Todd’s phone rang. He didn’t know what to do when he saw who it was, but he knew she wouldn’t just go away.
“Hey,” he said. “Look, honey, I’m really busy.”
“For God’s sake,” Livvie said, entering the conversation at full tilt, a skill of hers. “You’re supposed to be here.”
Todd had no idea what she was talking about. Then he remembered. New clients. Japanese. Due at his house for dinner in…about an hour.
“Christ, I—”
“No, Todd. No. There is no conceivable end to that sentence that is going to work for me. So don’t even finish it. Just come home.”
“I will. I’m…look…”
For a split second, he remembered the Livvie of twenty-five years ago, when life had been brighter and so much more straightforward. He wanted everything that had happened since to have not happened. He wanted to wipe all the slates clean, to do whatever it would take to make Livvie not angry at him all the time, to find inside her the raucous college girl he’d not been able to stop thinking about, who had for a while made the rest of her sex obsolete. Most of all he wanted to tell her what was going on now and ask her to help, for her to make everything all right. In the end that’s what men want most of women, and the thing they can never ask for out loud.
Then he saw it. A pale green VW Beetle, his twenty-first-birthday present to his daughter. It was coming quickly up the street.
“I’ve got to go,” he said.
He closed the phone on whatever his wife was now saying and ran across the road.
The car pulled over just past the building. Todd ran up to it, heart thumping. Rachel was hollow-eyed in the driver’s seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield. The passenger-side window was already rolled down. The girl was sitting there.
“Observe my hand,” she said.
Todd had already seen that the girl’s arm was up against his daughter’s stomach and that something hidden in her sleeve protruded a little past the tips of her fingers. Also that there was a splash of dried blood under Rachel’s nose and a livid bruise on the side of her head.
“Baby, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Rachel said. Her voice was dry, quiet.
“Open the front door,” the girl said. “Go inside, leave it ajar.”
“No. You—”
“Do what she says, Dad,” Rachel said. “Please.”
Todd turned, walked stiffly over to the building. Found a key on his ring that he hadn’t used in six or seven years. Opened the door and went inside, leaving it open behind him. He turned back to watch what happened in the car, wondering if he could make it there in time.
He saw the girl talking to Rachel. Saw his daughter nod her head, slowly. He saw in her face the tiny being he’d held in his arms, the ghost of that long-ago child. And he wondered what, if anything, was left inside Todd Crane, what dead thing unable to comprehend or affect the cramped prison it had built around itself.
The little girl got out of the car, came across the sidewalk and toward the building. Past her shoulder Todd saw his daughter slump forward until her head rested on the steering wheel. His stomach rolled over.
But then he saw Rachel’s head lift again and turn toward him. Her eyes locked with his.
The girl walked straight past him and into the hallway of the building, pulling the door shut behind her.
The sudden darkness made Todd’s eyeballs twitch. He moved back involuntarily, as if he were here not with a child but with someone larger and older and incomparably more dangerous. Which he was, of course. He knew that now. It made no sense, but there was no other way it could be. He realized he should have listened harder to the voice within him that had said it recognized the parting shot of the child who’d been led out of his office by Bianca the previous afternoon. An expression he’d heard a certain man use a long time ago, a man he’d had few dealings with but had instinctively disliked a very great deal.
There was a click. A strong white beam of light from a flashlight illuminated the little girl’s face as she stood there between Todd and the door.
She cocked her head. “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page here, Todd,” she said.
The girl let the long knife slip smoothly out of the sleeve of her nice, expensive coat. “You hearing me?”
Crane felt sick. “Yes, Marcus, I hear you loud and clear.”
She smiled. “Glad you got there in the end.”
chapter
THIRTY-NINE
Five seconds too late, I was all about movement. I threw myself at the door, calling Amy’s name.
“Can’t you open it? Pick the lock?” Fisher had gone straight to the bookcase and started pulling books off the shelves.
“It’s padlocked on the other side.”
Gary leafed through another book, dropped it to the floor. “They’re all just law manuals.”
“It’s a lawyer’s office.”
“Lytton works out of here. Zimmerman. Whatever his name really is.”
I kicked the door, uselessly. “So either they’ve got the sense not to keep anything in an obvious place or maybe there’s just nothing to be found.”
“Jesus, Jack. What does it take?”
The truth was, I wasn’t sure anymore.
“Two armed guards plus your wife,” Fisher said. “Heavy backup for just some lawyer, don’t you think?”
For either a lawyer or an ex–history professor, and I couldn’t begin to understand what Amy had been doing here. My only chance of finding out lay in catching up with her. I headed into the portion of the room that led to the back of the building. The doors in this section were as thick and heavy and locked as the first one.
“Why replace the doors up here?” Gary insisted. “Why make them so tough? What are they protecting?”
“I don’t give a shit, Gary. I have to get to Amy. Anything else is your problem.”
