They first tried to tip the boat into an upright position, which took both of them. The swan boat was heavy—really heavy—and looked to be made of metal and concrete. These are not generally considered to be good boat-making materials, which indicated that maybe it had not been intended to be a boat at all. Perhaps it was to be a decoration in Ellingham’s weird underground grotto of love. Whatever the case, they would not be able to carry it.
“I hate this,” David said. “I hate that we’re down here.”
Stevie scanned the area. How could there be so much crap and yet nothing useful? The rock formations couldn’t exactly be pulled off the walls. The three bags of old cement had gone solid. The only thing that was left was a small pile of bricks off to one side.
“Bricks!” she said cheerfully, like bricks were fun things that you might bring to parties.
David shone his light on the meager little stack.
“Not enough,” he said.
“But it’s some. Some bricks are better than no bricks. There’s two of us. Maybe one of us could stand on the bricks and boost the other.”
“Yeah . . . maybe. I guess. Yeah.”
The thing about bricks is that they are not easy to carry. One in each hand is about the limit. There was nothing in the grotto to use to wheel the bricks around.
“So we make a few trips,” she said, trying not to lose the momentum of her enthusiasm. “We’ll dump out our bags to carry more.”
With her bag full of ten bricks and David’s with about the same, they began the journey back to the front of the cavern, David using his free hand to hold up the flashlight.
“Let’s speculate,” Stevie said, trying to remain cheerful. “Let’s say you were planning on doing something to Hayes. Let’s say you thought that since I’m the local detective that I might get ideas about it, that it wasn’t an accident—which is what happened—so you do something to make me seem a little crazy. I see threatening notes on my wall at night.”
“We’re still talking about this?” David said. “Look at where we are.”
“Hear me out. My ideas would seem less sensible, right?”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“Something to do,” Stevie said, her voice strained from the effort of carrying the bricks in the cold.
“Well, let’s don’t. We don’t have to run through your case notes every time we’re alone. It doesn’t always have to be about murder.”
“Okay,” she said.
“We have to get out of here.”
“We’re working on that,” Stevie said.
“Don’t you get sick of this place?” he snapped. “Who the fuck does this? Who builds all of these tunnels and fake grottoes?”
His words echoed around the cavern and bounced back on them.
Stevie found her body was starting to stiffen and shake from the cold. She had to keep it together. She had to be fine so that David would be fine. And she would be fine because David was there.
“You know,” she said, “Disneyland is built on a slope because it also has a vast underground series of tunnels.”
Nothing from David.
“They were built to keep characters in the right places. No one wants a space monster in Frontierland.”
“A space monster?” David said. “Have you been to Disneyland?”
“No,” Stevie said.
“Seriously?”
“Too expensive. But I spend my time planning my perfect Disney dream wedding, with the space monster and a . . . Mickey . . . something . . .”
They dumped their twenty bricks at the top of the ramp.
“Stop talking,” he said. “It’s not helping.”
On their second trip, they removed another layer from the depressingly small pile of bricks. There was no way this would be enough to do anything, but she dutifully opened her bag to accept some more. Her arms ached from the cold.
“Oh my God,” David said.
Stevie looked up. David was staring at the brick pile. Well—not at the pile. Something in the pool of light from his flashlight. Under the top layer of bricks there were several wooden boxes marked LIBERTY POWDER CO, PITTSBURGH PA, HIGH EXPLOSIVES, DANGEROUS.
“Ho-ly shit,” David said.
David removed a few more bricks from around the boxes. There were three in total. A bit more digging turned up a long coil of wire.
“You think this is real?” he asked.
“I think it’s definitely real,” Stevie said. “This is the treasure.”
“Treasure?”
“Francis—the one who wrote the diary—she must have been stealing dynamite and stockpiling it.”
“There was a student here who was stealing and stockpiling dynamite? And people bitch about a few squirrels in the library?”
They regarded the pile for a few moments. It was clear what was going to come next, though Stevie did not want to bring it up.
“I’m going to say something you won’t like,” David said.
Stevie said nothing.
“I mean, there is a lot of dynamite here,” he went on. “We don’t need that much. One stick is probably all we would need. Look at this. Blasting caps, wire. Everything but the plunger to set it off. I think all we’d need is an electrical charge. I probably have something in my bag . . .”
“We can’t set off dynamite,” she said.
“Sure we can. Haven’t you ever seen cartoons?”
“We’ll kill ourselves,” she said.
“No we won’t. We probably won’t. A stick or two? That’s nothing.”
“It’s dynamite,” she pointed out. “Old dynamite. It will blow up.”
“Dynamite,” he said, looking up at her, “is a high explosive. It produces a pressure wave. Imagine a sphere—an expanding sphere. That’s the pressure wave. As the sphere expands, the surface area increases by the square of the radius, therefore the pressure drops by the square of the radius. In addition, we have a wall, which means the pressure wave has to go around a corner, which it can do through diffraction, but it will lose energy in the process. I’m saying it won’t be that bad.”
