Dark Lie (9781101607084) (21 page)

In the screaming silence, all the church bells of Appletree began to toll the call to Sunday morning early worship.

FIFTEEN

G
radually a red mist of panic and rage cleared from Sam's eyesight. Blinking, he found himself standing in that selfsame infernal gravel parking lot while several different kinds of cops and fire department volunteers and emergency personnel swarmed all around him. At some point an ambulance had materialized, and a ladder truck, and swerving around the corner that moment came a white van with a bright TV logo painted on its side. Reporters. For all the good they'd do. Sam tried to look down the concrete steps at the green door, but he couldn't see it; the cellar stairwell was a bobbing sea of heads in black fire helmets, yellow hard hats, blue police caps.

Standing there, Sam felt his heart pounding. Felt wetness on his face. Fear. Tears. He tried to lift a hand to clear his eyes.

Couldn't. Something made of cold metal clamped his wrists behind his back.

Despite a bruised and aching feeling throughout his body, Sam only vaguely remembered having been forcibly removed from the stairwell. Evidently they had handcuffed him.

But . . . but handcuffs were for criminals. Their steely grip renewed Sam's panic.

“Hey! Get these damn things off me!” he yelled. If ever in life there was an occasion for swearing, this had to be it. Struggling, wrenching against the handcuffs, Sam felt them skinning his wrists, but they wouldn't let go. He wasn't strong enough. “Somebody get these goddamn things
off
!” he bellowed, but none of the swearwords he knew were strong enough either.

No one paid any attention to him. No one even looked at him. Except for the ones who were running back and forth with camcorders and microphones, they were all running in circles and yelling at one another:
Bring the Jaws of Life! No, everybody get back till the SWAT team gets here. Hell, what do they plan to use, dynamite? Bring a pry bar, get the plywood off one of the windows. Nobody go near any of the windows. Try one of the windows around the other side. Everybody's supposed to get back. We're going in. Not there, you idiot. Too small. Upstairs. Bring the ladder. Get the ladder away from the window. Bring the ladder, Goddamn it, sometime before we all get too much older.
Orders, countermanded orders, revised orders, contradictory orders, total lack of order.

Instinctively, like a trapped animal, Sam tried to move, and found that even with cuffs binding his hands behind his back, he could still walk. Weaving through the chaos around the back of the old brick building, he saw a familiar craggy oldster in a blue uniform. “Bert,” he begged, “get these handcuffs off me.”

But Bert responded only with a stare that passed right through him without any apparent comprehension.

Sam looked around for another blue uniform. Who the heck were all those people on the sidewalk? Most of them wearing their Sunday best, they had been on their way to church, Sam surmised, but were enjoying live entertainment instead. Uniformed police officers were trying to keep them and the news reporters back, giving the parking lot space to more important police officials such as the men in suits. Vaguely Sam recognized the FBI agents from the Phillipses' dining room; now they clustered in a football huddle at the corner of the building. Along with them stood a burly blue back. Sam approached it.

“Excuse me,” he said, his courtesy a plaintive throwback to the way life used to be a day ago, “could you please take these handcuffs off?”

The cop turned, scowling. It was Walker. “What the hell you doing here? I told them to put you on ice!”

“What are you holding him for?” demanded one of the FBI Men in Suits, a tough-looking guy with ice blue eyes.

“Interfering with a police officer in the performance of his—”

“Bullshit. Let him go.”

“You trying to tell me what to do? We been through this before and we're going to keep going through it until you feds get a clue. Read my lips. I Hold Jurisdiction Here.”

“You are holding back from us, is what you are holding. Where's Officer Roman?”

Sam heard this without interest or comprehension. “My wife's in there,” he said, the words coming out of him compulsive, inane. “Her car was here. Her purse is here. I don't know whether that was her screaming. I never heard anybody scream like that.”

“Bert!” Walker roared, turning his back on the FBI. “Get your rear in gear over here! Agent Gerardo wants to talk with you.”

“I don't know whether she's all right,” Sam said.

Walker had already stalked away. Bert appeared not to have heard his boss's order; he stood staring at something that apparently only he could see. Sam gave a gaze of mute appeal to the FBI guys, but they headed toward Bert. His wandering glance caught on a familiar caramel-colored face.