The window at the back had been secured with a sheet of plywood. I wedged my fingers under the bottom and tugged. It didn’t feel like it was going to move easily. I took a step back and slammed my heel into it. After a couple more kicks, it began to splinter.
Fisher continued to pull books down at random, flicking through them, throwing them away. He was getting more and more frustrated.
Finally a crack split across the bottom third of the wood. I gave it one more kick and then took it in my hands and gave a hard yank inward. The bottom pulled away. Fresh, cold air flooded in, along with the sound of traffic from far below. I hooked my fingers under the higher portion. With a couple tugs, it started to come away, revealing a few square feet of open space.
I stuck my head out the gap. It was totally dark now. We were four stories above the parking lot. A handful of overnighted cars, a chain across the entrance. No light in the attendant’s hut. But right in front of me was the fire escape. I hadn’t liked the look of it before. I did now. “We’re out of here,” I said.
Fisher came over to see. “The hell we are.”
“We can get down to the next level.”
“Yeah—or straight to the parking lot, fast.”
I stuck my head out and shouted. There were a couple of people walking along the street at the end of the lot. Neither of them even glanced up. We were too high up, the lot too deep, couldn’t compete against traffic sounds.
I vaulted onto the sill. Reached out and grabbed the sloping ironwork of the escape. Gave it a push. It moved ponderously. Hanging on to the window frame with my left hand, I lowered my right foot onto the level patch of the metalwork. Gradually moved my weight onto the foot on the platform. It made an unreassuring sound. I lifted my other foot off the sill, then slowly lowered that, too.
“We may not have a lot of time on this,” I said. “Be ready to move fast.”
I went down the stairs, watching the wall brackets. All were rusty. A couple were missing. I disturbed a large bird as I reached the platform below. It took off, and I felt the whole structure move. The window
on the next level down was boarded up from the inside.
The floor below was boarded, too, however, and the supports looked even worse down there. So I stayed where I was. The panes in this window were mainly broken, jagged remains of glass studded into the wood frames. I smacked my elbow against the point where the cross-joins met, then again.
The join in the window splintered. I tore off the pieces of frame around it until there was a big enough hole. Went back a couple of steps up the ladder, then swung my foot and kicked. The first impact told me the board was damp and wouldn’t hold for long. A grinding sound said the escape brackets wouldn’t either.
“Get ready!” I shouted. The area of board directly in front of my boot split, breaking inward. I moved down a step, started kicking again. The fire escape above me gave out a loud, grinding sound, and for an instant I felt weightless.
Fisher’s head jerked out of the window above. His face was white. I was now very aware of how far I was above the ground. “Jack…”
“Wait until I get in,” I said. “This isn’t going to take both of us at once.”
I shoved the broken board with my hand, holding the frame to minimize the stress on the brackets. The board started to push away from the wall, and a chunk bent inward, wide enough for me to get my head and an arm in. I knocked away the bigger pieces of glass left around the sill and levered the upper half of my body through.
Couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t get to the flashlight, stuck in my pocket. So I kept shoving against the plywood, pulling myself over the sill until I toppled forward to the floor inside, making ringing contact with an iron radiator under the sill.
I got up quickly and stuck my head back out the hole, yanking more of the board away. “Come on. Now.”
Fisher’s feet emerged from the window above. The escape made a grinding noise again, and this time it was longer, like an old door opening. There was a thunk, too, and a small fragment of metal dropped past my face.
“Shit,” Fisher said. “One of the supports just—”
He took the last three steps in one. I grabbed his hands and started pulling, but he’d given himself a good push with both legs and came through fast enough to knock me over onto my back.
“If we can’t get out of this room, I’m going to kill you,” Fisher said, wiping the blood off his palms.
The flashlight showed a room cluttered with upturned furniture, boxes, and inky shadows, filled up almost to the door. We made our way across quickly, shuffling our feet against obstructions on the floor.
We got to the door and threw our shoulders against it together. Banged them hard and fast and with something approaching panic. In the end I pushed Fisher to one side and forced myself to go at it the right way, ducking low and hitting it where it would make the lock casement splinter fastest. When it started to go, I switched to kicking.
Fisher joined me again, and finally the door blew open and we crashed out onto the landing. We ran down to the second floor, around the landing there.
I was heading straight for the stairs to get down to the next but Fisher grabbed my arm.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
I heard something, too. A sound from below.
I went to the top of the stairs. From there I could make out hard breathing, someone moaning softly.
We had no other way to go. I kept my back to the wall. Fisher followed two steps behind. When I hit the half landing, I shone the light directly below.
There was a man lying on the floor. A dark pool around him said he was bleeding to death. He slowly wrenched his head up as we came down to reach him.