Stevie was too stunned to reply.
“Janelle isn’t the only one who knows physics,” he said. “Got a few things in here that might work. Actually, the flashlight . . .”
He opened up his flashlight.
“Nine volts,” he said. “That might do it. So all we need to do is wire it.”
“Dynamite,” she said. “They used it to blast things open. To level the mountain.”
“Yeah, but you need a bunch for that,” he said. “One stick shouldn’t start an avalanche or anything. I don’t think so anyway.”
“You don’t think?”
“No!” he said. “No. Probably not. No. We’re not really on a slope here. There’s nothing to come down.”
“Except the rest of the mountain above us.”
“One stick,” he said. “Tiny dynamite. Cute little dynamite. I think I can do this. Do you trust me?”
The truth was, there was no real choice. It was getting colder and darker, and no one knew they were under the ground.
And deep down, she did trust him.
“How do we do it?” she asked.
The how was not completely clear, and it was distressing to Stevie how much of this plan really did seem to be coming from cartoons. They stretched out the wire first.
“That’s, what, twenty feet?” David said. “I mean, it’s not enough that we could rig the hatch and get all the way in here, where it would be safe. I’ll have to be closer.”
“We’ll have to be closer,” Stevie said.
“There’s no point in . . .”
“We,” she said. “I’m not dying in this dumb hole alone. We.”
The second problem was that they could not actually get the dynamite up to the hatch itself. They could only place it underneath and hope the force of the blast was enough. Which meant . . . more dynamite.
They decided to use two
sticks.
“That should probably do some damage, right?” David said as they set it down.
“Or bring the ground down on us.”
“Or that,” he said.
David managed the wiring of the caps. Stevie didn’t really want to watch this part, because of the terror she felt and also the fact that she suspected he was making this up as he went along. Then they both hunkered behind one of the small rock formations. This meant they had to be closer to the blast, but it provided some shelter. Stevie and David huddled under the foil blanket that Janelle had so thoughtfully packed and demanded they take.
“You’re sure you won’t go in the back?” David said.
“Before we do this,” she said in reply. “There’s something I want you to know.”
“Oh boy.”
“I solved it.”
“You what now?”
“I solved it,” she said simply. “The Ellingham case.”
“You solved the crime of the century.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And who did it?”
“George Marsh,” she said simply. “The cop, the guy from the FBI.”
“And . . . that’s it? You just know?”
“I don’t just know,” she said. “I worked the case. I researched. I sat in the stupid attic reading menus and inventories.”
“You . . . solved it.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“And who knows this?”
“Nate,” she said.
“Nate.”
“Yup,” she said. “Nate knows.”
He waited a beat.
“Sure,” he said. “Seems about right.”
“So now tell me why I couldn’t have a tablet,” Stevie said.
David shifted next to her.
“He got to you once,” he said. “I didn’t want him to be able to get near you ever again. Happy now?”
“As happy as I can be in a hole in the ground about to blast some old unstable dynamite.”
“And there’s this,” he said. “When you took off, I was coming to show you something.”
He pulled out his phone and opened up a message.
“Call Me Charles replied to Imaginary Jim,” he said.
Stevie read the note:
TO: [email protected]
Today at 3:47 p.m.
FROM: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Mr. Malloy,
We appreciate the senator’s concerns, and we certainly thank him for his help with our internal security system. Attached is a copy of Albert Ellingham’s codicil. We trust that the senator will keep this strictly private.
In addition to all other bequests, the amount of ten million dollars shall be held in trust for my daughter, Alice Madeline Ellingham. Should my daughter no longer be among the living, any person, persons, or organization that locates her earthly remains—provided it is established that they were in no way connected to her disappearance—shall receive this sum. If she is not located by her ninetieth birthday, these funds shall be released to be used for the Ellingham Academy in any way the board sees fit. It is further stipulated that no member of the faculty or administration of Ellingham Academy may claim this sum as their own.
“It’s real,” Stevie said. “The codicil is real.”
“Apparently.”
“It’s real,” she said again.
“Yeah.”
She leaned her head back on the cold rock wall and laughed. The laugh quickly turned into a kind of laugh vomit, endless and rolling, to the point where she was gagging from it. David laughed too, probably because she was laughing.
“So you have your thing,” he said. “Did it tell you what you needed to know?”
“No,” she said, painfully coming down from the hysteria. She wiped her eyes.
They settled into each other. She wrapped her arms around his middle and he did the same to her. The foil blanket rattled.
“I’ve decided not to ignore you,” she said. “I don’t care if I promised.”
“Doesn’t matter. My ass is toast.”
He pulled up another message, this time, a text.
Today 2:24 p.m.
I see someone named Jim Malloy now works for me. I can only assume this is you. I also understand you have returned to Ellingham. Be aware that I know that you accessed my safe and our private server. If you think I won’t press charges against you, you are much mistaken. As a public official, I need to set an example—my son will not get special treatment. Think very carefully about what you do next. How do you want your life to go?
