Good Lord, Deliver Us (24 page)

Scraping sounds ... as if someone was
using a large, metal tool.

Surely, with all that racket going on,
if Z was careful ....

Taking hold of the wiggly doorknob,
turning it, Z eased back on the old door, swinging the heavy
barrier open so slowly that its creaking hinges registered at too
low a volume to alert the greater "noisemaker" in the pit at the
bottom of the stairs.

As the door came back, not only did
the noise below increase, but Z could see light reflecting up the
splintered wood steps, considerably more radiance than the combined
illumination of Z's and the girl's tiny flashlights.

Flicking off his light, motioning to
Jamie to do the same with hers, Z slid his penlight back into his
pocket.

Careful to keep from dragging the tiny
light out again -- or his car keys -- or loose change -- Z
extracted his blackjack.

Motioning Jamie to give him room, sap
in one hand, firecracker pack and punk in the other, Z slipped
through the cellar doorway to take the first, cautious step --
down, hoping this was not the time his knee gave out. (While
immunity to pain was a beneficial result of adrenaline shock, it
also added the danger that his knee might collapse without a shriek
of warning.)

Z took another step down, then another
-- the cellar swallowing him step-by-wary-step, Z continuing his
controlled descent, the light below coming from the right side of
the basement, the ... rooting? ... sounds, making it a certainty
the housebreaker was on that side of the cramped cellar.

The enclosed upper stairs hiding Z
most of the way, he was careful to sit back just before his feet
came into view as the steps broke free of the side
panels.

From his position three-quarters of
the way down, the basement -- what he could see of it -- appeared
to be undisturbed. Decrepit, wooden shelving continued to climb the
walls, the slanted tunnel of cracked concrete steps rising across
the way to the nearly flat, overlapping, barn-wide doors leading
outback.

Not ...
quite
the
same.

Something was different about the
basement.

Z shut his eyes. Tried to
concentrate.

Something different about ... the
smell, the odor somehow more foul ... at the same time, perfumed
with late-night air.

Making no sense.

Z opened his eyes; thought
he knew at least part of the solution to the apparent
contradiction. Bending down a little, he could see
past
the top of the
stairs leading to the backyard,
past
them because the outside doors
had been laid back, the back stairs open to the sky!

Jigsaw puzzle pieces snapped
together.

Someone was in the basement, someone
who'd gotten in -- not through the front door of the house; not
through the nailed-shut back door; but through the cellar doors in
back.

The answer to the "entry problem" was
so simple Z wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.

What had blocked his consideration of
the cellar doors had been the padlock shackled through the hasp out
back. Not a key lock. A combination lock, Z ... intimidated ... by
combination locks. With a key lock, he had a chance. With a
combination lock, the only solution was a lock breaker.

On the other hand, the lock outside
hadn't presented the "basement man" with a problem.

Why? Because the padlock was the
intruder's lock!

An answer posing other
questions,
Z
possessing the necessary "skills" to get the housebreaker to
explain them to him.

But first, Z had to jump the man. ...
Men?

What Z needed was a quick look at
whoever was in the cellar, Z preparing to do that by reaching
behind him to set the firecracker pack-and-punk on a higher step,
making sure the glowing punk-end was over the edge. It wouldn't do
to have the tinder go out as it tried to burn along the cold length
of the thick wood step.

Next, Z put his blackjack in his
pocket.

Having the use of all his "limbs"
again, Z backed up the steps, then reversed his position so he
could crawl down, doggy-style; the idea, to have his head be the
first part of his anatomy to become visible from below. With luck,
the person in the basement -- who appeared to be taking no
precautions whatsoever against discovery -- would not be looking at
the stairs at the precise moment Z's head came into
view.

Following the plan, Z
"walked" his right arm down a step. Then his left arm, his knees
alternating behind him, this kind of "travel" hard on
both
Z's arms and
knees.

Until -- doing a shaky pushup to bob
his head down, then back up -- Z got a look to the
right.

Shifting so he could sit back on a
step high enough so his feet didn't show, Z had no trouble
reconstructing the scene below. In the first place, the light that
was being generated down there came from an old-fashioned kerosene
lantern sitting on the floor. Or maybe it was a modern camping
lamp. In any case, it was the kind of glass-enclosed lantern whose
small flame excites a mesh mantle of luminous material, causing the
lamp to put out a surprising amount of stark, white
light.

A canvas backpack had been
dumped beside the light; both light and carryall at the feet of ...
a man.
One
man, Z
was glad to see.

Put together with Z's initial
impression of the basement, it seemed the man had been pulling the
large pieces of cardboard off the sandy floor to stack them against
an open space in the wall. Nor was it difficult to tell why he'd
taken up the cardboard. He'd done that so he could dig.

Yes, dig.

The man had picked up the old spade
that Z had seen leaning against the wall; was using it to turn over
the dust-dry dirt that comprised the basement's floor.

Z needed another look.

Once again, crawling headlong down the
stairs, Z took a second peek at the man.

Dragging his head back quickly because
Z had to sneeze! Found, to his horror, that with both hands holding
him up, he was helpless even to press a finger against the base of
his nose to stifle the paroxysm.

So there he was. Fighting desperately
to keep from sneezing, closing his eyes to avoid seeing the
slightest ray of sneeze-summoning light.

And there he stayed, delicately
balanced between sneezing and not sneezing
................

Until the urgent need to sneeze had
passed, leaving only a tickle in the end of his nose.

