Home Repair Is Homicide - Crawlspace Part 23

Wade nodded. "On top of which, he knows the territory, all the isolated hiding places he can hunker down in. He can keep to the sh.o.r.eline, not go too far out on open water, so he can take cover if he hears a boat or a plane. But improvising means it's also likelier that he'll make a mistake." He paused thoughtfully. "There would be that last long open stretch he'd have to cross, heading for Grand Manan. He could make it, though, I guess. Just get lucky. Small boat, it's not as easy to spot from the air as you might think."

But then he shook his head at himself. "But we'll still get him sooner or later," he said. "There's going to be a lot of guys out there all day, and into tonight if need be."

He straightened, impatient now to get going. "If we don't find him downriver, we'll come back up this way, keep on looking until we do."

He didn't suggest she might go along, and she knew better than to do so. Between a bad ankle and her tendency to lose her lunch at the slightest ripple, she wouldn't be an a.s.set.

To put it mildly. "Thanks," she said, meaning it. "Tell the other guys I said so, too, will you?"

He shot her a grin that she knew was meant to help keep her spirits from collapsing completely. "Yeah, well. You just keep your chin up."

She forced an answering smile. But as she heard him go down the stairs, she knew Randy Dodd still held all the cards: three hostages (please, G.o.d, let there still be three, she thought) plus the willingness-possibly even the eagerness-to do very brutal things.

Topped off by a lot of what looked at least to the casual eye like genuine money. So the questions now were (a) what else did Randy Dodd want, and (b) what would he do to get it?

But they were so far unanswerable, she knew, and Wade did, too. Which was why he hadn't promised they would find Sam alive.

Thinking this, she hammered the last nail, then swept up enough stray fluffb.a.l.l.s of insulation material to stuff a mattress.

After that she picked up all the tools and cleaned them, collected up all the empty blue plastic insulation bale wrappers, found a trash bag and filled it with them, and dragged the trash bag downstairs to the cellar.

In this way, what remained of the morning pa.s.sed. At noon, she let Bella force a bowl of soup on her, looked at the bottle of pain pills again, and ignored it again.

No call came to say that Randy Dodd had been captured or that Sam had been found. Jake haunted the house, fixing a wobbly doork.n.o.b in the front parlor and some loose carpet on the stairs.

Later on she got a new pane of gla.s.s from the hardware store and installed it in a cellar window, and oiled the bulkhead door hinges. At two in the afternoon she checked the phone line and found it working. Still no call.

She took the dogs out, forcing herself to let them romp while she threw a Frisbee for them until her arm gave out, once having to retrieve it herself from among the rosebushes over in her neighbor's yard. The curtain twitched there, but as usual no one came out to complain, or even just to chat.

By the time the animals got tired, lolling and panting ahead of her up the porch steps, it was past four in the afternoon and already getting dark.

Bella was in the kitchen pouring kibble into their metal dog dishes. The phone rang. Heart pounding, Jake ran to answer.

By the time she did, whoever was on the other end of it had already begun speaking, the tone one of high, manic glee threaded with malice: "... kill you!" it burbled out at her.

Hot rage coursed through her, demolis.h.i.+ng all her careful defenses. "You do that," she snapped to whoever it was. "You come right on over to the house here, right this minute. And give it your best shot."

Shocked silence greeted this outburst. She could still hear someone breathing. She slammed the phone down.

Then, alone in the tiny alcove with the old gold-medallion wallpaper reflecting the evening light through the dining room windows, she sank to the floor and wept.

CHIP HAHN WOKE FLAT ON HIS BACK IN A PUDDLE OF WATER, gazing up at the ma.s.sive old sentinel pine looming far away, at the top of the pit. Everything hurt. A leaf floated down toward him. He turned his head to watch it landing a few feet away. Strange ...

But then he shot to a sitting position, hot pain knifing at his injured shoulder, as full consciousness returned.

Sam ... where is he? Struggling up, Chip remembered the rest of it: walking with Randy, being shot, going over the pit's edge.

Now he was at the bottom of it and what had been early morning was late afternoon, the sky darkening swiftly through the bare branches overhead and the pit filling with shadows. Getting colder, too ...

