Smart House (20 page)

Abruptly she stood upright and drew in a breath of air. She was dizzy, her eyes not focusing properly.

“Charlie!” she cried. “Charlie!”

How strange, he was thinking, the way the little spot of light drifted around and did not settle anywhere. He heard her call as if from a long way off and thought that was strange also, and then the light made a track down the wall and his fingers were so far removed that he no longer could use them to pick it up, even if he had wanted to do so. He wanted only to put his head down and rest at the moment. He heard the call again, frantic and shrill, and he roused.

She was tugging at him and he was trying to back out of the elevator shaft, but he was so leaden that each movement was tortured, in slow motion, and the cart was in the way. He finally got out in a tangle with the cart and Constance was pulling him upright. He wobbled and the room tilted, but he took a breath and another. Then they were pulling each other to the stairs, upward. Each step took them into better air; by the time they got to the top, they were both drawing in long shuddering breaths, very frightened and pale.

Constance reached for the doorknob, tried to turn it; nothing happened. She tried again, and then with both hands. Charlie pushed past her and tried.

“We’re locked in,” she whispered. “My God, we’re locked in!”

“
Shhh. Shhh.
” He looked past her. The door was solid, with only the brass knob on this side. No lock. On the other side was a bolt, to keep anyone from opening the door accidentally in case they wanted to purge the air inside. He did not waste time trying to force the door now, but looked back at the room. Stainless steel walls, shelves, bins, a counter, the upended cart and another one at the far wall, the open door of the dumbwaiter, the shaft behind it, and the dumbwaiter itself on the floor above. Even if he knew which pipe was feeding in carbon dioxide, there was no way in here to turn it off again.

“Don’t move,” he said then. “I’m going up in the dumbwaiter and I’ll come around to open the door. The air’s okay near the ceiling here, so just don’t move.”

She did not argue. Her pale eyes were wide and very frightened, and she was the color of snow, right down to her lips. She touched his cheek and closed her eyes for a second, a blessing, transferring all the love a touch could carry, and then he took a long breath and, holding it, started down the stairs. He had not broken anything, he told himself, the mechanism would work okay. He pushed the cart aside, but on second thought dragged it back, then he pushed the down button. He had to close the door first, he realized, cursing himself for an idiot. He closed the door and pushed the down button again and stepped on the cart to keep his head as high in the air as possible. He could not remember that the infernal thing had been so slow before, but now it seemed to creak at dinosaur speed. He exhaled the air in his lungs and took a shallow breath, not certain how good it was here, then certain that he had to breathe it in, no matter good or bad. The dumbwaiter finally came and he pushed the open button, and now he had to abandon his place on the cart, lean down to enter the cage, hold himself in a bent-over position because it was not quite five feet high, and at last it began to ascend in slow motion.

At the top of the stairs Constance had taken off her shoe and was pounding on the door with it. They both knew it was a futile gesture. This room was too well insulated.

He held his breath in the dumbwaiter, certain it was filled with dangerous air. By the time the cage came to a stop, his lungs were afire, his head pounding; he could see veins in his own eyes with each beat. When the door opened, he lurched out, staggering and reeling, and tried to race through the pantry to the door at the end, into the hall. His gait was like that of a drunken man; he crashed into a wall, veered off it, and made his way to the door of the cold-storage room and fumbled with the bolt. Constance fell into his arms when he opened the door.

Chapter 18

There had been times
when Constance had glimpsed an anger in Charlie so intense that it had been frightening. The time that Stan Walinowski’s wife had been beaten severely, so badly that she had lost an eye, Charlie had turned to stone. He and Stan had worked together, and following the beating suffered by Wanda Walinowski both men had worked overtime, weekends, after hours, until one day Charlie had come home with a pinched look, a haunted look in his eyes, and that night he had made love to her passionately. The following day he had insisted that she learn self-defense because, he had said, if anyone ever laid a hand on her, he would kill the son of a bitch. There had been no doubt then, or ever, that he meant exactly that. He and Stan had gone back to regular hours, and no one ever brought up the subject of the vicious attack or the guilty person. And, God help her, Constance thought, neither had she. She had been afraid to.

