“That doesn't add up,” I said.
“How are you doing?” said Sally to Melissa. I heard a response, but couldn't make it out. Sally looked up, and said, “She says fine.” She mouthed the word “shock.”
I nodded. “Ask her where Huck is, if you can… ” and pulled my walkie-talkie out again. “Comm, Three?”
“Three?”
“Yeah, how we comin' with the ten-fifty-two?”
“Ambulance is ten-eight, ten-seventy-six your location. ETA less than five.”
“Ten-four.” At least, when the ambulance got to us, we could move Melissa. I was about to ask if we had anybody close to escort them, when I heard a squeak of tires outside. I looked out the window, and saw the Freiberg PD car in the drive. Byng. He'd be able to help the ambulance crew.
It took the ambulance another three minutes to make it up the drive, but it seemed like an hour. I contacted them on my walkie-talkie, and told them we were in the house, and not to come in unescorted. As I looked out the window, I could see two white sheriff's cars, and a black state patrol car around the drive.
I tapped Sally on the shoulder again.
“Yeah?”
“I'm gonna look for the rest of 'em. Our boy has to be here somewhere. He's probably high on meth or ecstasy, or both. Draw your weapon. If Peale comes into the room, if you think you have time, tell him to stop.”
She nodded.
“If you don't think you have time, shoot the fucker. Shoot until your gun is empty. You understand?”
“Yeah, but… ”
“Just do it. You gotta protect her, too,” I said, mo tioning toward Melissa.
My trip down the hall was a little tense. I entered each room in turn, and found nobody home. No evidence of a struggle. Nothing. That left the third floor.
I hustled back down the hall to Sally.
“Sally? It's me!” I said that very deliberately before I stuck my head in the door.
“Okay,” she said. As I looked in, I saw that she had both hands on her pistol. Good.
“I'm going upstairs. Nothing on this floor but us folks.”
She nodded. “Melissa says that Huck tried to help her. She doesn't know where she is.”
I hate going up a stair when I believe there's somebody at the top who wants to kill me. I really, really hate that. But if Huck was alive, odds were that she was up there, too.
I figured I might as well go up in a hurry. I had my gun in my right hand, and tried the door with my left. It opened easily. A bad sign. It should have been locked, I thought, unless Dan Peale had gone up with a key.
I took two deep breaths, and then just ran up the damned stair.
The upper floor turned out to be just as empty as it was the day we searched it. I double checked, even under the bed and in the little slot between the refrigerator and the wall. Empty. So was the back stair leading down to the kitchen. And that door turned out to be locked.
I went back to check Sally and Melissa, and found a real crowd.
An ambulance crew of two women and one man were there, just getting started. We moved the bed away from Melissa while the smaller of the women EMTs wedged herself into the widening space, and began taking vitals. The only sound in the room was the puffing of the blood pressure collar.
“Nobody on three,” I said to Sally. “Back door's locked.”
“Where…?”
“I don't know,” I said.
“Okay,” said an EMT, “cervical collar.”
She was handed one, and she pushed the bed away from the wall another foot. In a few seconds, she looked up, and said, “Backboard.”
We shoved the bed back about five feet; they slipped a backboard against Melissa, tightened the straps, and gently rolled her over onto her back.
She looked like hell, with her left eye swollen out almost as far as her nose, and her left ear had a vertical tear in it that split the upper portion in half. That could have been from her head hitting the wall. That hard, she had to have at least a concussion. There was a lot of blood clotted on her face, her nose looked broken, and her lower lip was split. She opened her right eye, and said something. Sally leaned in, to try to hear over the rasp of opening Velcro and the tearing of bandage packs.
“What?”
Melissa said something again. Sally answered her with, “We will, don't worry, we will.” Melissa spoke again, and I heard the words “Huck,” and “stop.”
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?”