Chip s.h.i.+vered, pulling his coat and the life vest beneath it tightly around him. Randy must have thought he killed me.

But he hadn't, somehow. Chip didn't know why. The life vest wouldn't have stopped a bullet. And then ... Sam, he thought again.

The last time Chip saw him, Sam had been lying unconscious near the water's edge where Randy had flung him. Bleeding ... and the tide had been rising.

Had Sam been alive? If he was, then was he still? Had he been able or even conscious enough to drag himself away from that rising tide?

Chip had a sudden very clear mental picture of Sam Tiptree a dozen years earlier, age ten or so, falling into the pond in Central Park. They'd been racing a pair of brand-new, radio-operated model sailboats, laughing and yelling and having a fine time bas.h.i.+ng into each other's remote-controlled vessels, trying every dirty trick in the book to cross the finish line first.

Until Sam slipped on a wet spot, hit his head on a paving stone, and fell in. Chip recalled flinging himself into the murky water, sure he'd never reach Sam in time and that he, Chip, would be responsible for his young friend's death.

Now the same fear made him charge the steep, sandy slope, scramble up it in a frenzy, dig in with his fingers and push with his feet, not caring if his fingernails broke until they bled. Which they did, and he kept climbing anyway, grabbing onto weeds where they grew and onto nothing where they didn't.

At times, it even seemed that he might make it.

But the sand kept slipping, and the stones flew from under his shoes. The weeds, pulled easily out by their dead roots' good-looking handholds, turned out to be deadwood, no more substantial than sawdust.

Finally, just as he was about to fling his hand up over the edge of the pit, the whole side of it cascaded down with him on it, all the way to the bottom, where he landed gasping and weeping in frustrated exhaustion.

Some kind of big bird flew over as he lay there, its cry lonesome and harsh. A breeze rattled the branches. Pulling his shoes off and emptying them, he felt a liquid trickle of weakness go through him, and that was the scariest thing of all.

Because with it came the idea that not only did Randy think he'd killed Chip, but that Randy was right. That Chip would never get out of here, just keep trying and failing until he filled up with weakness and eventually quit.

And that someday, somebody would be digging around down here and find his bones.

Or not.

CAROLYN RATHBONE LAY MOTIONLESS IN THE LITTLE BOAT Chip had stolen, watching the daylight drain out of the sky. Every once in a while a white seagull sailed overhead, crying.

She cried, too, but not on the outside, because she was way too scared to do anything but breathe carefully. She didn't know where Randy was taking her now, but when they got there something bad would happen, she knew that much.

So she just lay there, hoping they wouldn't get to that part for a while yet. Hoping and freezing, because now that the sun was going down it was getting cold again.

Very cold. After leaving Sam and Chip on the island, he'd taken the boat across a narrow channel and into a sheltered cove at first, and for a long time they'd sat there.

Waiting for it to get dark, she supposed. Or dark enough. For what, she didn't want to imagine.

Now in the gathering gloom they were motoring again. Waves thumped the boat, spray splashed in, and fog started thickening all around them once more, just as it had the night before.

Fog tasting of salt. She licked her lips thirstily. She hadn't drunk anything since much earlier, on the big boat.

And that seemed like ages ago, back in another life where there were things to eat and drink and people who didn't want to kill her any minute.

Randy Dodd's dark shape at the stern loomed in silence. The boat's engine roared monotonously. Lulled, she drifted woozily, hearing the girls singing in the engine noise.

Singing and sobbing. A wave slapped the boat's side hard and sloshed over the rail onto her, waking her with a start. Coughing up salt water, she lurched and froze, remembering: Sam, Chip. The sharp, popping sound of a gunshot.

Randy was staring at her. Behind him, dozens of tiny red and white lights bobbed on the dark water.

Boats. They were the running lights of a lot of little boats, she realized with sudden hope. And behind them were the lights of Eastport. The breakwater, the streets full of houses ...

She drew in a deep breath, opened her mouth to scream, then met his dark gaze again.

