Snakes and Ladders

by Matty Dalrymple

  She wrapped her arms around herself as if she were suddenly cold. “I don’t know if I could do it.”

  He nodded. “I can understand that. So I won’t ask you to promise me you’ll do it. But I will ask you to promise me you’ll think about it. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to do it myself and I haven’t been able to. But I know exactly how to take care of George Millard. If you’ll promise me just to think about doing that for me, then I’m happy to take care of George Millard for you.”

  Her head fell forward and her shoulders slumped, as if she were trying to curl in upon herself. The seconds ticked by, Philip straining his ears for any sound from the house—a door opening, footsteps on the driveway. Finally he heard her voice, barely audible. “How did I get to this point?”

  “How? Because Louise Mortensen and her husband decided that their goals were more important than your happiness and your parents’ or Owen’s lives.”

  Finally she looked up, and her eyes were dry, her mouth pressed in a thin line. “Yes,” she said. “You’re right.”

  “You’ll let me go into the house?”

  “Yes. And I promise I’ll think about Tobe Hanrick.”

  65

  Philip pulled out the Glock. “If I open the back door and an alarm goes off, we’ll run. I’m pretty confident that we could get to the car and away before anyone could catch up with us. We will have blown our plan, but that’s why there’s a Plan B.”

  “What’s Plan B?” asked Lizzy.

  “TBD,” he said with a grin.

  “And what if the alarm doesn’t go off?”

  “I’ll take a look around.” He checked the gun’s magazine. “Don’t text me.”

  “What if it’s an emergency?”

  “I can’t imagine a situation where the information I could get in a text would trump the distraction of having my phone buzzing away in my pocket, even if I could take the time to read it.”

  Lizzy described the layout of the house to Philip, although she couldn’t provide much more detail than he could have guessed.

  “I know I spent over a week there before Uncle Owen rescued me,” she said miserably, “but I was drugged up most of the time. I’m sorry I can’t remember more.”

  “Don’t worry,” replied Philip. He checked his pocket for Pieda’s keyring. “Remember,” he said, “give him a squeeze if he starts to wake up.”

  She nodded.

  He took a step toward the corner of the building, then turned back to her.

  “Are you good at memorizing numbers?”

  “What?”

  “Can you memorize a phone number without writing it down?”

  “I think so,” she said, confused.

  “Okay, I want you to memorize this number.” He gave her the ten digits, then repeated them. “Can you say it back to me?”

  She did.

  “Do it again.”

  She repeated the number.

  “If things do go to hell in a handbasket and you need a new identity—you know, a fake driver’s license, social security card—call that number and tell them Philip Casal asked them to help you.”

  “Casal?”

  “What was the number again?”

  She said it a third time.

  “Don’t forget. And don’t write it down.”

  Philip stepped to the corner of the detached garage and peered around it. He could see no change in the seemingly dormant appearance of the house. He jogged toward the back door.

  He kept low to limit his profile, and kept to the shadows of trees and shrubs where possible to limit his visibility. When he got to the house, he flattened himself against the wall next to the back door, then eased himself over to look through the door’s glass panes. The mudroom just inside was empty. He tried the knob—locked. He got out the keyring, unlocked the door with the first key he tried, and cracked it open.

  No alarm.

  He stepped into the mudroom, then into the kitchen, leading with the Glock. It was deserted. Dimmed under-cabinet lighting provided faint illumination. He could smell the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. He looked around for the coffee maker, intending to see if any warmth in the coffee or carafe indicated that it had been brewed recently, but didn’t see one.

  He crossed the kitchen to a short hallway that led to the dining room. Here the room was dimly lit by a display light over a large oil painting depicting a scene that could well have been the view a hundred years ago from the hill on which the house stood. But he realized why he and Lizzy had not seen any lights from outside—the windows were completely covered by heavy drapes.

  He passed cautiously from room to room, each one looking ready for an Architectural Digest photo shoot: not a chair out of place, not a stray magazine or electric bill on a counter. And each room was illuminated by some faint light, which was screened from the outside by drapes of the same heavy material. If Mortensen and Millard were in the house and knew he and Lizzy were outside, why would they have left lights on as a convenience to an intruder?

  Since he hadn’t wanted to handle the gun wearing gloves, he pulled his sleeve down over his fingers to open the few closed doors. They revealed a coat closet, a powder room, stairs to a darkened basement.

  He finished his circuit of the first floor back in the kitchen. He noticed a door he had overlooked when he entered, and cracked it open. Inside was a pantry. The shelves on one side were stocked with standard pantry fare: canned food, jars of spices, spare serving pieces. The shelves on the other side held darkened monitors. No doubt the security system.

  He clicked the power buttons on a few of them, but they remained dark. Perhaps Mortensen and Millard were not only not in the house at the moment, but not planning on coming back. Had they fled, sensing the authorities closing in, and shut down the security system when they left? Did they know that Pieda would be returning to the house and didn’t want him to have access to the monitors? Did it indicate a rift among them?

