them out loud, even to someone she knew as well as Z-man. She kept her mouth shut and grabbed the largest flat screwdriver from the tool bench, jamming it between the cracks in the boards. A two-foot square hatch opened upward and Zimmerman wrenched it backward on its hinges to reveal a narrow ladder leading downward to a dank underground cellar. In the scant beam of her flashlight, she strained to see the hard-packed dirt floor in the cinderblock-lined room. Plastic wrappers and crushed beer cans littered the floor.
Erin placed one boot on the top rung of the ladder. "I'm smaller," she explained. "I'll go." He held the trap door up and she shinnied down. The first two ladder rungs squeaked angrily with her weight. The hidey hole, as Gina called it, was about six feet deep, and six rungs to the bottom but Erin only took the first three. Halfway down, she leapt to the ground and shone her light into the face of Gunther Schmidt, lying supine on an old army-style cot.
The smell below ground was foul, a mixture of vomit and urine. She spotted a bare incandescent bulb affixed to the ceiling and yellow light illuminated the room when she yanked the chain. The scene before her was awash in a sickly twenty-five watt glow. The additional light revealed blankets tossed carelessly aside on a second cot in the
hidey hole. A small TV, now switched off, perched on the edge of an overturned plastic milk crate, its electrical wire snaking upward through floorboards.
"He's here!" Erin shouted. There was scuffling above and she hoped Zimmerman was not going to try to get through that hole. It would be truly claustrophobic down here with him and a corpse. Erin peered down at Gunther, partly covered with a moth eaten blanket, his face a waxy pallor. She detected no obvious signs of life but reflexively placed two fingers against the carotid artery at the old man's throat. She sprang back, startled by the presence of a faint pulse.
"Call an ambulance!" she shouted. Lying on the floor with head and shoulders squeezed down through the hatch, Zimmerman let go of his flashlight. It swung crazily on its wrist strap, creating deranged shadows around her as he hiked himself back up through the hole.
"Is he alive?" His muffled voice came through the ceiling.
"Unconscious!" she called out. "Heart rate around thirty beats per minute!" She listened while he repeated the information over his radio.
"How's his breathing?" Zimmerman called back.
"I don't know," she yelled. At first, she hadn't thought he was breathing at all. She leaned closer and recoiled at the scent on his breath, like he'd polished off a pound of Ukrainian sausage. "Quick and shallow, like a baby bird. Do they want me to actually count?" There were no remnants of any meals down here, aside from a few beer cans and candy wrappers. She wondered where the garlicky food had come from.
"That's okay," he called down. "Ambulance is on the way!"
Heavy boots stomped above her and Striker's raised voice. "I found a police radio down by the river. Stuffed under the planks on the dock."
So that's why they had so narrowly missed Derek. He had known they were coming. How had they overlooked the radio? Aside from Zimmerman's foray into the boot sucking mud, she hadn't been thinking much beyond the abducted girl and the canoe disappearing down the river, had she?
"Nicht schießen." Gunther's lips moved ever so slightly to let the words pass. Erin leaned closer but he did not repeat it.
"He's saying something in German!" she yelled to the men upstairs. "Do you know German?"
"A little," Striker's face appeared at the open hatch. "What did he say?"
"Something like nick sheesen."
"Are you saying Nicht schießen? I think that means 'Don't shoot'."
Erin stared at the old man. Was he having flashbacks to his time in the Vietnam war? Had Allie been tapping into his hallucinations? Her texts made a lot more sense.
"Mr. Schmidt," Erin urged tersely, taking him by the shoulder. She knelt beside the cot, careful to avoid a soggy puddle of what smelled like vomit. "Can you hear me? An ambulance is on the way. Help is coming."
Gunther's bloodshot eyes flickered open for a second and focused on Erin. "Helfen meine Enkelin," he mumbled faintly, "Achten." Then the old man's eyes clamped shut once more. Above her, Striker squeezed his head and shoulders through the hatch, much as Zimmerman had before, and watched the interaction.
"He said to help his granddaughter. And then he said to be careful," Striker translated. "Peew, it stinks down there," he added, as if Erin hadn't noticed.
She shook Gunther's shoulder firmly again. "Do you know where Derek Peterson took Lily?" Gunther Schmidt lay motionless, but his eyes moved erratically under their heavy lids. Was he once again dreaming of hiding from enemy soldiers in the jungles of Vietnam? Erin tucked the blanket closer around his shoulders and waited the twelve minutes until the medics arrived.
"Hi Andy. Michelle." She nodded at each medic when they descended the ladder after handing their equipment bags down to her.
"Long time no see, Erin," Andy, the first medic down the ladder greeted her with a sarcastic smile. It had certainly not been a long time. Andy was one of the medics who had taken Erin to the hospital after the fire but she didn't want to have to rehash that all over again. Not today. She left his comment alone and the two of them got down to business, squeezing into the nauseatingly cramped hidey hole beside Erin.
"Sir, Sir!" Andy firmly squeezed the sensitive trapezius muscle between Gunther's shoulder and the base of his neck. There was no response.
"Gunther Schmidt," Erin prompted. "His name."