She saw him at the same time. Officer Chappell from Fulcrum. Not in uniform. Out of place here. Didn't seem to know what to do any more than he did. She ran over to him like a frightened kid. “Mr. White! Mr. White, that awful scream, who was it?”

“I don't know.” Because he liked her and felt he could trust her, he added, “I pray it wasn't Dorrie.”

“Did it sound like her?”

“I just don't know. Would you take these handcuffs off me?”

“Handcuffs! What did they cuff you for?”

“For trying to get in, I guess.”

“But somebody's got to get in!”

“I know. Could you take them off?”

“Mr. White, I don't have the authority to remove your handcuffs. Of course I've probably already lost my job. But I don't have the key either.”

Sam barely heard any of what she was saying except the gist. What mattered to him. She couldn't help him.

Time to face it.

Nobody was going to take the handcuffs off.

Sam turned his back even though Sissy Chappell was still speaking to him. He no longer heard her. Like a locked-out puppy trying to get into the house the only way it knows, he headed back toward the rear of the building, toward the place where he'd been as close to Dorrie as he'd gotten yet.

The green door.

The cellar entryway stood empty now. The men in black helmets and yellow hard hats and blue caps had swarmed around to the side of the building where the light had come on.

Sam looked down the concrete steps. With its green paint somewhat scratched now, the metal door still stood there, relentless, inscrutable, impregnable.

Carefully, a bit off-balance with his hands cuffed behind him, Sam descended the steps. It was cold down there. Dank. Shadowed. A chill hell. He stood staring at the door.

Dorrie. Behind it somewhere. Sure as a compass pointing toward the north, he could feel her presence in there.

Maybe alive.

Maybe dead.

The thought made him gulp and bow his head. Tears burned his eyes. He'd never felt more helpless than he did at that moment, with the people who were supposed to help him playing power games, nobody giving a damn about Dorrie. . . . For lack of a friendly shoulder, Sam leaned against the strong, cold metal door.

CLICK.
From inside its metal torso.

The door swung open.

SIXTEEN

B
ert was still trying to connect with things flying in all directions—Blake's name zinging at him like a bullet out of nowhere, a dark green door without a handle, a light springing on, somebody's agonized scream—he was still trying to figure out what devilment was getting milled in the middle of all the chips shooting this way and that when he heard Walker yell his name.

“Bert!”

Actually he heard his name hanging in the air for a moment after it was yelled.

In kind of a delayed reaction, Bert took in the order after it was issued. Oh. Damn. They'd made the connection. The feds wanted to talk with him.

Focusing, then slowly turning his head, Bert saw two things: the FBI agents heading toward him, and Sam White striding across the parking lot, heading toward the steep concrete steps down to the basement and the inscrutable green doors. It took Bert no time at all to decide he preferred Sam's company to that of the FBI. He sure didn't want to answer a lot of nosy questions just because his last name happened to be Roman. However, it took him a moment to get himself moving. His stiff old arms and legs didn't want to work right these days. As quickly as he could, he limped after Sam.

As Bert shambled along, he tried to reason a way out of this mess. The way Bert's mind worked, he couldn't just let the chips fall wherever; he had to try to line them up in some way that made sense. And the way to do that was to start with the facts of the case: The White woman was missing and the girl Juliet Phillips was missing. Sam White said the girl had been abducted by some guy in a van and Dorrie White had followed. Walker said Dorrie White had abducted the girl. He was still saying it and he wanted to go busting into the old library and get both of them. For some reason, though, the FBI had changed its thinking. Now the suits thought there was a dangerous felon, a serial rapist/killer, holding both the woman and the girl in that building. The FBI wanted to set up a command post, establish communications, bring in the sharpshooters and the listening devices and the expert negotiators, and in general hold off until the cavalry arrived.

Bert did not know the identity of this putative serial rapist/killer.

But he did know that Blake Roman had been profiled as one.

And he did know that Sam White had suggested Blake Roman's name to the FBI, and so had that Fulcrum police officer who really should mind her own business.

What he still didn't get was
why
. Why pick on his grandson? What was the connection?

“CANDY GOT LAID HERE,” read the wall.

Okay, so what? Blake had taken advantage of half the girls in town when he was a young buck. In his way, after his parents had died, Blake had become as notorious as they had been. Bert had heard rumors about the kid fooling with girls under the stairs in the school, back in the stacks in the library, under bridges at night, wherever. Candy, Candor, Dorrie, whatever her name was, had been only one of many. So now, close to twenty years later, this Dorrie Birch White character had gone missing, so what? Why drag Blake in?