That afternoon Charlie had turned to stone again, she thought, and instantly corrected herself. Ice. He had turned to ice. Dwight had found them on the steps of the verandah, leaning against each other, simply breathing.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Charlie did not speak, and Constance told him what had happened.

“Jesus! Are you all right?”

At her nod, he turned and hurried off with Howie in tow. He returned a few minutes later. “No prints,” he said in disgust. “Oxygen turned all the way down, carbon dioxide all the way up.”

Charlie did not even look at him.

“When did they all leave the library and television room?” Constance asked.

“Right after I left you two. Mrs. Ramos was making lunch. There didn’t seem much point in keeping them locked up after we found the gun.”

Constance shook her head at him gently. “Of course not. It wasn’t your fault, Dwight. We know that.” What a nice younger brother he would have made, she thought, so concerned, so… She realized with a start that the look on his face was awareness, and it was directed at Charlie. Another shared man thing, she thought distantly. He knew that Charlie had turned to ice and why.

“Why don’t I bring out a tray of sandwiches,” he said, a touch too eagerly. “You haven’t eaten and neither have I.”

“You go ahead,” Constance said. “I want to go up to our room. I need to wash. I feel filthy.”

Charlie was on his feet before she finished, and she knew this would be part of it; he would not leave her alone a second until they were well away from Smart House.

Constance took his hand; it was icy. “Well, it wasn’t really a serious attempt,” she said. “Not with the dumbwaiter as an escape hatch. It must have been meant to frighten us.”

Dwight looked uncomfortable, glanced from her to Charlie and back, and said slowly, “It was serious. It looks like someone tried to jimmy open the dumbwaiter door in the pantry. If he’d managed to do it, the door in the cold-storage room wouldn’t have opened. If Charlie hadn’t already forced that one and held it open it would have worked.”

Charlie’s hand tightened painfully on hers.

Still Dwight hesitated. “Charlie, take it easy, okay? Don’t do anything stupid, old buddy.”

Finally Charlie really looked at him and grinned. “Do something stupid in Smart House? They’d toss me out on my can. Are you bringing the divers back?”

“Yeah. Six-thirty.”

“Good. Let’s go wash up.” He tugged her hand and they went back inside, up to their room.

Constance showered and tried to scrub away the feeling of violation. This was how people said it felt to be burglarized, she thought, scrubbing, scrubbing. And rape victims. She shut her eyes hard and let the steaming water hit her face, her head. Violated. Someone had wanted her dead, had wanted Charlie dead. If either of them had fallen, no doubt that one would be dead, maybe both of them, drowned in the incoming tide of carbon dioxide that would pool near the floor, gradually accumulate to fill the room. She shook her head angrily, determined to stop thinking about it, and saw instead how Charlie had been leaning over, low to the floor, his face in the pool of poison.

He met her at the bathroom door and held her, nuzzling her wet hair. “You’re as shriveled as a raisin,” he said finally, stepping back to examine her. “Okay?”

“About what you’d expect from a raisin. What are you doing?”

Their suitcases were on the beds, one on each, and a few garments had been folded inexpertly and put inside. Other things were in a heap.

“We strike our tent and decamp,” he said and looked ruefully at the mess he had made. “No more sleeping in Smart House. We’re heading for a hotel or motel or something.”

How could his eyes do that, she wondered. At times they seemed to become flat, lusterless, like smooth rocks. “All right,” she said without argument. “I’ll pack, but on one condition. We get something to eat first.”

“Not here.” Bad policy to eat in the house of anyone who was trying to kill you, he thought. “Get some clothes on and we’ll hop in the car and go find a place that knows about steamer clams and beer and civilized things of that sort.” He looked at the papers on the desk. “It’s actually a good idea to get the hell out of here for a while. I’ll take that stuff and we won’t come back until six-thirty.”

