“Let me call someone,” Charlie said. “I still have two bars on my phone.”
“No,” I insisted. “Who are you going to call? The cops here are as corrupt as they come. We know that for sure now. You call them and they’ll finish us off for good. We’ve got to find Paul. Then we’ll contact Lauren and get the press here.” I looked down at Charlie. “And what about you? Are you alright?” I put my hand on the back of his neck. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“Nah. That creep didn’t know what hit him. My only problem was that I’m left-handed, but I was on the right side of the wall carpet, which meant I had to shoot around the carpet with my right.” Charlie looked over at the body on the floor. “Not bad, considering. I think I hit him two or three times.”
“Why didn’t you just shoot through the carpet with your left?”
“I didn’t want to risk hitting you.”
“But I was a dead man anyway. You would have saved yourself.”
“Save myself? There’s no saving myself and leaving you and Paul behind. I’m a marine—or did you forget that?”
Gathering what little strength I had, I took one hand off the arm of the chair holding me up, placed it on Charlie’s shoulder, and squeezed. “Can’t ever be sorry I brought you along, now can I?” Despite the unrelenting bass drum pounding in my head, I smiled a weak but sincere ‘thank you’ at my loyal friend, then thought again. “But why do I think he got off a round?”
“Because he did. And I may have been wrong before. He might’ve caught you in the left ear. You’re bleeding pretty bad there.”
Charlie then ripped the sleeve off his shirt and handed it to me. “Wrap this around your head before you pass out.”
I sat down in the chair that had been holding me up and did just that. Grunting in pain when I pulled the fabric tight, I noticed for the first time that my ears were ringing from the gun blasts.
Charlie grabbed my arm. “I hear something,” He whispered. “Do you hear it?”
“I don’t hear a thing,” I said.
Charlie pointed toward the cave passageway Paul was dragged into.
By using the chairs in the room for balance, I made it past the monster on the floor to the foot of the open door. I then stepped up and into a passageway carved out of cave walls that were just like the basement of the sewing shop. It was barely large enough to walk through, and it came to an end about forty feet away.
Soot coated the tips of my fingers as I reached out to the walls for balance, while Charlie followed behind me—walking on his thighs and using his hands and arms for support. “I think my head is clearing a bit more,” I said as I stopped to catch my breath under a cage light that dimly lit up the walls of black rock.
“You must have lost your sense of smell,” Charlie said. “This putrid odor is friggin’ nauseating.”
“If I had, it’s coming back.” I winced and turned to check on him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine,” he said sharply. “You’re the bloody mess, not me. Any sign of Paul?”
As I looked down the short tunnel, Paul was nowhere to be seen. Refusing to believe that he was badly injured or dead, I called out his name.
I got no response.
“There appears to be a sinkhole at the end of this path,” I said with an odd strain of hope in my voice––like the sound of false optimism that precedes a grim discovery.
“Just be careful,” Charlie insisted. “I’m right behind you, and I reloaded.”
The farther we moved into the passageway, the stronger the stench became and the warmer it got. When we could go no farther—a cave wall in front of us—I saw why.
Built into a side wall of black stone and rock was an old cast iron furnace, and although I didn’t see a single lit ember inside it, it was still burning hot. Across from the furnace door and bordering the other side of the passageway was a short wall of black stone about two feet high and five feet long. Searching for Paul and the source of the awful smell—while praying the two were not related—I looked over the wall.
In the bleak light, I saw glimmers of surface water. As I strained to get a better look—sweat and blood dripping from my head—a smell so foul that it was nearly asphyxiating, floated up and into the air.
Charlie handed me his flashlight so I could get a better look.
On the surface of a well about twenty feet down, face up and motionless, was Paul.
A rope ladder bolted into the floor was crumpled at my feet. I quickly tossed it over the wall, then handed Charlie back his flashlight. “Shine it down,” I said.
Charlie hesitated. “Are you sure you’re up for this?”
Seeing Paul was like a shot of adrenaline and one monster shock to my senses. Alive or dead, I wasn’t leaving him. “I’m fine,” I said.
The rope rungs were thick, and the ladder was secure—but with each step down, my initial steadiness wavered and the ladder shook in response. As I descended closer to the surface, I noticed that the lower rungs were submerged, but for better or worse, Paul wasn’t. And despite the ladder shaking feverishly, I saw why.
He was floating.
I stepped down two more rungs after my feet touched water. Immersed up to my knees, I pulled Paul toward me. He was unconscious but breathing, and moved rather easily across the surface. I called out his name and smacked his face like Charlie had smacked mine. “He’s alive,” I yelled. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”
“Is he responding to you at all?” Charlie asked.
“No!” I shouted back.
“How then do you figure we do that?” The beam from Charlie’s flashlight flickered off the surface water as his hand shook with every word spoken.
“I’m going to hook him on to the rungs, and we’ll just have to pull him up somehow.”
“I can do that,” Charlie said proudly, and I immediately recalled his rock-solid arms.
“We’ll do it together,” I said.