He was holding the gun. "Lie down. Put that blanket all the way over you. We're going to cut engine, sit here in the dark, and let them go right on by. But if you move or make a sound ..."

Carolyn hesitated. The other boats drew nearer. Their lights did, anyway. But he was right: in the dark, those lights were the only thing visible. So his plan could easily work ...

Everything in her said scream. Scream and scream, until the world ends, until the stars fall out of the sky.

And the girls, all the dead girls ...

They said something, too. We love you, they sang.

But they'd been with her for a long time now. So she knew something important about them. Their darkest secret ...

They loved her, all right. So much that they wanted her with them.

Down there in the dark. But she wasn't dead yet; not like them. Not quite. So she lay down obediently on the deck, pulled the blanket up, and waited for her chance.

Or for the sweet-voiced girls to welcome her home.

CURLED UP IN A BALL AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SAND PIT, CHIP thought about dying. But he just couldn't seem to get his mind wrapped around the idea of actually doing it.

Right off the bat would have been one thing, he figured. But by some accident of fate that he still didn't understand, he wasn't injured enough. No, this was a long-term project, one that even here in the freezing cold would probably take hours.

A s.h.i.+ver went through him, then another. He felt like the meat in a refrigerated sandwich: cold ground, cold sky. A sound of teeth chattering came from somewhere.

After a moment he realized it was his own teeth making that sound. A low, sad laugh came out of him, then: G.o.d, what a mess. All that trying and failing to make something of himself for all those years, and now here he was.

Miserably, he felt around in his coat pocket. The kit he'd taken from Sam back when they were on the boat was still in there, and maybe he could at least build a warming fire with it. He'd noticed some dry branches earlier, fallen from the trees growing at the top of the pit.

Maybe he could use them. The old sentinel pine he'd seen as he'd walked to the pit, especially, had dropped a lot of burnable material. He felt around in the dark, hoping to come upon some of it.

His hand closed on some twigs, on what felt like a sc.r.a.p of old rope-he dropped it fast before realizing it wasn't a snake-then on a larger chunk, an entire pine branch. The dry needles clinging to it might make decent kindling, Chip thought.

Not that it was going to make a difference in the long run. No one would see his fire down here in this hole. But if it made him feel better for a little while, why not?

At least it was something to do. He opened Sam's emergency kit, unwrapped the packet of stick matches inside it, and struck one. Its sudden, bright flare was just about the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and when he touched it to the sticks and pine needles he'd gathered together, they didn't just burn.

They flared, the pine pitch still in the needles sizzling and popping like gasoline. A giddy laugh escaped him as he warmed his hands over the blaze, which small as it was lit up the whole bottom of the pit.

Which was when it hit him: gasoline. If he had some of that, maybe he could signal for help with a bigger fire. Or maybe if he used ...

Pine boughs. The sudden, vivid memory of the sentinel tree looming over the pit's edge came back to him once more. Tall, dead, and ... well, not quite dead. With all those live pine boughs still waving all the way up there at the top, the old tree was probably visible for miles in daylight.

And at night, if it were on fire ... At the thought Chip felt a surge of energy go through him. It made his pain explode back to life, too, as if somebody had just stuck a hot poker through his rib cage. But ...

The h.e.l.l with it. If he didn't do something, pain would soon be the least of his problems. He scrambled to gather more fallen pine boughs before his fire went out, grabbing any twig and stick he could find, especially ones with pine needles still on them.

By the time he had enough of them, he was gasping in agony, a slick of pain-sweat making his clothes stick to him. Sweat and a lot of blood, because now in addition to the pain in his ribs, he could feel a stealthy but steady pulse leaking warmly from his shoulder.

But before he could think too hard about that, he forced his bad arm out of his coat sleeve, letting himself groan aloud. Next he wrapped the coat around the pine boughs he'd collected and tied the sleeves in a tight knot. The boughs stuck bus.h.i.+ly out of the coat's top like a bouquet, just as he'd hoped they would.

A bouquet-or a torch. But another wave of serious weakness washed over him as he thought of this and he sat down hard, very frightened again suddenly. Because maybe this dying business was not quite as time-consuming a project as he'd thought.