"Mr. Schmidt," Andy amended. "Can you hear me?" As he spoke, he motioned to his partner and Michelle handed him an oxygen mask which he snapped over Gunther's mouth and nose. She adjusted the flow on the tank's dial until she was satisfied.
"It could sure use an air freshener down here, couldn't it?" Michelle wrinkled her nose then easily flipped the empty cot onto its side and shoved it against the cinderblock wall so she could arrange equipment bags. Kicking two beer cans aside, she clucked her tongue sanctimoniously and began extracting required equipment. "You think he had enough to drink? Seriously."
Michelle, a tall slender brunette, curved herself as gracefully as a dancer around her partner to take vital signs, verbalizing each in turn. "BP sixty over forty-two. Heart rate thirty-eight BPM, Respirations thirty-six, O2 Sats seventy-eight, patient is cyanotic," she said into her radio. She quickly affixed electrodes for the heart monitor, watching the output. It appeared as a series of tiny blips on the screen, a foreign language. She noticed Erin's perplexed expression and explained what this meant in layman's terms. "His blood pressure is low, his heart rate is slow, but respirations are quick, indicating distress, and he is cyanotic so he is not getting enough oxygen in his system."
That much made sense to Erin. She shone her flashlight onto Gunther's face and noted that behind the transparent oxygen mask, his lips were a definite bluish color. Giving the medics more room to work, she wormed her way back to the ladder. Andy squatted beside Gunther and started an intravenous line, his dark features a study in concentration. Skilled fingers finessed the needle to insert a catheter into the vein like the conductor of a tiny orchestra.
Andy noticed Erin's poised notebook and pen. "You should write down that he has wicked garlic breath, which can be fatal—" he paused and Erin narrowed her eyes in disbelief, "—to relationships! Yuk. Yuk."
"That was beyond bad," she retorted.
"Just kiddin' Puddin' Face." He slapped a beefy thigh like a comedian in a comedy sketch.
"Seriously." She frowned her disapproval, more of the nickname than the initial bad joke. "Will he make it?" She had a lot of questions for this man and she wanted answers as quickly as possible.
Michelle shrugged. "Hard to tell. With these vitals, he is at risk of seizure and cardiac arrest." She removed the pulse oximeter she'd earlier placed on the tip of Gunther's index finger and pressed the bezel of her flashlight firmly against the discolored nail bed.
"Mr. Schmidt," she said in a commanding voice. Can you hear me?
Gunther's fingernails were ringed with light colored lines, almost the same hue as his pale skin and Erin couldn't help but cringe a little. That level of pressure on a tender fingernail woke most people with a cry, but the unconscious man merely emitted a faint moan.
"He's GCS4. What if he goes down?" Andy asked her. "Should we intubate before we transport?"
"We are close to hospital," Michelle answered confidently. "Let's see if he'll take an OPA and we can load and go." Andy gave a quick nod and, within seconds, had inserted the oral airway. When he finished, he glanced at Michelle who motioned lifting. The two medics had worked together long enough that the rest did not need to be said aloud.
Michelle called up to the officers above, who leaned over the hatch. "Can you grab the stretcher for us so we can load him up as soon as we haul him out?" Zimmerman's face stayed put but Striker's disappeared and boots quickly tromped across the floor above. The boots returned a moment later, along with a loud dragging noise, and there were choice expletives uttered by Striker, followed by Zimmerman's rumbling laughter.
"You don't have to drag it," Zimmerman told him. "Let me show you. Here's the release catch." More expletives from Striker, and then Zimmerman called that they were
all ready.
Andy grasped Gunther Schmidt from behind, wrestler style under both shoulders, and lifted him backwards up the ladder like an oversize sack of corn. Michelle pointed a finger at the oxygen tank and IV bag, and nodded once to Erin. Then she hefted the bags and followed Andy up the stairs, working with him as a single unit to transfer the patient and ensure all attached equipment was unencumbered.
Erin grabbed the indicated equipment and scrambled to keep up, feeling like the cockeyed caboose of a long, awkward train. Hands reached down when she ascended and relieved her of the tank and IV bag, so that when she surfaced in the shed, Gunther was already securely loaded on the stretcher and on his way out the door.
The air outside the shed was sweet like springtime after a rain and Erin filled her lungs to replace the foul stench from below. She craved a shower, badly, and she had probably been in the hole not much more than a half hour. She retrieved a bottle of antibacterial hand sanitizer from her car's glove compartment and liberally applied it to her palms. When it had dried, she repeated the process, this time ensuring she had cleansed front, back and fingernails. She remembered Gunther's nails. She had never seen such discoloration. Was that the result of years of alcoholism and the continual neglect of one's body? How long had Gunther been in the hidey hole? And Lily? Had they been hiding from the police, or from Derek?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At home, Allie poured boiling water into a mug and dangled an herbal sachet into it, dunking the bag absent-mindedly. She carried her mug to the living room and seated herself on the sofa in front of the oversize flat screen TV. She searched through the online channel menu until she found what she knew she needed to see. There it was on channel 128, a classic favorite of hers since she'd first seen it in her teens with her foster mom. The two of them had stayed up many nights watching movies together and now Allie found it was still a wonderful stress reliever. She sat back and sipped her tea, feeling relaxation wash over her. The movie reel started in her head when she closed her eyes.
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