With one hand on the rope ladder, I pulled Paul closer with the other. It was then that I realized that he wasn’t floating at all. There was something holding him up. Concentrating hard on saving him, I secured one foot on a submerged rung and rested the other on what felt like a bag of sand. Since Paul was too heavy to lift, I had to drop further down into the water and whatever the source of the awful smell was, I would be chest high in it.
“Fuck it,” I said, convinced that if I left Paul in this disgusting well a second longer, he would drown.
Whether it was my tugging at Paul in the water, or my body stirring the contents of the well every time I moved, whatever was holding him up was beginning to reveal itself—and to make matters worse, Charlie’s flashlight was starting to dim.
Wasting no time and without too much difficulty, I managed to hook Paul’s arms over the lowest ladder rung above the water line, and like a scarecrow on a clothesline, he hung on. As far as I could tell, he was unconscious and unaware of my efforts to save him, but he was breathing, nonetheless.
I yelled up to Charlie. “I can hardly see. Can you turn on your cellphone’s light also?”
Charlie complied and before he could say, “Nick, don’t look down,” I did—unaware that the memory of what I would see would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Floating in the well water—were the bloated and decomposed bodies of dead little boys.
Charlie had seen the bodies before I did, but he kept it to himself. “Not to freak you out,” he later told me.
It freaked me out anyway and I quickly climbed over Paul, up the ladder, and out of the well faster than I ever thought possible. Soaking wet and smelling like death, I fell to my knees and puked my guts out. I then crawled over to Charlie and tried single-handedly to pull Paul up, but quickly gave up. Adrenaline rush or not, I was just too tired and weak.
“I can do it,” Charlie offered. “Bu
t you’ve got to anchor me.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“Just sit down behind me and brace your legs against the retaining wall. Then wrap your arms around me and hold on tight.”
I didn’t think Charlie’s plan would work, but it was all we had. I just wasn’t sure that I would be able to hold him. And I didn’t believe he was strong enough to pull Paul out of that well by himself.
I was wrong on both counts.
One-by-one, he grabbed each rung of rope and pulled. Three rungs later, he turned to me, my head over his shoulder, my arms locked around him. “Just tell me how the hell we’re going to get him out of here without calling someone?” he asked.
I was in no mood for questions and told him so. “My head is throbbing, and after what I saw today, the world will never look the same to me again. So just keep pulling up on that fucking ladder.”
“Alright, already. Cool your jets. I got this.” Another ten rungs and Paul’s head rose to the top of the well. “Just don’t let go of me,” Charlie howled. “I’ll grab him. You just hold on.”
“Just hurry,” I pleaded breathlessly. “My legs are about to give way.”
In a matter of seconds, Paul’s body was lying on the ground in front of us. Miraculously, he appeared to be regaining consciousness. His left eye was nearly swollen shut and the back of his head had two masses on it the size of golf balls.
I whispered in Charlie’s ear. “We’ve got to get our guns and get the hell out of here.”
“No shit! And exactly how do you suppose we do that all by ourselves?” he asked. “We’re never going to get Paul down that tunnel and up that ladder…not to mention that basement’s long flight of stairs.”
“Just wait here. There’s got to be another way out.” I got up and returned to the so-called waiting room.
The monster was lying in the middle of three large puddles of blood. I picked Paul’s gun up off the floor, held it firmly in my hand, and went into the adjoining room with the two twin beds and the Hitchcock posters on the walls. Before the lights went out and I got clobbered—not once, but twice, on the head—I remembered seeing a set of stairs.
In the far corner of the room and behind a large artificial plant, stood a walnut-stained staircase with a baluster rail that led to a hatch in the ceiling. I immediately went up the steps and pushed open the hatch to a brightly lit living room inside of what appeared to be a log cabin decorated like something out of a page from Country Living Magazine. An assortment of deer and moose heads was mounted on the walls. Stuffed chairs and a couch filled with pillows encircled a bearskin rug and a fireplace. Off to the side were a kitchen, a small dining room, and a bar stocked from floor to ceiling. I climbed out of the hatch. With Paul’s gun in my hand, I walked over to the nearest window and peeked through the curtains. It was pitch black outside, while assorted stained-glass lamps lit up the rooms inside. And though it was apparent to me that no one was in residence, there was no sign of a hurried departure, either.
I checked the rear of the cabin and found a large nondescript bathroom, and a bedroom that was decorated in an ‘early American’ style. There was even a large steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, circa 1940s. Concerned about Paul, and getting us the hell out of there, I had seen enough. I stepped quickly down the hatch and across the underground room with the twin beds and posters on the walls. Once back in the so-called waiting room, I knelt down, and picked up my own gun. It was lying on the floor within a few feet of the killer’s body. I snapped it back into the holster at my side. Fearing that in my condition I would not be able to crouch back down and up a second time, I turned, avoided the puddles of blood on the floor, and crawled over to the killer’s dead body. After rummaging hastily through his clothes, I found cash, credit cards, a driver’s license, and a car key—all of which I stuffed into my back pockets.