They met Dwight in the downstairs hall, and he told them about a restaurant that knew all about clams, gave them directions, and said if they were still there in a couple of hours he’d join them. Five-thirty or a few minutes later.

The clams were exactly right, Charlie announced with satisfaction after the second bucket was emptied. And the booth was exactly right, with a good view of the ocean, and, more important, good lighting. A pleasant-faced middle-aged woman had served them and now returned with coffee and the dessert menu, which was the same menu they had scanned earlier. Charlie asked if anyone cared if they used the table for a spell and she looked surprised and asked why anyone would. And so they had a well-lighted table and coffee and he began to spread out the papers again.

Constance read the ones Charlie already had finished with: the corporate structure, the forensics reports on Gary and Rich, financial forecasts… She wished they had the inventory that Bruce had compiled, and then muttered, “Damn.”

“I agree, but why?”

“Bruce has covered any missing object from his room, hasn’t he? The blue whale that he says is gone.”

“’Fraid so. That inventory gives anyone else an out, too. Suppose a cast-iron sea lion is missing. Our guy would say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Never laid eyes on it.’ Who could prove otherwise?”

“But why go to the trouble of switching things like that? Why not just let the object be from Milton’s room?” She stopped, then said, “Oh, I see. You’re right. It must have been the ashtray. We know Milton used that. It would be missed even if another object wouldn’t be.”

Charlie grinned at her look of annoyance. Food had done wonders for his disposition, and distance from Smart House had helped, he knew. He turned once more to the timetable they had made up for the time of the game, the night of the two first deaths.

She gazed at the sparkling water that rose and fell, rose and fell forever. The trouble was, she thought, anyone could have killed Milton and tidied up afterward, and no one could have killed Gary and Rich. She nodded to herself. That was the problem. Why hadn’t Rich Schoen put up a fight, struggled to save himself? Why had Gary let someone push him into the Jacuzzi without taking the other person in with him, at the very least? Maybe Dwight’s scenario was the only way it could have been done, with two people working together. Or maybe both men had been moved, after all. Milton had been moved, perhaps they had been also. The police work might have been ineptly done, a mistake made. She frowned at the blue Pacific Ocean. No matter how inept, no one would mistake death by drowning for anything else. She muttered another
damn
, under her breath this time, and Charlie’s hand covered hers on the table.

“Let’s take a walk on the beach out there,” he said. “We’ll come back by five-thirty to meet Dwight.” His voice was very low, very quiet; he sounded weary.

“Charlie! You know!”

“Not yet. Not yet. I want to think about it. Let’s walk.”

She knew he did not see anything of the beach as they walked side by side without speaking. He could walk tirelessly in this stage, or play endless games of solitaire, or drive hundreds of miles. What he could not do was sit and do nothing. It was as if he had to give his body a task and turn it loose on it as if that controlling part of his brain might otherwise interfere with his thoughts at these times. That part of his brain needed something to occupy it just to keep it out of the way.

Here, children were playing in the sand, racing back and forth with pails of water, building forts, castles. A few teenagers were in the water, splashing happily, but no one was really swimming. The waves, even though the tide was receding, were too unruly, the water too cold, even though it was August. The air had a fresh ozone smell, good, clean air, and it was pleasantly cool, even though the sun was hot. So many contrasts, contradictions, she thought. Other strollers smiled, nodded, spoke, and she responded, although Charlie was oblivious. Runners overtook them, passed them, leaving deep prints in the wet sand, and she thought about how Sherlock Holmes could tell the height and weight of a person by examining such prints, or know if he had been carrying something, or someone.

They got back to the restaurant only minutes before Dwight arrived, tired, irritable, hungry. They had come back thirsty and already had ordered beers, and now Charlie was sketching rapidly on a napkin as Dwight ordered a sandwich and beer.

“Still nothing?” Constance asked Dwight.

He shook his head. “Oh, there’s something,” he said with great bitterness. “Harry Westerman and his wife have been in touch with their lawyer, who spoke to me and ordered me to get my crew out of there, to let those poor people go home. And so the bloody damn on.”