“Wah-wah,” David said, imitating a sad trombone. “My life, as I once knew it, is done. Especially after I sent this.”
He pulled up one more message.
Today 2:26 p.m.
Your blackmail stuff has been destroyed. I want my life to go better than yours, and now it will. Suck it.
“You didn’t wait very long,” Stevie noted.
“No,” he said. “There was nothing to think about. But he is going to make my life very, very difficult.”
“As opposed to now?”
“I see your point,” he said.
They sat with their backs to the rock for a moment, the wires in David’s hands.
“You’ve really never been to Disneyland?” he said.
“Nope.”
“We gotta fix that.”
“When we get out of here, you can take me,” she said. “You ready?”
“Sure. Why not. Shall we?”
“I guess,” she said.
David took the two ends of the wire and then, with great care, touched them to the poles of the battery.
For a moment, nothing happened. Stevie looked up at the rocks and the dark and wondered if she was moving slowly through time. Maybe she was already dead. Maybe this was it. Ellingham would take her at last, like it had swallowed Hayes and Ellie.
Then, a strange noise, something angry, hissing.
Then a bang—a bang so loud it burned her ears. A cloud of white dust shot past them and there was an acrid smell. When she opened her eyes again, she found she was pressed deep into David, and David into her. She couldn’t really hear because of the ringing in her ears, and she was coughing uncontrollably.
But they were alive. Dusty. Maybe with hearing damage. But alive.
They both got up and cautiously peered around the rock. There was a pile of rocky rubble under the entrance, and a tiny chink of light. They stepped forward. The ground around the explosion was pitted, and the walls were blasted. Above them, the hatch was bent upward—not completely open, but not completely closed either.
“That was amazing,” she said.
“Yeah it was. Yeah it was!”
He turned to her and grabbed her in a huge, enthusiastic embrace and started jumping up and down. She started jumping too, because it was hard not to jump, and because this was something worth jumping for. They were not free, but they were not trapped either. And it was cold and snowing, and they were in a hole in the ground.
“We still can’t get out!” he said. “We’re still stuck! We blew it up and we’re still stuck! We may freeze to death!”
The jumping was getting old, and she slowed up. He did as well. They both gasped for breath for a moment. She could see him better now that they had a tiny bit of light coming down.
“So what now?” he said.
Above them, there was a grinding noise. A pair of hands gripped the sides of the hatch and pulled it back.
Then a face appeared.
“Germaine?” Stevie said.
22
“HEY,” GERMAINE SAID. “DID YOU GUYS BLOW THIS UP? I THOUGHT I saw something blow up.”
Germaine Batt was dressed head to toe in winter gear—ski pants and jacket, goggles, a massive hat, plus walking poles to help her get through the snow. She pulled back the goggles, revealing a raw red mark around her eyes where they had been. She also didn’t seem that shocked abou
t any potential explosion she may have witnessed.
“I can’t believe I’m looking at you and how much I love you,” David yelled up.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he yelled.
“Do you have a rope?” she called down.
“No,” David said. “We didn’t plan to fall into this hole.”
“Okay. Hold on. I’ll be right back.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” he yelled. “But can you keep the hatch propped open? We’re kind of paranoid about being stuck in holes in the ground.”
Germaine took off her backpack and used it as a wedge.
“Germaine,” David said, turning to Stevie in wonder.
“Germaine,” she repeated.
Snow poured down into the hole, but Stevie and David sat under it anyway, refusing to give up their square of sky. They squeezed together in the foil blanket. The cold was penetrating now. Her feet and hands were numb. Her skin was starting to burn all over, and she was getting tired from the effort of trying to be warm.
“What if she doesn’t come back?” David said.
“She’ll come back,” Stevie said, pushing herself into his side. “She’s Germaine. Fire and flood cannot stop her.”
Germaine did come back.
She returned with some sheeting that had been on the ground where the paintballs went off on Janelle’s machine. She tied these into a few knots, then tied them together. She looped the other end around the statue. Germaine dropped the sheet rope down. David gave it a test tug and nodded.
“You want to go first?” he asked Stevie. “I’ll spot you.”
Stevie had never climbed anything like this before. Her hands were numb with cold, and her feet slipped several times on the knots. But her determination to get out gave her the arm strength to keep pulling herself upward. The few times she lost footing, she felt David hold her up from underneath. Germaine helped pull her up into the deep snow above. She crawled out of the earth like she was coming out of her own grave. After being in the dark underground grotto, the bright whiteness of it nearly blinded her. The cold was so pure and numbing. David climbed up next, Germaine and Stevie pulling him out as he reached the top. They trudged back to the Great House. There was no worry now about anyone yelling at them. They were far beyond those kinds of cares. Pix regarded them with a weary acceptance as they dragged their snowy, wet selves in through the front door.
The Hand on the Wall Page 21