  He climbed the stairs to the second floor, testing each step for a squeak before putting his full weight on it, although this didn’t strike him as the type of house that would be prone to anything as mundane as squeaky floors. Unlike the first floor, the upstairs windows weren’t dressed with the heavy drapes, and here the illumination was provided by the moonlight seeping in from the uncovered windows. Other than that, the rooms upstairs were like the ones downstairs: silent and devoid of even that movement of air that suggests a human presence.

  If the house was as deserted as it seemed, it would be foolish to pass up the opportunity to find more evidence of what Mortensen and Gerard Bonnay had been up to. He descended the stairs to the first floor and made his way to the room that he assumed to be Mortensen’s home office. Just in case the house was not as deserted as it seemed, he locked the door behind him.

  He went first to the desk, which held only a dimly glowing desk lamp and an empty wooden inbox. He tried the desk drawers. The top drawer slid open to reveal neatly arranged pens, paper clips, tape, and rubber bands. The larger side drawer was locked.

  Philip noticed a doorway leading off the study and crossed to it. Behind it was a small alcove, and even this space contained a window that was covered by the heavy drapes. The light from the study provided little illumination here. He got out his penlight and clicked it on. The alcove contained a table on top of which was what looked like a computer printer, and copier paper boxes sat on the floor to the left and right of the table. Holding the penlight between his teeth and the Glock in his right hand, he pulled a sheet out of one of the boxes.

  It looked like a medical record—a computer printout, but heavily annotated by hand. Phrases popped out at him: adverse reaction … non-viable fetus. He put that sheet back on the pile and picked up another one: signs of telepathic ability accompanied by slight mental retardation. He glanced through a few more of the sheets, many containing equally chilling commentary.

  He had already developed an aversion to Louise Mortensen and George Millard base
d on what they had done to Lizzy; this evidence of the pain they had caused so many others cemented his loathing.

  If he knew for sure the house was deserted, he would have taken one of the boxes of papers with him, but a sample would have to do. He picked up the first sheet, folded it roughly, and tucked it into his inside jacket pocket, then returned to the desk in the main room.

  He had hoped that the locked side drawer would be equipped with the standard flimsy hardware found on most office furniture—a mechanism intended to thwart curious family members or a nosy maid—which could be easily jimmied with his pocket knife, but the lock was substantial. He wished lock picking had been a skill he had learned in his dissolute youth.

  He decided that he wasn’t particularly concerned about Mortensen or Millard knowing someone had broken into the desk—not only were they not likely to report this break-in, but he figured that one way or the other, Millard wasn’t going to be around long enough for it to matter.

  He briefly considered firing the Glock at the lock assembly, but didn’t want to risk getting caught by a ricochet. He scanned the room for other options and spotted a possibility.

  On one of the bookshelves was a display of marble spheres of various sizes. He hefted the largest one. It was about the size of a small grapefruit and had to weigh fifteen pounds. He carried it back to the desk and crouched in front of the drawer, shining the penlight on the lock. He was pleased to see that although the lock itself was substantial, it had been retrofitted into wood that by his estimation was at least a hundred years old. He didn’t fancy bashing his way through the drawer front itself, but he might not have to.

  He returned to the display and picked up one of the smaller marble spheres, this one about the size of a baseball—big enough to keep his hand out of harm’s way, but small enough to concentrate the force of a blow on an area the size of the lock. Returning to the desk, he put down the Glock, positioned the smaller sphere over the lock, drew back the larger sphere, and, hoping he didn’t misjudge his trajectory, swung the larger sphere into it. With a dull thunk that barely reflected the tremendous jolt that traveled up his arm, he felt the lock give a fraction of an inch. After listening for a full minute for any attention that his activity might have triggered, he drew back the larger sphere again and brought it down on the smaller one. The wood around the lock splintered as the lock was driven into the drawer. After another minute of listening, he brought the larger sphere down for a third time.

  The lock had now sunk far enough into the drawer front that the smaller sphere no longer concentrated the force of the blow on the lock mechanism. Philip went back to the bookshelf and retrieved the smallest sphere, this one no bigger than a cherry tomato. Back at the desk, he used the tape from the top drawer to secure the sphere over the lock. He swung the larger sphere one more time. The wood gave a last splintering crack and the drawer rolled open as the wood holding the interior mechanism gave way.

  The drawer held a rack from which files hung. Philip pulled out one labeled Gerard - Cards and flipped it open. Inside the folder was a fat stack of greeting cards in envelopes, the flaps neatly slit open. He flipped through them quickly. On each envelope was written For Louise in what looked like a masculine hand, and in the upper right corner, in a different hand, a date. The earliest was dated two dozen years before. He returned the file to the drawer.

  Behind it were other Gerard folders: Gerard - Media, Gerard - Awards & Recognition. It looked like the woman who was willing to cause a child to be born with slight mental retardation—or worse—in pursuit of her scientific goals had a sentimental streak when it came to her husband.

  The next file was labeled Alvarez and contained employment documents. Evidently Mortensen’s housekeeper.

  He glanced through several more files—Louise’s will, her birth certificate, the deed to the house—then came to several files labeled only with numbers.