When I returned to the cave passageway, Paul was lying on the ground next to Charlie. Sounding more lucid than before, he asked for his gun, and no sooner did I take it out of my pocket than he grabbed it from my hand and snapped it back into its holster. He was still quite dazed and weak. From the looks of it, he had broken his ankle and maybe even his leg in the fall. I told him we had to get the hell out of there. When Charlie rolled his eyes at the prospect of moving Paul in the condition he was in, I told them both that there was a shorter way—an exit we could probably manage.
Paul was in a lot of pain and ignored me. “I was unconscious,” he said. “Why didn’t I drown in that well?”
He demanded Charlie’s cellphone. Though he grimaced in pain, he wasn’t satisfied until I turned him toward the well, where he was able to lean over the wall and shine the phone’s light down at the water. After a few seconds, he called out to me and I turned him back around. Gripping him by his armpits, I lowered him slowly to the floor, his back resting against the cave wall.
Then he said something I would never forget.
“Such a cold-blooded monster, he didn’t even realize that he had filled the well to capacity with their bodies. And these kids, whom we couldn’t save…wound up saving me.”
I asked Charlie, who had the only working cellphone (my battery was dead, and Paul’s was waterlogged), to take pictures of absolutely everything—especially the surface of the well, even though I doubted there was enough light to do so.
As a testament to Paul’s strength and perseverance—and to my utter amazement—when we got him to his feet, he put his arm over my shoulders and managed to hop alongside me as I walked. Charlie followed as before by walking on his thighs or swinging himself forward using his hands and arms, pausing only to take out his phone and click away.
After we made our way down into the waiting room where the killer lay dead, Charlie called out to me. “Forget something?” He reached under the couch and picked up another pistol. It was the killer’s gun. It had gone flying when Charlie shot him. Considering it was prima facie evidence, I asked Paul if we should leave it.
“No fucking way,” he answered. “No telling who will find it and make it disappear. Once we’re out of here, I’m calling the FBI.”
Charlie stuck the gun in his pocket, looked around the room, and took more photos with his phone. “Holy shit!” he shouted, while gesturing at the laptop sitting on the desk. “I guess I have to think of everything.”
“Grab it,” I said. “Even if it means you can’t take any more photos.”
“Who said I can’t take any more photos?” Proving more useful by the minute, Charlie stuffed the laptop down his shirt, tucked the shirt in his pants, and kept moving.
“By the way, did you get that killer’s ID?” Paul asked, while grimacing in pain as I helped him along.
“Yes, I did,” I said, as I struggled to catch my breath.
“Well, who the fuck is he? What’s his name?”
“I didn’t look at the ID yet, but what I do know is that he’s Richard Holcomb’s son, following in his father’s footsteps. That much I can tell you.”
“You didn’t look?” Paul asked incredulously.
“Sorry pal, but getting you the hell out of here alive was a higher priority. And don’t worry. His ID is in my back pocket, along with his credit cards.”
“Credit cards?” Paul grunted as he spoke. “I say we have a steak dinner on the prick.” He didn’t sound like he was kidding, either.
I was acting as a crutch for Paul and doing my best to keep us moving. We had already managed the three steps down just outside the cave passageway door, but there were still another three up, and then down again into the adjoining room. Finally, there were the ten steps that led up the staircase to the cabin, which would be especially difficult for Paul to climb. As we plodded along, I wondered if Paul’s head was throbbing as much as mine. Though he seemed to be focused on the pain in his ankle, I was convinced that he was toughing it out since his entire leg was
beginning to look like a tree trunk. Meanwhile, Charlie apologized for not being able to help and was moving along quite well, but perspiring to such a degree I thought he was going to short-out the laptop under his shirt.
In a matter of minutes (which seemed like hours), and despite more than our fair share of internal bleeding, Paul and I made it up the steps and into the cabin.
After we plopped ourselves down on the couch by the fireplace, Charlie took a seat on the floor next to us. “Mia was right about a cabin,” he said, while wiping sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
“She was right about a lot of things,” I added.
“Except she was a little girl, and all the kids that were abused and killed up here were boys,” Paul said, while continuing to breath hard.
“I may have that little inconsistency worked out,” I answered.
“How’s that?” Charlie asked.
“Can we get out of here first?” Since I didn’t believe that the son of Richard Holcomb had acted alone, the longer we stayed in the cabin, the more worried I became.
Charlie left us on the couch, and while walking on his thighs, managed to pull himself onto a nearby window seat. With all the moving around and traveling up and down stairs that he had done, I had little doubt that he had his share of pain to deal with as well. But he never complained or gave me reason to be more concerned about him than I already was.
“I see an SUV parked outside,” he cried out.
“It’s probably the dead man’s,” Paul said, his voice growing hoarser with each utterance.
“If it is, I have the car key,” I said. “It was with his ID and credit cards. Now let’s get the hell out of here while we still can.”
I managed to get Paul and Charlie into the SUV—Paul in the back and Charlie up front.
“Now I see why this place didn’t show up on my drone,” Paul muttered, while looking back at the cabin, his swollen leg stretched out across the rear seat.
The Criminal Mind Page 23