Well, maybe it was kind of peculiar that Blake kept renewing the writing on the wall. But even so—

Bert broke off his attempt to line up some thoughts in a row, because he saw Sam White descending the basement stairs to the locked door.

Damn strange, a door without a handle. Not the way any normal person would choose to shut out unwelcome company. But it sure had worked. That door wouldn't budge—

Bert blinked. The green door was moving.

Sam White had barely touched it this time, but the green door swung open.

Wide open.

Silent. Inward. Dark.

Bert stood rigid, staring, not likely to yawn again anytime soon. His mind struggled against what he was seeing, but his gut comprehended it completely.

Nobody had been able to open that door before.

But now somebody was in control.

Somebody inside.

Inviting Sam White into a trap.

And it had to be Blake.

Bert knew this instantly, with bone-deep intuitive certainty, because he remembered too clearly: Blake, damn brilliant kid in his freaky way, when he was only ten years old already putting together gadgets for his crippled daddy. Remote control coffeepot, remote control microwave clicker. Remote control switches for fans, lights, heaters. Door openers, door locks.

Blake.

Good son. Clever. Clever son of a bitch.

Bert felt as if his insides had turned to soup. He couldn't move or he'd slop himself, watching Sam White, hands cuffed behind his back, walk into the darkness behind the yawning door.

God. The guy was either incredibly brave or two eggs cracked in his dozen. Or both.

* * *

Sam peered into the basement behind the open door. He saw only shadows.

In those shadows somewhere he would find Dorrie. He felt stark certain of it.

But he didn't know whether he would find her alive.

He walked in slowly, testing each step with his big feet. Couldn't even feel his way with his hands, because they were locked helpless behind his back. Didn't know what he was going to do if he needed to rescue Dorrie from some creep with a gun; tell the guy,
Wait, excuse me, don't shoot, don't hit me until I get close enough to trample you
? Sure. A lot of good he'd do Dorrie by getting himself killed.

Yet Sam considered that he had no alternative but to walk into this shadow hole.

After a few shuffling steps he began to hear someone crying.

Or he thought he did. It was hard to tell when his frightened body insisted on gasping like a guppy out of water. Sam stood still for a minute, held his panicky breath, tried to tune out the pulse yammering in his ears, and listened.

Yes. He could hear it, off to his right. It sounded like—Sam had hardly ever heard Dorrie cry, and never like that. He didn't think it was Dorrie. Too young, too soprano. It sounded like a girl, maybe the missing girl, the Phillips girl, moving around and making a choked-down panicky sobbing sound, as if she was trying not to be heard but she couldn't hold back her whimpering.

Turning toward the sound, Sam realized his eyes were adjusting to the dark and he was beginning to be able to see. That vertical shadow line ahead was a corner, and somewhere beyond it, a yellowish electric light was sending a few rays his way.

Sam sidestepped until his shoulder bumped against the wall; then, using that contact for guidance, he walked forward. Slow steps. Three. Four. Five.

Six. Sam edged around the corner and found himself blinking at a stretch of shabby hallway—shredded carpet, or had somebody dumped garbage? Splotches and blotches of something on the floor. It was hard to see through tears and harsh light and harsher shadow, hard to put the picture together with an exhausted, stricken mind. Hard to comprehend paneled walls with sections missing, lying splintered—or were those sharp things shadows, or parts of the door?

A broken door. An old-fashioned wooden door with a big hole busted right through its rectilinear middle, as if this insane place were a circus and the door was made of tan tissue paper a lion had plunged through.

The light issued through that hole. From behind that door.

It had to be the door to a room.

Where someone was crying.

Sam walked forward to see why.

* * *

I struggled along a dark passageway, so shadowed, so far under so much weight of earth and mortality and transience, a straight and narrow tunnel rife with angel cries and devil shouts and thunder gong noise. Bells, bells, bells. A silver shining presence accompanied me—a crescent of moonlight? An angel, a devil? Or a shaman, a psychopomp, a guide? The journey felt long, long, perhaps beyond my strength. I staggered, I fell, I crawled, I fell farther, I hitched, I crept on my elbows while the companion shaped like a silver fish swam in my blood, while I swam in my own blood toward—nearer, yet too far—the end of the tunnel of travail where light shone, and the name of the light was love.

