“Admit…Well, yes sir, there is.” She smiled and looked at Dalton. “We’re sending some footage to New York and LA. I will abide by whatever punishment you want to give me, or resign at your pleasure, if after seeing this you still believe that I’ve faked it.”
Kelly nodded toward the assistant, then closed her eyes. The tape started again, and exactly one minute and eleven seconds later Harris Dalton sat heavily into his chair.
“I’ll be goddamned,” the CEO said from New York.
“Ms. Delaphoy, this is Julie Reilly. Mr. Feuerstein allowed me to sit in on the test tonight. Is what I just witnessed real, or are you bullshitting all of us?”
“I’m not about to sit here and be grilled. If you think I faked the footage, fire me now. And as for you asking me about credibility? This footage should be one more knot in your hanging rope, Ms. Reilly. After all, aren’t you the one who hung Professor Kennedy for not being able to produce one shred of evidence about Summer Place?”
“Well, I—”
“That’s a profound denial, Julie. You’ll have to excuse me now, I believe Mr. Peterson was just about to fire me. I think I’ll take this footage to CNN and fuck the Halloween special.”
“Now, now, let’s all calm down,” Feuerstein said.
“Calm down, hell, sir,” Kelly said. “Keep her on a chain. I have lost two very close friends, at least for the moment, and we have a missing teenage boy, and now the president of entertainment programming is sharpening his teeth so he can sink them into my neck.”
“Now, Kelly, Mr. Peterson is a smart man. He must realize we were all jumping to conclusions. We weren’t given all the information to make a logical decision, were we?”
“No, sir, but—”
“Mr. Peterson, we are going to hold off on any rash decisions until we know what’s happening. I’m sure our young lady here is just anxious about her crew, and I think it would be in bad taste for anyone to act prematurely upon anything.”
Peterson, near to three thousand miles away, kicked the desk drawer closed where he had his foot propped, making his assistant jump.
“Yes, sir,” he said with all the grace he could muster.
“Now, get Kelly our best legal team in case the state police want a pissing contest over this. I also want you, Kelly — and you, Dalton — in my office for lunch the day after tomorrow. We’ll all have a nice chat and get to the bottom of this thing.”
The connection from New York was terminated, but Peterson didn’t bother to wait on the line for further insult to his authority. He also slammed the phone down.
Kelly bolted from the control van and fell to her knees, scraping them on the gravel driveway. Then she heaved and threw up violently onto the ground. After a few minutes, Dalton helped her struggle to her feet.
“You okay?” he asked.
Kelly wiped her mouth once more and looked at the looming visage of Summer Place. She shivered.
“I can’t go back in there tonight, Harris.” That was the realization that had sent her stomach into a fit. She was terrified of going back inside.
“Well, it looks like we have to.”
“We need help with this thing. A lot of it.” Kelly tasted blood in her mouth and realized she had nervously bitten through her lower lip.
Kelly and Harris looked at the glowing house. It looked so welcoming now. Then they turned away, as if they didn’t want Summer Place to know it had succeeded in scaring the hell out of both of them.
FIVE
Detective Jackson waited for Wallace Lindemann on the second floor landing. With the ornate hallway fully illuminated, the detective could see that Lindemann wanted to be anywhere but here — even with the six armed Pennsylvania State Police escorting him.
Jackson looked down at the fallen stationary camera. It looked intact. Then he saw, at the midpoint of the hallway, the fallen stepladder and an open toolbox against the wall. He walked slowly down the hallway, looking the scene over. Reaching up, he felt the cast iron grating that covered the heating vent. When he brought his hand away, there was no dust. Then he knelt down to one knee and touched the hardwood floor between the Persian runner and the wall. He rubbed the old plaster between his fingers and then stood and looked at the grill again.
“Look in that tool box and get me a flathead screwdriver.” He gestured, and one of the troopers handed him the screwdriver. The five troopers and Lindemann watched as Jackson set the stepladder upright, then climbed up and started unscrewing the grill from the wall.
“What are you doing?” Lindemann asked. “You don’t actually believe that guy was pulled into the vent, do you?”
“This grill has been removed in the last few hours, that plaster is pretty fresh, and Eunice isn’t the kind of housekeeper that would skip vacuuming this hallway — not the way she keeps this place,” he said as he removed the last large screw. “Besides, our friend had to go somewhere. We may as well start checking here.”
Lindemann cleared his throat and shifted nervously, but didn’t answer. He didn’t want to be standing here if the lights went out again.
Lieutenant Jackson pulled the heavy grate off the wall and handed it down to one of his men. Then he looked inside and then frowned.
“I hate to ask, but who’s the smallest man we have?”
The five troopers looked from Jackson, who still had his head in the vent, to each other. The smallest of the five grimaced and shook his head and silently mouthed the word fuck.
“I guess I am…sir.” He removed his Smokey the Bear hat and handed it to the trooper standing next to him, who was smiling from ear to ear.
“Okay. Get in there and see what you can see. There’s no dust inside, so someone has been in here recently.” Jackson pulled his head out and climbed down from the ladder.
The small trooper grimaced and then went up the ladder. With one last look back at the others, a few of whom were trying to hide their snickering behind their hands, he pulled himself up and inside. Once in, he clicked on his heavy-duty flashlight and started crawling. When he thought he was far enough away from the opening and prying eyes, he silently and carefully pulled his service weapon from its holster, and then continued down the steel vent, feeling a little better with the weight of his nine millimeter.
Jackson turned to the four remaining troopers. “While we wait for our tunnel rat, let’s start checking these rooms.”
“All of these rooms were locked and I have the only key,” Lindemann said. He looked like he was about to bolt from the hallway — his eyes refused to leave the vent’s opening. To him, it had looked like the trooper had willingly climbed into an open maw of an animal. He didn’t want to be there when that darkened mouth closed.
“Mr. Lindemann, I have a worried mother and a pissed off television crew down there. Now, you say you have the only set of keys?” Jackson asked.
“I do.”
“Well, we happen to have a missing boy. Do you think he may have had access to a set of keys, considering that he’s one of the caretakers?”
Lindemann lowered his head, but didn’t answer.
“Start unlocking doors, Mr. Lindemann. This is a big house and we don’t have that many men to cover it.” He looked at his watch. “Now. Someone may be hurt in this monstrosity, and I would like to find them before they decompose.” The large black man leaned closer to Wallace.
Lindemann produced his keys. Anything to stop the large man from looming over him, making him feel smaller than he actually was.
As the first door was unlocked, Jackson glanced back at the vent for a few moments. He gestured one of the troopers to stand by in the hallway, in case the man in there became uneasy. Regardless of his own outward calm, he knew he wouldn’t want to be left alone inside a steel hamster cage, either.