It was Todd Crane.
chapter
FORTY
It was too dark to see, but the stifling air and heavy smells of brick and earth were all too familiar. Madison knew she’d been here before, in dreams and nightmares. Though the man inside kept her plunging forward into the dark, if felt like he was pulling her backward. The darkness didn’t bother Marcus. He knew he had nothing to fear from it. Madison did not want to have him in her head anymore, but it didn’t feel as if she had any choice; if anything, it felt like it was she who was being shoved out. He was increasingly out of control now, too—or she was less able to stop him from doing the kind of thing he’d always wanted. She hadn’t known he was going to stab Rachel’s father—she’d just found herself doing it, before she could do anything to try to stop it. He’d been angry that the woman he wanted to see wasn’t here after all, that this was supposed to be a trap, though Madison believed he’d known this was a possibility all along, that his anger was partly a pose, and this was all just part of the endless game he played with whoever was available.
There were huge amounts of blood all over Madison’s hands and coat, and now she could remember shoving the nice woman in the Scatter Creek restroom, tripping her so she fell and smashed her head against the side of the toilet bowl. Tears were running down her face. She was unaware of them. She was pulled ever forward, as if someone had tied ropes to her arms and legs and was tugging her deeper into the cloud.
Marcus wasn’t interested in the upper part of the building, it seemed. He’d brought her straight down into the basement, opening the door with the second key on the ring from the envelope Madison had carried since Portland. He was muttering things to himself, things she hated to hear in her own voice…horrible, sick things, tasting his own memories on his tongue. Rarely did he use the lighter he’d taken from Rachel, holding it up to get his bearings, before plunging onward into the blackness.
After a couple of minutes, the echoes were different, and Madison realized they’d come into a bigger space. Marcus dragged her onward, not caring if she crashed into things or fell or cut herself.
She stepped on something crackly on the floor, and he paused, her face splitting with his grin, but there was something far more important in this place, something he was desperate to see again and for which this man felt the closest he was ever going to feel to love.
He scrabbled on over piles of chairs and boxes. He flicked the lighter once again, and Madison saw they were in a long, low room now, like a bunker. At the far end was another doorway, blackness beyond. There was a shape to one side of it. It was slumped in a chair.
When Marcus saw this, he caught his/her breath, holding the lighter up above her head until it got so hot that Madison cried out. Then he let it go out and started toward the corner again, like someone going home.
“You have to warn her,” Crane said. His voice was weak.
“Warn who? About what?”
I was squatted next to him, trying to establish where and how he’d been hurt. So far all I could see was blood, and all I could tell was that it was bad.
“Marcus is back.”
“What?” I said.
“Marcus Fox,” Fisher said, misunderstanding me. “The other man on the documents for this building. The one I couldn’t find anything about for the last ten years.”
“You wouldn’t,” Crane said. “He was dead. You’ve got to warn her. Warn Rose.”
My hands froze, and I stared at him. “Rose? How do you know about Rose? Who is she?”
His eyes were unfocused. “Oh, you know Rose,” he said, with affection and bitterness. “Everybody knows…”
His face contorted, and the words became a sharp intake of breath.
“Where did he go? Marcus?”
His face slack, Crane jerked his head to the left.
“In one of those rooms?”
He shook his head. I flicked the flashlight down along the corridor toward the back of the building.
“Into the basement,” Fisher said.
I thought for a second. Amy and the Zimmermans would be long gone by now. There was no point in my running after them. “Gary, go out on the street and get help. Quickly. Get an ambulance.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find the person who did this.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. This
guy’s badly fucked up. He needs an ambulance, and he needs it now.”
Fisher pushed past me and headed along the corridor. “I don’t care. I have to know what’s down there.”
“For God’s sake.”
I started to move back past Todd toward the street door, but his hand reached out and grabbed my leg. “Don’t let him go down there alone,” he said. “He’ll die.”
“Todd, you need a doctor.”
“Go after him,” he insisted. “Please.” His eyes were strong again, for the moment. “Or he will die.”
I hesitated. “Hold your hands over the wound,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
I ran back toward the staircase down into the basement. Fisher was already heading down the steps.
“You’re an asshole,” I said, shining the light so he could see his way into the darkness. He just started descending more quickly. The stairs hit a return halfway down and kept going. There was a full story below-ground, which didn’t make much sense. I knew that there were areas like this in the old town, but here?
We came off the bottom into an open space. There was a door on the left side. Beyond it lay ser vice areas, full of pipes and dampness. There was another door on the right, hanging open. It was three inches thick, with the same reinforcing we’d seen on the top floor. I pointed the flashlight through the gap. A narrow corridor led away into total darkness.
Fisher went through. I followed. The walls on the other side were of old brickwork, the mortar rotted out in parts. I passed a bank of switches and flicked them, but nothing happened.
“Gary, slow down.”
Fisher wasn’t listening. When I caught up with him, I found he’d hit an intersection. The flashlight revealed only about eight feet in any direction. Darkness led three ways. The place smelled of rock and old dust.
“I don’t get it. We must be out under the street by now.”
We heard a sound then, from down one of the corridors. A moan, which abruptly climbed in pitch.
The Intruders Page 33