Shakily, Z turned; climbed back up so
he could sit down and rub his nose.

So -- what had Z learned this time?
Primarily, that "cellar man" was young, looking more like an older
teenager than an adult.

Stranger still, between
the time Z had taken his first and second looks, the man had
stopped shoveling to do something
truly
eccentric! He was now on his
knees beside the shallow trough he'd made, dabbing at the dirt with
what looked like a small paintbrush.

Enough of this! For Z to learn
anything useful, he and the man had to have a
heart-to-heart.

Jamie now making whimpering sounds at
the top of the stairs, Z turned to see her motioning for an
explanation of events.

Waving her off, Z turned back to ...
the problem.

Something at the edge of Z's
consciousness was bothering him. Was it the basement's smell again?
If so, it was just a reinforcement of the reaction he'd had before,
Z not liking the smell of this cellar the last time he and Jamie
had come down here.

Time for direct action!

Looking above and behind him, Z found
the firecracker pack, the glowing end of the punk beside it guiding
him right to it, Z reaching back behind his head to pick up both
punk and firecrackers.

Turning, edging down the stairs again,
hunching up his knees to make himself into a ball, Z stopped at the
place the stairs came free from the wall.

There, he fished out his blackjack,
putting it carefully beside him on a step. After that, feeling the
firecracker pack with his fingers until he found the right place, Z
touched the hot spot of the punk to the end of the package's
braided fuse.

A pause ... then a spit of sparks as
the fuse caught, a fuse long enough to provide Z with time to
underhand the firecracker pack beneath the stair partition, Z using
enough force to frisbee the package over the kneeling man and into
the far corner of the cellar.

A space of time
...............

Then, World War II in
miniature!

The harsh echo of firecracker
explosions covering any squeak of stairs. Sap picked up, Z vaulted
down the rest of the way, past the microphone to one side of the
bottom step, to find that the young man below had scrambled to his
feet; was turned away from Z, the man seemingly in epileptic
seizure as he stared at the incredible sight of firecrackers going
off in the far corner.

Z's careful preparation presenting him
with a stationary target, it was easy for him to zap the guy in
just the right spot behind the ear, the man crumpling softly into
the trench he'd been digging, a shallow ditch that looked
suspiciously like ... the outline of a grave!

* * * * *

Z's throat hurt, and the rank basement air
didn't help. On top of that, Z missed his underwear, the seams in
the crotch of his pants chafing him.

At least Z could see into the corners of the
underground room with Jamie's big flashlight, its beam set on
wide.

Standing, Z sighed as he shifted position in
an attempt to find a comfortable spot to lean against on the rough
basement wall. It was going to be another long night.

After zapping the
housebreaker, Z had to talk fast to keep Jamie Stewart from staying
in the cellar for the "awakening." (
Nothing
could have kept her from
coming down after Z made his charge.) What about your reputation as
a teacher, he'd asked? What happens to that if it gets out that you
and a big dumb fuck like Bob Zapolska had spent night after night
together, a story that would certainly break if the trespasser
discovered she was in the house? What if the man who'd broken in
was some kind of drug dealer? Inquiring minds would suspect Jamie
Stewart of being in the house to buy drugs. What would happen to
Jamie Stewart, respected teacher of impressionable young Catholic
girls, if she got fired?

Z doubted that any of
these outcomes was at all likely; which was beside the point. The
point was that he'd been able to convince Jamie that such
things
might
happen; persuade her that, the less she knew about the
break-in, the better. The thing for Jamie to do was bring him her
big flashlight, then let Z -- professional detective that he was --
handle this.
Her
job tomorrow, was to report to Vice Chancellor Ashlock that
illegal entry was responsible for the "ghost" lights, collect her
fee, and get back to her life.

Amazingly, these appeals to "reason" had
worked, after bringing him her regular sized flashlight, Jamie
remembering to pick up the basement mike before going back
upstairs, the noises above him in the little bedroom the result of
Jamie unplugging the grill and coffee pot, folding the sleeping
bag, stripping the blackout cloth from the window, collecting the
cameras and sound equipment, and get everything boxed up to be
carried out to her truck.

At long last, the ghost house case was
coming to an end -- at least, that's what he'd made Jamie
believe.

For his part, Z was still
stuck in the basement, waiting for the kid to wake up, a process
that was taking awhile. Thinking about Sleeping Beauty in the fairy
tale, a kiss from the prince had awakened Beauty from a long, long
sleep. The trouble was that Z had "kissed" this "beauty" a little
too hard, making him sleep longer than Z desired. (Z had to wonder
if Jamie was thinking about
another
fairy tale as she bustled around upstairs. Could
she be thinking that she'd kissed a frog who
didn't
turn into a
prince?)

Z sighed.

The only thing he could do
now, was wait, not that Z had anything
better
to do.

A more positive way to look at this "waiting
game" was that the longer he stayed in the basement, the more he
stuck Jamie Stewart with the crating up. She'd been fond of
pointing out that he was an old man? Fine. Time to let someone
younger do the heavy lifting.

Z sighed again, wrinkling up his face at
having to breathe such disgusting air. As a disciplined detective,
one used to stakeouts, Z could stay down in this hole forever ...
if it wasn't for the smell.

The boy groaned.

After thumping the kid
(and for all the thump
ee's
bulk, that's what he'd turned out to be -- a
kid,) Z had wrestled him out of the boy's, self-dug trench, then
dragged him across the basement floor, the adolescent's heels
making scuff lines in the loose dirt floor from there to
here.