* * *

In his mind Sam wanted to stop, go back, stay away, never know. But his big blundering feet insisted on carrying him forward.

To the shattered door.

Its breach, a jagged oval, framed the jumble of images within so that he saw it as a grotesque vignette, not something he had to quite believe, not yet. For an instant he just saw objects overlapping in confused juxtaposition:

Table shoved into a corner. Overturned chair. Drips and puddles of red on the floor. Brown coat lying there. No. Brown coat was Dorrie. Covering Dorrie, or Dorrie's body. Girl, teenager, kneeling over Dorrie with thick ribbons of something silvery gray hanging off her hands and feet. Broken glass. Beer cans. Big hunting knife on the floor. Knife same color as metallic ribbons. Weeping girl wrapping and wrapping the silver gray stuff around Dorrie's left wrist. Red mess on Dorrie's arm, her hand, her clothes.

Blood.

Dorrie.

Oh, my God.

At the sound Sam made, the crying girl screamed, snatching the hunting knife from the floor, crouching over Dorrie with it as her stare darted to the door, the invader. Her wild wet eyes fixed on Sam, and for a hallucinatory moment he thought she
was
Dorrie, a disheveled new butterfly Dorrie that had just emerged from the dead brown cocoon Dorrie lying on the floor. The next moment sanity returned, and he recognized her: Yes, it was the missing girl. Juliet Phillips.

“I won't hurt you,” he said, pushing against the door with his shoulder. Something heavy—oh. Sofa. Sam forced the door open a couple feet anyway and edged in. “Is she—is she . . .” With all his hammering heart Sam wanted to rush to Dorrie and help her, hold her, will her to live. But damn the handcuffs, the best he could do was waddle toward her.

Raising the knife, the girl cried, “Who are you? What do you have behind your back?”

Crashing to his knees on the hard floor, Sam said, “Handcuffs.”

“You're a—you're a prisoner?”

Intent on Dorrie, Sam didn't answer. Unable to feel for a pulse with his hands, he did it with his face, mouth to her throat, exploring with his lips like a baby.

Yes. Yes! He found a pulse. He felt her breathing.

“She's alive!” he cried, straightening to face the girl across Dorrie's unconscious body. “She's
alive
,” he informed her earnestly.

She met his gaze, and within an eyeblink she'd decided he was harmless; he saw her face dismiss any fear of him. She let the knife drop to the floor. “But I can't get the
bleeding
stopped,” she wailed, clenching Dorrie's wrist between both her hands. The silver gray ribbon stuff, Sam saw, was duct tape. Juliet had been bandaging Dorrie's wrist with it. But blood flowed from under the tape.

Sam stared at the tape, the blood, just barely comprehending. He blurted, “Who did that to her?”

“Him,”
the girl said with a note of hysteria in her voice. “She cut the tape off me before she fainted, but I don't know where
He
is. He could come back any minute. And she's bleeding to death!”

“No, she's not. She's
not.
” Not with an ambulance parked outside. Reeling like a drunk, the handcuffs throwing him off-balance, Sam struggled to his feet, intending to go yell in Walker's ear until he got through. But once upright, he discovered he could not leave Dorrie's side. Could. Not. A kind of gravitational force bound him to her, stronger than the steel binding his wrists.

So it was up to him to fix her. Practical. Mechanical. “Find something to tie real tight around her arm,” he told the girl.

“A tourniquet! Duh!” With frenzied haste Juliet Phillips grabbed for a shoe box lying nearby, snatched from it something red—thong panties? She tied the fabric, whatever it was, around Dorrie's upper arm, then stuck the knife handle through it, twisting to tighten it.

“Oh, God,” she whispered, eyeing the flow of blood from Dorrie's wrist, “please stop.”

Oh, God,
thought Sam,
what else can I do?
Lurching closer to the broken window, he lifted his head and bellowed, “Help! We need help down here! Send the medics!”

But he couldn't tell whether his words were heard, because the sound of his voice was punctuated by an explosion far stronger than any exclamation.
CRACK
, like the crack of doom, a blast from somewhere close at hand, in the basement, so near that Sam could feel the concussion in the air.

Gunshot.

Hanging on to Dorrie and her makeshift tourniquet, Juliet screamed.