Maybe he was going to do it now, or in the next few minutes. The blood-pulse seemed abruptly very convincing, and meanwhile Sam might very well still be down there on the beach.

Maybe even still alive. If the tide hadn't washed him away, if he wasn't already floating ...

So there was no time to waste. Tiredly, Chip got up, began feeling around the slope of the sand pit for the rope he'd seen dangling, back when there was light to see it with. He imagined it must be from where some out-of-work fisherman, long ago reduced to the grim labor of humping sand out of a pit, had built a pulley and hung it from a branch of the sentinel tree, so at least he wouldn't have to haul heavy bags of sand uphill on his back.

Chip tripped over a stone, landed hard on some more of them, flat on his face in the dark, and as he lay there found both ends of the pulley rope by accident.

When one end went down, the other would go up. With both rope ends in his hand, he sat again on the cold wet sand with his brush-filled coat in the crook of one arm, the match kit in his other hand. There were only six matches left. The kit did contain a flint and steel, but in this dampness he doubted he could do anything with them.

So: six matches, rope and pulley, and a bunch of pine boughs with his coat wrapped around them, instead of around himself. He s.h.i.+vered convulsively, gritting his teeth until the spasm had pa.s.sed. Now all he needed was a counterweight, something to make one end of the rope go down so the other would go ...

Up. Chip sighed heavily. All the activity was making blood pulse out of his shoulder thicker and faster; possibly that alone would kill him, especially if he tried climbing the pit's steep, unstable side yet again.

But what the h.e.l.l, he thought. Probably it would kill him anyway. That or the cold. Screw it, he thought, understanding on some deep level that he was thinking a lot less clearly now.

Feeling worse, too. But ... clumsily, he began to work, tying one end of the rope around his branch-stuffed coat. Then he struggled uphill through the s.h.i.+fting sand, gathering the slack in the rope as he went.

Sweating and bleeding, cursing and sometimes weeping, he fell several times and each time had to make up the ground he'd lost doing so. But he managed it. One step at a time. It was yet another of the lousy plat.i.tudes he'd inflicted on Sam, back in the city.

But to his surprise, it actually worked: step by step, he climbed the pit's side. After what felt like hours but was really only about twenty minutes, he reached the top.

Panic had made him fail earlier, he realized. The beliefs, simultaneously held, that he couldn't do it but that he had to. Plus Randy, shooting at him with a gun ...

The memory made Chip giggle, which scared him again quite a lot. It convinced him that he really had lost a lot of blood so he'd better get on with it. Because this next part would be the worst: Going back down into the pit again. Fast- Everything in him said that instead he should find Sam, then stand at the water's edge, yelling for help. But the truth was, n.o.body would hear him. It might make him feel good, or as good as he could feel while freezing and bleeding to death.

But that was all. That, he realized bleakly, was absolutely the only benefit he or Sam would ever get out of it.

Hauling on one end of the rope wouldn't work, either, to make the other end rise. It would have, earlier. But now his hurt shoulder had stiffened up so much, he could hardly move it. So: Climbing up the last few yards out of the pit, he took one end of the rope in both hands, letting the slack fall to the ground by his feet. Above, the rope hung over the pulley wheel; the other end was tied around his pine-brush-filled coat.

So when he went down, the coat would get hauled up to where the pulley wheel was bolted ... .

Hoping the pulley itself wouldn't just crash down on his head, he tied the rope's free end around his waist. His fingers felt thick and unwilling; his body was urging him to lie down.

In a minute, he thought, then wrapped the rope around himself a few more times and knotted it. Then you can rest.

Funny how your hands went on moving even after your mind had let go, he thought. And how after a while being ice cold made you feel warm ...

Oh, just get on with it. He pulled out Sam's emergency fire kit. Another giggle escaped him, but this time he didn't bother worrying about it. He was losing it, and he knew it.

At last he stood at the edge of the pit with his coat in his hands. One end of the rope was around it, the other around his waist. The middle still hung unseen, high above.

Where the pulley was ... where the pine boughs were. The very flammable pine boughs ... like the ones in his coat. A final task remained, but first Chip stood a moment looking down into the pit.