David Morrell - Creepers

"That you'd get some of the coins for him," Vinnie said.

"Yes. He admired you and Cora and Rick so much, he was certain you wouldn't agree to take the coins. He was afraid about his health and how he'd pay for his heart treatments. He was angry about losing his professorship. You can't imagine how angry. So the deal was, you'd unknowingly help me search the hotel for some clue about what happened to Diane. Then I'd come back the next night and get the coins for the professor. Of course, once I knew how to get in, I also planned to do a lot more searching."

"I know Ronnie kept at least one other woman here," Amanda said.

"What makes you sure?"

"In the dark, in the vault, the first time he locked me in, I touched something on the floor. About a half-inch long and wide. One end was smooth, the other jagged. I didn't want to admit to myself what it was. A broken fingernail."

Rain lashed the building.

Amanda pulled the Windbreaker around her. "You need to understand what it was like. We had candlelight dinners Ronnie made me watch him prepare. Elaborate gourmet menus. The best wine. CDs of Bach or Handel or Brahms playing in the background." Amanda grimaced. "We spent hours reading in the library. Often, he read to me out loud. Philosophy. History. Literary novels. He's especially fond of Proust. In Search of Lost Time. Lost time." Her voice wavered. "He made me discuss what we read. I think that's one of the reasons he kidnapped me-because I worked in a bookstore. We watched movies. Always art movies. Most were foreign, with subtitles. Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Renoir's The Rules of the Game. All about the past. He never let me watch regular television. He never let me have any idea of what was going on in the world or how long I'd been here. With the shutters closed, I didn't have any sense of whether it was day or night. There weren't any clocks. I couldn't tell hours from days. I had no way of calculating weeks. I couldn't depend on my body rhythms to give me a sense of time. For some meals, Ronnie made me eat when I wasn't the least bit hungry. For other meals, he made me wait till I was starving. In the vault, I couldn't tell if I was dozing for a few minutes or sleeping for hours."

"He must have slept, also," Cora said. "How did he stop you from getting away from him?"

"Except for the first time, when I woke in that damned bed, the only place he ever let me sleep was the vault. When I was with him, he never turned his back on me. He kept a metal belt locked to my waist. The belt had a box on it, like the ones by the trapdoors. He said, if I tried to escape, he could blow me in half, even if I was a mile away. He said the charge was shaped to blow inward so that even if he was in the room with me, he wouldn't be injured."

"Where's the belt?" Balenger asked.

Amanda made a futile gesture. "I don't know."

"We've got to find it." His nerves on fire, Balenger pulled out bureau drawers, searching them. He heard Cora going through the closet. Vinnie looked under the bed.

"Nothing," Cora said. "I'll check the medical room."

"And I'll take the exercise room," Balenger said. "Vinnie, you take the-"

"Wait a minute." Vinnie stared upward. He grabbed a post on the bed and used it for support while he stepped up onto the ornate bedspread. He stretched and peered over the canopy's top. "There it is. Got it."

Amanda looked sick when he stepped down with a metal belt that had a box attached to it.

Balenger tugged at the lid, but it wouldn't come off. "Sealed. I can't disarm the…"

"I see him," Tod said.

"What?" Balenger whirled toward the surveillance room.

"The son of a bitch is waving at me on one of the screens."

Balenger charged into the surveillance room. The others followed. On the bottom right monitor, tinted green by a night-vision camera, a tall, thin, plain-faced man waved at them, silently saying either hello or goodbye. Amanda began to weep.

At least, it seemed that he was plain-faced. Hard to be sure when the man's eyes were covered with what Balenger had feared he would have: night-vision goggles. Unlike the ones that dangled around Tod's neck, these were streamlined, almost elegant, the latest high-tech version.

He had a weak chin. His thin nose was a counterpart to his thin lips. The baby-soft look of his skin made the wrinkles on his brow and around his mouth seem painted on. His salt-and-pepper hair was receding. He wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and a conservative striped tie.

"He always dresses that way," Amanda said. "Never takes his coat off. Never loosens his tie."

"Never?" Vinnie asked. "But how did-"

"I recognize him," Balenger said.

"What?"

He turned toward Cora and Vinnie. "The professor described him for us. Remember? A blank-faced, bureaucratic type. In his fifties. No expression."

"The guy in charge of Carlisle's trust?" Vinnie looked startled.

"I spoke with him several times after my wife disappeared. The son of a bitch said Diane spent an hour in his office the day it happened. He showed me her name in his appointment book. Eleven in the morning. After their meeting, he said, he had a lunch appointment, and he had no idea where she went. But he doesn't call himself Ronnie. The name he uses is Walter Harrigan.''

"Not Walter Carlisle?" Cora asked. "So much for his claim that he's Carlisle's son."

"But why does he use different names?" Vinnie asked. "Who is he?"

On the monitor, Ronnie pointed toward something behind him. When he moved, Balenger saw that Ronnie was in the utility room, that the door to the tunnel was now shut. More than shut, Balenger realized.

"Jesus, what's he done to it?" Cora asked.

A metal bar seemed to hang in mid-air in front of the door. No, Balenger thought in dismay. Not in front of the door. On the door.

Ronnie pointed toward something next to it.

"What the hell is that?" Tod said.

A metal cylinder resembled the kind of tank that scuba divers used. The tank was on a cart. A slender hose was attached to the tank. A short pole with a handle was attached to the other end of the hose. A mask with thick glass was propped against the cart.

Balenger felt nauseous.

Vinnie answered, "Welder's tools. God help us, he welded a bar across the door. There's no way out."

Balenger stared down at the metal box in his hands. All the time he watched the monitor, he tugged fiercely at the lid, but the seal held firm. He feared that at any moment Ronnie would press a remote detonator, "Need to get rid of this."

He rushed to the trapdoor in the surveillance room. "Cora, free the bolt!"

Holding the belt with his left hand, he drew his pistol with his right. "Open the trapdoor. Maybe this is a trick. Maybe we're watching a video. Maybe Ronnie's actually waiting under this trapdoor." Balenger aimed. "If he is, I'll blow him to hell. Vinnie, shine your flashlight at the opening. Ready? Cora, do it. Open the trapdoor!"

Cora pulled it up. Vinnie's flashlight blazed into the darkness of another spiral staircase. Balenger reached under the curved hand-rail and dropped the belt and the box. They plummeted, clattering off metal.

Cora slammed the trapdoor shut. While she locked it and Balenger darted back, Tod said, "The bastard's doing something else."

Balenger whirled toward the monitor. There, Ronnie continued to display his neutral smile as he pointed toward something indistinct on a wall to the side.

"What's that on the floor?" Vinnie asked.

"It's moving," Tod said.

"Water from the storm," Cora realized.

Ronnie stepped sideways through the rippling water and reached the object on the wall. It was so far to the side that the camera hardly showed it. The object had a handle.