Donald Harstad: Code 61

Sally stood, and turned to me. “She says that we gotta help Huck. She thinks he took her with him.”

“Did she say Dan or Dan Peale?”

“Just a sec,” said Sally, and leaned over Melissa once more. They were just putting an O 2 mask on her, and just the glimpses of her split lip moving as she tried to talk made me wince. They had a small problem with moving the blood matted hair from her cheeks and mouth on the left, finally using alcohol wipes to get it loose before securing the transparent mask over her face.

Sally straightened up. “Yep. Dan. It's him, for sure.”

“I'll bet he thinks he killed her,” I said. “And I'll bet he gave Huck the same treatment, outside in the hall.”

“I agree,” said Sally.

We were both moving into the hallway as we talked.

In the hall, we met up with Borman, Byng, and the state trooper, who were just getting to the top of the stairs.

“He's hurt one of the girls pretty damned bad,” I said, “and he went after another one. We think”-and I pointed to the dent in the wall-“that's from her head. He kicked in this door. I already checked up on third. Empty.”

“You guys need help?” croaked a voice coming up the stairs.

Lamar. He sounded like he had strep throat.

“What're you doing here?” I asked. “You're sick.”

“Right,” he scratched. “Don't worry about me. Maybe you should see this first,” he said. “They told me to stop at the office for this.” It was almost painful to hear him. He handed me a piece of the ubiquitous dispatch notepaper; used computer sheets with the perfs still attached.

I read the note. Hester had phoned our office, about 12:20 A.M. Told I was busy, she left a brief message. “Hester says to tell you that subject Tat tells her subj DP is mad +++. He thinks subjs at Mansion have been making up lies re him and telling them to her and you. Hester says subj Tat tells that subj Huck has been snitched off. You should call her ASAP in am.”

Written in at the bottom was Hester's cell phone number. I put it in my pocket.

“Okay. Watch out for him,” I said. “I don't know if he's armed this time, but he's sure as hell violent. Hester says he's mad at the people here in the house, and we know he snorts and probably mainlines crystal meth and ecstasy, and he thinks he's immortal. Really,” I added, seeing the look on some of the faces.

“You got anybody but one victim?” said Lamar, scratchy but loud, from the bottom of the stair behind us.

“Not yet, but let's go over it again, just to be sure,” I said.

Where the hell was Huck? The basement?

No. The basement had been checked by the time we got back to the main floor.

“God, Houseman,” said Sally, “Huck's as good as dead.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “He could have killed her right here, but he didn't. Why take her somewhere else? To keep her alive awhile.” I didn't want to think of why.

As far as I could see, the only other route off the cliff, other than stomping down through the woods and the ravine, would be to go down that old elevator shaft we'd found out about.

I explained to Lamar and the rest about the possibility of an elevator shaft down into the mine. I also explained that we didn't know exactly where the shaft was. As I did so, I remembered a conversation I'd had.

“But I know who does,” I said, with a smile. “Our man, Toby.”

As we exited the Mansion, I was surprised to see it was much lighter. Sunrise on a rainy day can sneak up on you.

Toby and Hanna were still in the back of Borman's car, being guarded by a state trooper. Excellent.

As I opened the back door of the idling squad, and motioned him out, Toby said, “Are you gonna beat me again?”

Coming from somebody with a little dried blood on his face, and a clot in one nostril, it sounded worse than it was.

“Probably not,” I said. I shrugged at the trooper. “He hit me first.” Lame. I knew that when I said it. The trooper didn't say a word.

I helped Toby out of the backseat, and stood him up. “Two things. Was Peale in the house when you came out, or had he been there and gone? And I gotta know where that damned elevator shaft is, and I gotta know now.”

“What elev-”

I really got in his face. Well, to within three or four inches, I think. It probably looked like I was going to bite him.

“Dan Peale wants to kill you,” I said, “as soon as he's done with Huck. Got that?”

He blinked, but didn't say anything.

“I think the only way he ain't gonna kill you is if we find him first. Think I'm right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Wonderful. Now, was he in the house, or did you hide and just get up the guts to run when you knew he was gone?”

He kind of hung his head.

“That's what I thought. Do you know how long it was that you hid, before you knew he had left?”

“Maybe ten minutes.”

“Don't fuck with me, Toby!”

“Half an hour!” he said instantly. “Half an hour. For sure.”

“Did he have Huck with him?”

“It sounded like it,” he said softly.

“What do you mean?”

“Something bumped on the stairs. He was dragging something, I think.”

I took a deep breath. Hell, he probably couldn't have stopped Peale anyway. But Huck had tried to help Melissa. He should have tried. I was sick of him, but I needed him. “Let's go to the elevator shaft. Now.”

We did. A whole bunch of us, in fact. Toby, Sally, Lamar, Byng, two troopers, and me. We walked right past the tree that Sally and I had gone to when we tried to close in on Chester, and a little way into the woods, ending up less than a hundred feet from the head of the ravine we'd negotiated only a couple of hours ago. We stopped, and Toby pointed to an old foundation that was cluttered with dead leaves and some decaying branches.

“There. That's it.”

“That?”

“Yeah. The door's in the wall on this side.”

I moved around the foundation. Sure enough, standing on the bluff side of the rock-lined excavation, I could make out an old, wooden door frame, with a half dozen vertical slats and an angled crosspiece forming a door. The wood had faded to gray, and the edges were rotting, but it was a functional door, nonetheless.

I looked at Sally. She and I had just missed it last night.

“How do you get in?” I asked, as I gingerly lowered myself into the wet leaves on the floor.

“Move the rock at the bottom of the door,” he said, from above me.

I looked. There was a scraped path discernible in the leaves. There was a large, limestone block that looked as if it made that track, but it was several feet from the door.

“You mean this one?” I asked, as I bent over and pointed to it.

Toby took two or three steps forward, toward the edge of the foundation, so he could see me and where I was pointing. He stared for a moment. “Oooh, man… ” he said, drawing it out. “Oh boy. It's been opened… He's down in the crypt, sure as hell.” He spun around and would have left then and there, but one of the troopers just reached out one arm and stopped him in his tracks.

I pulled my gun, and with my other hand gingerly reached out and opened the door.

What it revealed was pretty damned unimpressive, at least at first glance. A dark recess, about seven or eight feet into the hillside, one that would be high enough for me to stand in, if I bent a bit. Maybe six feet, or just a bit less. Just an old, wooden floor, with a hole in the middle that was about six feet square. That was it, as far as I could see, and it was quite a disappointment.

“There's nothing here,” I said.

“It's at the bottom,” said Toby.

“What's at the bottom of what?”

“The car. The car's at the bottom of the shaft, just look down the shaft… ”