  648-854-777. He flipped the file open. It was a medical record for Antonia Pieda and Antonia’s baby, Mitchell Robert. The file was large, but stapled to the front of the folder was a handwritten page—evidently a summary of the contents of the file. He pulled off the summary sheet, folded it, and tucked it into his inside jacket pocket.

  There were several other files in the drawer with numbered labels. The next two contained names he didn’t recognize, but the third one—185-701-411—did. Vivantem patient Charlotte Ballard and her baby, Elizabeth Marie. He pulled off the summary sheet and put it with the others in his inside pocket and zipped the pocket shut.

  The last file in the drawer was labeled Millard. It held several sheets of yellow legal-sized paper containing columns of handwritten notes: dates followed by two-letter codes and locations: KK Palo Alto, AC Baltimore. The first date was fifteen years earlier. Some of the entries were in the same handwriting as the For Louise inscriptions on the greeting cards—Gerard Bonnay’s, he assumed—and some in the same handwriting as the dates on the envelopes—probably Mortensen’s. Philip scanned the list. A final column on each line contained what looked like a dollar amount. Assuming it indicated payments made by Bonnay and Mortensen to George Millard, the man was likely a millionaire with a tax-free income.

  An entry on the last sheet read 12/5 PB Philadelphia in Louise Mortensen’s hand. The last entry read 3/6 PC Sedona. His jaw tightened. He glanced at the last column—George Millard had made more for his few days in Sedona harassing Philip than Philip made in a month. He wondered ruefully if Millard had paid Lorna out of that money, or if Louise had reimbursed him for that expense.

  As he scanned the other entries on the sheet, he became aware that something had changed in the house. He grabbed the gun from the desk and brought it up. There was a faint sound that hadn’t been there before.

  He stuffed the legal sheet into his outside jacket pocket, then walked carefully to the closed door to the hallway and pressed his ear against it. After a few moments, the hum resolved itself into voices—one male and one female, if he had to guess—coming from within the house but at a distance.

  He unlocked the door, opened it slowly, and peered into the hallway. The sound of the voices came to him slightly more clearly, but not clearly enough for him to hear what they were saying. He stepped into the hallway and turned his head back and forth to identify the direction from which the voices were coming. Toward the back of the house. He crept down the hallway.

  The door to the basement stood ajar. Philip was certain it had been closed when he made his pass through the first floor, and that he had reclosed it after checking it. He stepped to the side of the door and listened. The voices were clearly coming from the lower level—a male voice, the tone pitched up in a question, the female voice responding, then the man laughing politely.

  Was it possible that Mortensen and Millard were in the basement, and were unaware that he was in the house? It was hard to imagine that they could have missed the noise from Louise’s office, but if they wanted to take him by surprise, wouldn’t they have been careful enough to close the basement door behind them?

  He eased the door open and stepped into the stairwell, then closed it silently behind him so he wouldn’t be backlit by the dim light from the hallway. A light in the basement was on—he had no doubt it had been dark when he had checked earlier. He descended step by careful step, straining to hear what the voices were saying.

  The male voice: “… incredible …”

  The female voice spoke what sounded like an acknowledgement of a compliment.

  Philip reached the bottom of the steps. A carpeted hallway led away from the stairs and a dim light spilled from the second doorway, fading and brightening slightly as if something or someone was moving between the door and the light source.

  The voices became clearer as he neared the door, the Glock drawn.

  “… hard to overstate the impact …” said the man.

  He stood next to the door, his back to the wall. If it really was Mortensen and Millard, he’d shoot Millard first, then hold Morte
nsen at gunpoint unless she had a weapon. What he did after that would depend on how cooperative she was.

  If it wasn’t Mortensen and Millard, there was a man and a woman who were in for quite a surprise.

  “It must have taken great commitment—” said the male voice.

  He spun into the room, the gun held in front of him.

  “—to pursue your theory in the face of your colleagues’ skepticism,” finished the man, who was seated at the front of the room, a clipboard on his lap.

  “Ah, if only you knew,” replied Louise Mortensen.

  66

  Lizzy’s senses were strained to harp-string tautness, her eyes searching for any sign of light or movement from the house, her ears tuned to any sound from Mitchell Pieda. She cupped her hand around her phone and hit the power button to display the time: nine eighteen. Philip had been inside for almost fifteen minutes. She wished she had thought to ask him how long he expected to be in the house. She itched to send him a text and longed for him to send one to her: Still okay.

  Another minute ticked by, and she could no longer contain her impatience, or her concern. She stepped out from behind the detached garage and trotted toward the house.

  Lizzy stepped cautiously through the door by which Philip had entered the house and tiptoed across the mudroom and into the kitchen. When Louise Mortensen and Gerard Bonnay had held her hostage in the house the previous year, she had never been in the kitchen—meals had always been brought to her in the bedroom where she had spent most of the time in a drugged stupor.

  There was a closed door across the kitchen from the mudroom—she had a vague idea that it might lead to the basement. She tiptoed across the kitchen and pressed her ear against the door. She didn’t hear anything, but she was also beginning to doubt her memory that it led to the basement. Perhaps it was just a closet, which would be a handy place to hide while she decided what to do next.