The open door beckoned to him.
He opened it the rest of the way with a gentle nudge of his foot, Sam’s request reminding him that he didn’t want to disturb any evidence unnecessarily, and stepped inside, Sam close at his heels.
The morning sun had yet to rise high enough to crest the trees surrounding the property, making the interior of the house dim and gloomy. Jake was forced to turn on one of the lanterns to see clearly.
The entryway looked undisturbed.
“Wait here a sec,” he said to Sam, and stuck his nose into the rooms on either side of the foyer. Everything looked to be in its place.
Jake didn’t bother going up the stairs directly ahead of him. They led to the second floor, and there was nothing of value up there anyway. Besides, for some strange reason he was certain the intruder hadn’t gone up.
He’d gone down instead.
To the basement.
To the tunnel.
“Come on,” Jake said, and crossed the foyer into the dining room and out through the kitchen to the door that opened onto the cellar steps.
Holding the light high before him, he descended.
Once down below he discovered that his suspicions were correct. The tarp covering the stairs leading deeper into the earth had been pulled aside. A crowbar lay discarded next to it.
Jake moved over to the steps with Sam right behind him. A hand gesture told Sam to extinguish his light, which he did, and the two of them stood there in the darkness.
No lights shone up the stairs from below.
No sound reached their ears.
Jake drew his gun and leaned close to his friend. “Looks like we’re alone, but let’s not take any chances. Keep your voice down and follow me. If we come upon an intruder, I’ll hold him at bay while you go back to the trailer and call for help.”
Sam gripped the shovel in his hands a bit tighter and nodded his agreement.
Turning on their lights and moving carefully so as to make as little noise as possible, the two started down the steps in pursuit of the intruder.
They moved down the length of the tunnel and turned the corner to find a large hole cut in the center of the wall that had previously blocked the way. Jake stopped before the hole, shining his light inside, gazing through it at the scene on the other side.
Sam stepped up to his side and added his light to his friend’s.
After a moment, he lowered the flashlight and raised his camera.
Several shots later he turned to Jake, and asked, “Now can we call the police?”
Jake nodded without saying a word.
On the other side of the wall, the corpse of Kyle Halloran gazed back at them with wide, staring eyes.
7
WILSON
Damon Wilson was on duty in Harrington Falls when the call came in. As sheriff of Algonquin County, he was responsible for the safety of the inhabitants of not only Glendale, but also Harrington Falls and the other similar mountain communities within the county limits. He had two men out sick, so he was covering their shifts himself, patrolling in his Bronco.
“I’ll take it, base. I’m in the vicinity.”
“That’s a roger, Sheriff. See Jake Caruso at the site.”
“Ten-four.”
Damon replaced the microphone and headed for the Stonemoor estate.
Back when he was on the force in Chicago, such calls had been a fairly commonplace occurrence. They were called into abandoned buildings and derelict lots all the time, especially during the summer months when the stench of decomposing corpses would disturb the denizens of even the roughest neighborhoods. The winters weren’t so bad; a body could lie in the dark for weeks without being discovered. He’d seen his fair share; that was certain.
But here in Harrington Falls?He couldn’t remember the last time there had been a violent crime. Glendale was a bit different; a little more modern, more bad apples. Harrington Falls seemed to have missed all of that, nestled as it was in the mountains. The people were quiet folk. They kept to themselves and generally obeyed the law. Aside from the occasional loud drunk or teenage shoplifter, the patrol in Harrington Falls was considered incident-free.
Making the call even more interesting.
As Damon pulled up in front of the house, he saw two men sitting on the top step of the porch, obviously waiting for him.
Jake watched as a large, heavyset man got out of the Bronco. Roughly six-foot two, he had to weigh a good 250. His hair was salt and pepper, right down to his beard and mustache. Both were carefully groomed and short in length. The man was dressed in the brown uniform of the sheriff’s department, with a pistol clearly visible on his belt.
Jake and Sam rose to greet him.
“One of you Jake Caruso?” Damon asked.
Jake said, “I am,” and extended his hand in greeting.
“Damon Wilson, sheriff’s department.” The sheriff shook Sam’s hand also. Turning back to Jake, he asked, “I understand you’ve found a body?”
Jake nodded. “Down in the cellar.”
“Mind telling me what you were doing out here in the first place?”
Jake explained to the sheriff how he came to be there that morning, going back to the events of the day before. The sheriff listened closely, made notes every few minutes, but otherwise left Jake to tell the story without interruption. When Jake was finished, the sheriff turned to Sam and asked him if he could remember any other details.
The sheriff then suggested that Sam wait outside to direct the coroner to the scene, before asking Jake to lead him to the body.
The two climbed the steps to the house, passed through the foyer and the kitchen, and reached the stairway to the basement. The smell of mildew and decay from below reached Damon. For just a moment, he had a vivid picture of bodies lying for days in forgotten Chicago tenements, the memory of another time, another place. He quickly slammed the lid closed on that particular memory before it could escape the Pandora’s box of his mind. Chicago was a long time ago, and Damon definitely wanted to keep it that way.
Jake headed down the steps, and Damon followed.
“Sorry about the stench. When we began renovations, this entire level was flooded. My men pumped out the fetid water the other night, but the smell will probably linger for a while.”
“That’s how you found this tunnel?” Damon asked.
“Yeah. There was a big stone slab in the middle of a small trench dug into the floor. The tunnel was underneath it.”
Jake had left the lanterns behind when he and Sam went to the trailer to call the police. By their illumination Damon could see the trench where the men had been working. When they moved closer, he could see the opening to the passage itself.
Jake stopped and picked up his lantern from where he had left it beside the opening. He nodded at the heavy flashlight the sheriff was carrying. “You’d better turn that on.”
The sheriff was surprised at the tunnel. It appeared to be man-made, carved from solid rock sometime long ago. The effort that went into such an undertaking had to have been incredible.
Why would someone go to all this trouble?he wondered.
He didn’t have much time to think about it, however, since they were rapidly approaching their destination. Ahead, Damon could see the remains of a brick wall that had once blocked the tunnel. Jake stopped a few feet away, allowing Damon to pass him.
Damon stood just outside the chamber and gazed in at the body. He could see that it was that of a white male, in his mid-to-late twenties, lying faceup and partially on his right side. The man’s face was twisted into an expression of horror. One arm was trapped beneath the body, the other hung limply across the base of the statue. In the dim light, Damon could not make out any signs of injury.
“This the way you found him?”
Jake nodded. “I went inside the room and checked his pulse, but I didn’t touch or move anything.”