I checked out the vaunted Runco projector that was mounted to the ceiling near the back of the room. Since I didn’t even know what I was looking at, that chore managed to use up no more than another twenty seconds.
The recessed speakers? They were only good for ten. There wasn’t much to admire in a recessed speaker with the sound turned off.
Doyle’s theater was actually rather spartan considering the big bucks that had been invested in its creation. No popcorn maker. No Old West saloon and mahogany bar to belly-up to on the back wall. No Xbox or souped-up Nintendo setup. The fancy Spielberg screen was all that was left for me to examine. I ambled to the front of the theater and gave it a thorough once-over. My impression of the screen was the same the second time as it had been the first: It looked suspiciously like a movie screen.
I returned to my designated recliner. Where is the remote control? I bet myself that Doyle had one of those fancy programmable remotes that operated everything electronic on the whole block, including his neighbors’ toasters and microwave ovens. That would be an interesting find, right? That would capture my attention for at least a few minutes. Maybe there was a hockey game on TV. Sam would let me watch hockey.
I couldn’t find the device. I checked the other recliners for hidden compartments and secret drawers. Didn’t spot a single cubby that was spacious enough to stash a fancy remote control.
I began searching the perimeter of the room for a panel that might disguise a hidden cupboard. I used my elbow to put pressure on the wall every twelve to eighteen inches, suspecting that the room might have the kind of panel that you have to press on to free the latch.
Nothing budged. Most of the wall panels were padded and fabric-covered. Whatever was beneath them felt rock solid.
Where is the remote? What good are all these electronics without a remote control?
I was about to conclude that someone had pilfered the thing during one of the showings of Doyle’s house when I guessed that the storage cabinet I’d been searching for might be secreted behind the Spielberg movie screen. I returned to the front of the room. Careful to use only my fingernails, I pulled on one side of the mahogany molding.
It didn’t budge.
I moved to the other side of the screen and did the same.
That side didn’t move either.
I tried the hidden latch trick and used my elbow to put pressure on the right vertical section of the frame.
The mahogany slid backward half a centimeter and clicked.
Bingo.
I released the pressure and the screen swung forward from a recessed hinge on the opposite side of the frame.
My mouth dropped open.
Well, I thought, this part of the book isn’t fiction.
I pulled myself into the opening behind the screen, used my fingernail to flick on a light switch, and stared, trying to drink in every detail before I was banished from the house, because I knew that it was almost certain that I was about to be banished from the house.
I spent about a minute sitting there-examining, figuring, memorizing-before I hopped back down into the theater, flicked off the light switch, swung the screen back into place, and found Sam in the kitchen. He was engaged in a dialogue with a woman dressed in street clothes. I figured she was a detective or a crime-scene tech. I manufactured some fresh surprise for my voice as I interrupted them. “Excuse me. Something to show you in the theater downstairs, Detective Purdy.”
The woman with Sam gave me a who-the-hell-are-you look. Sam glared at me, too, and seemed prepared to launch into some low-velocity attack on my character either because I’d interrupted something important or because I’d ignored his instructions to stay put downstairs.
Or both. Most likely, both.
“Now,” I said. “It’s important.”
“Give me a minute,” Sam said. He said it not to me, but to the woman in the street clothes.
52
Earlier that evening, back in my office, I had lifted a dozen or so sheets from the top of the stack inside the blue Kinko’s box and placed them in my lap. I’d turned the pages one by one, lingering for a long moment over the handwritten sheet that Bob Brandt had written warning me not to read any further.
Ultimately, I turned that one, too. Considering the transgression I’d committed by arranging the fake-psychotherapy session with Bill Miller that afternoon, breaking my promise to Bob Brandt not to read his manuscript until he gave me permission seemed, by comparison, like a paltry professional sin. Right or wrong, I’d already rationalized that Bob’s apparent disappearance was a sufficiently emergent circumstance to void the previous arrangement, anyway.
I was beginning to feel so adept at rationalization that I was considering running for Congress.
The next sheet in the box was the first page of actual text of Bob’s book, written in that tiny font he preferred.
No one had considered the possibility of a tunnel.
Talk about starting your joke with the punch line.
A tunnel? “No one had considered the possibility of a tunnel.”
Holy moly.
53
Doyle’s excavation was a work of thoughtful engineering.
The length of the subterranean construction wasn’t exactly mind-boggling; the distance between the south side of Doyle’s basement and the north side of the Miller home was only about fifteen feet. And this wasn’t a highway tunnel; the diameter of the mostly round bore ranged from a maximum of about thirty inches a few feet from where it began behind the Spielberg movie screen to as narrow as twenty-four inches or so near the Millers’ house. Parallel tracks of angle iron were embedded in the flat floor of the tunnel all the way from one end to the other. A long string of outdoor holiday lights-white only-were stretched along the entire distance to provide illumination.
The slope of the tunnel-it ran downhill at a steeper angle than I would have expected-was curious to me, but my initial impression was that the slope was deliberate. It appeared that the floor of the tunnel dropped about six or seven feet over its short length. A husky winch was bolted to the outside of Doyle’s foundation wall and a sturdy stretch of conduit connected it to the house’s electrical system. The stout cable from the winch was hooked to one end of an ingenious contraption that was constructed of four sets of skateboard wheels topped with two narrow, interconnected sections of thick plywood, loosely hinged in the middle. The wheels of the makeshift sled fit perfectly into the angle iron tracks that had been set in the tunnel floor.
A flimsy remote-control unit jerry-rigged from a garage-door opener would have allowed Doyle to operate the winch from any location in the tunnel. By climbing prone onto the sled, hanging on, and pressing the remote-control button, Doyle could either slowly extend or retract the cable on the winch, which would either lower the sled farther into the tunnel toward the Millers’ house or pull it back up the slope toward his own house.
Simple. Elegant.
Building the tunnel would have been tedious, no doubt. But if Doyle had managed only six inches of fresh digging a day, he could have completed the excavation in a little over a month. A foot a day and he’d have been done in a fortnight. The dirt that he’d removed from the tunnel was undoubtedly part of the weaving contours and berms of Doyle’s personal backyard water park.
And the snow thing?
Mystery solved.
54
“You should close that door,” I said, after Sam had followed me back downstairs into Doyle’s theater.