“Tough,” Charlie muttered without conviction. He finished his sketch and eyed it a moment, then turned it so that Dwight could see.

“Look,” Charlie said, pointing to three rectangles. “This big job here is the main elevator, and next to it is the private elevator, and the last little shaft is for the dumbwaiter. Granddaddy, Poppa, and little John, all side by side.”

He was so pleased with himself, he was intolerable at the moment, Constance thought, glancing from him to Dwight Ericson, whose face was a mask.

“Now,” Charlie went on, “at the bottom here we have the cold-storage room. And in the cold-storage room there is a controlled atmosphere. Fifteen percent oxygen, one percent carbon dioxide, and so on, all appropriately monitored with alarms and exhausts if things get out of hand. But the low oxygen and high carbon dioxide are givens; they don’t trigger alarms. And here,” he said, drawing in some hash marks, “we have leakage from the little-John shaft to the Poppa-elevator shaft, an inch gap at the bottom of the wall. That whole shaft becomes part of the closed system practically.”

Dwight Ericson was shaking his head. “We’ve done the figures, Charlie. It would take too long to build up enough carbon dioxide or exhaust the oxygen in a space that big. No one was missing long enough. And what do you think they did in there, just fold their hands and wait an hour or two to die? They would have raised a ruckus, and you know it. Someone would have heard them pounding on the walls or yelling.”

Serenely Charlie continued. “I did the figures, too. If that cage were hermetically sealed it would take two men about half an hour to die of carbon dioxide poisoning. Drowning in their own waste, so to speak. But they didn’t die of carbon dioxide poisoning, you see. And besides, the cage isn’t hermetically sealed: There is that leakage through the bottom, and ventilation holes in the top. So, let’s say the cage is up here on the second floor when they enter for whatever reason and close the door. The cage is filled with warm air, of course. As soon as they start to descend, the fan comes on and the nice warm air is replaced with cool air from the shaft, and the nice warm air starts to rise, taking its nice oxygen with it. We all felt the same thing, dank, cold, oppressive, but we opened the door and got out. Anyway, by the time the cage gets to the basement level, the air has been changed a few times—good air out, bad air in. Normally that wouldn’t even be noticeable because you open the door and in comes more good air. But this time, let’s say, the door doesn’t open. And the cage comes to rest in a pocket of air that is very bad, very concentrated carbon dioxide, low oxygen. You know about carbon dioxide, pockets of stale air, poisonous air that collects?”

Dwight’s expression had changed. He no longer looked impatient or bored or forbearing. His eyes narrowed and he nodded. “Yeah. Miners, divers, cave explorers, they all know about coming across pockets like that.”

“And firemen,” Charlie added darkly. “You go in a big building in any city and if the sub-subbasements haven’t been used for a spell, you know. Anyway, that’s what would collect in that shaft. Carbon dioxide on the bottom, because it’s heavy, the lighter elements above, all of it bad.”

“Dear God,” Constance said softly. “Those poor men!”

“Right,” Charlie said, almost brusquely. “So there they are. Their own body heat would create an up-draft of air, enough to make the ventilation holes practically useless, a menace in fact, because the heavy carbon dioxide mix would be pulled in at the bottom while the better air escaped out the top. And every minute they are consuming about seven hundred cubic centimeters of oxygen, and they’re producing five to six hundred cubic centimeters of carbon dioxide.” His voice had become very flat now, a machine voice. “You learn things like that so you know what you’re dealing with in fire situations. Are people still alive in pockets of air, breathing? Is the good air exhausted yet?” He stopped abruptly, then went on. “Anyway, by the time Gary and Rich realized they could die, it was probably too late to do anything about it. First, in only a couple of minutes, discomfort, headaches, then a condition that, I’ve been told, and can now attest to, is like almost waking up from a nightmare, knowing you have to move, but you can’t seem to locate your body parts and do it. Five minutes at the most. By then it was too late. Collapse, unconsciousness, it happens fast.”