“We’re going up then,” I said. The gables on the old house had big vents. If I had to, I could kick one out.
“When Dad took out the dumbwaiter, he extended the chute all the way to the attic. Same time he did my knothole. He thought I’d be a climber, like him. He wanted it to be something special just for us.”
Peter knew damn well that Adrienne wasn’t going to hang around in there.
I felt around me. The climbing wall was a square chute. I guessed it was forty inches on a side. It had footholds and handholds randomly placed on all four faces.
I can do this, I thought.
I had never been rock climbing in nature. I had never done an interior rock wall.
Jonas, of course, asked, “Do you rock climb?”
I thought about lying. It didn’t seem like a good time for that. “I do now,” I replied.
“Oy,” Jonas said.
Oy, indeed. I was wondering if a twenty-foot-plus fall down a defunct dumbwaiter lined with fake rocks would kill us.
Frankly, I wasn’t in love with our odds. My right hand was barely usable. I really had done some damage to myself when I punched the asshole in the face. In my life, I’d hit two men in the face. Both times had yielded great personal satisfaction. And both times I’d injured my damn hand. I was missing something, I figured, technique-wise. If Jonas and I lived, I would work on that. Take some lessons on how to hit adversaries in the face. Jonas and I could do it together. Gracie could come, too.
The climbing was slow, but I had plenty of adrenaline to provide buoyancy. I would get to the attic in five or six feet. I can do this. I can do this. My silent words were 20 percent confidence, 80 percent psychological cheerleading.
Jonas said, “Is that a siren?”
I listened. “Yeah. It is. That’s great. Help is here.”
Down below us, near where we’d started, I heard some loud concussions begin. Five or six of them, in succession. Like the asshole was kicking at—
Suddenly smoke filled the dumbwaiter core. Earlier, I’d been able to smell it, and even taste it. But suddenly I could see the smoke. Lots of it. We were being forced to breathe it.
The asshole was kicking holes in the drywall, or plaster, or whatever the walls were made of in Jonas’s room. He was breaking down fire-protection barriers, making sure that the fire, and the smoke, would be able to move unimpeded into the parts of the house where Jonas and I had retreated.
Right below guns on my list of fears was fire. Snakes and bees were right up there, too, but at that moment? At the top of the list? Other people’s guns. And fire.
The only good news I could think of? I was thinking the asshole might be out of ammo. The kicking stopped.
I reached up with my beat-up hand and felt a flat horizontal surface above my head. I pushed on it. It did not give. Not even a little.
“I’m there. How do we get into the attic?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jonas said into my ear.
“You don’t know?” I whispered incredulously over my shoulder.
“I’m afraid of heights, remember? I’ve never been up here.”
Jonas had a lot of his mother in him. A lot.
The irony that Peter Arvin—a rock-climbing legend in Colorado—would have a firstborn son who was phobic of heights would be something I would have to ponder some other time. “It feels solid above us,” I said. “No opening. You don’t know if there’s a latch? A trick? Your dad liked tricks. Secrets.”
“He did. But I don’t know. I’ve never been up here. Feel for a knob or something carved.”
More sirens below us. I thought I could even hear some yelling. Help had arrived.
I tried to remember whether I had told Diane to get the fire department to respond. I didn’t think I did. I’d said police. I’d said ambulance. Not good foresight on my part.
To take advantage of the first responders, all we had to do was get out of the damn dumbwaiter and get past the asshole who was waiting for us in the house with a gun. With or without bullets. The smoke was getting bad. We had to do all that fast.
“Nothing, Jonas. Can you reach your phone?” I asked.
He answered my question with a question. “Where’s yours?”
“Lost it fighting the asshole.”
“Mine’s in my pocket. But I don’t think I can . . . hold on to you with one arm.”
“Sure you can. You ready to try?”
He hesitated. I waited. “Okay,” he said finally. He pulled one arm from around my neck. I could feel his other arm quiver.
Seven, eight seconds later, he said, “Oops.” I heard a thud. “Dropped it.”
I sighed. “No worries. Hang on tight.”
“Let’s go down to the first floor,” Jonas said. “I know how to get out there.”
“Then that’s our plan.” I dropped my left leg down, feeling for purchase on a fake rock. Did it again with my right. I repeated the motions.
I was finding a rhythm. We soon passed the opening to Jonas’s cubby, where I still feared the asshole was waiting for us with fresh ammo. We continued down.
The smoke wasn’t quite as thick below the cubby as it had been above. We were making progress.
“You good?” I asked my son.
“Good enough for government work,” he coughed into my ear.
My good hand slipped. My not-good hand was not so good. It slipped, too.
My feet were each on solid footholds. Jonas was on my back. As my hands slipped we teetered backward, not down, impacting the opposite wall with a deadening thunk. I waited for my feet to slip from their tiny ledges.
My toes ached in a way I didn’t know toes could ache. My feet didn’t slip. They were on one side of the dumbwaiter core. Jonas was hanging on my back. His legs were hooked around my waist. We were leaning forty-five degrees toward the opposite wall of the core. Jonas was pinned between my shoulders and the other wall.
I didn’t like the position we were in. Literally. Or figuratively.
I said, “Still cool?”
“You’re kind of heavy.”
I thought the muscles in my back were going to explode. I figured they would explode a few seconds after my quads did, which would happen after my toes went off like a string of firecrackers.
I recalled Rafa’s admonition about quads and climbing steep hills. How you either have the determination in your heart, or you don’t. Right then, I had it.
“Don’t let go of my neck. Feel around, find places to put your feet, Jonas. Just feel around.”
Almost immediately he said, “Got one.” I could feel him continuing to kick around behind me. “Okay, okay, got another one.”
As he began to assume his own weight, I felt stronger and lighter. The load on my quads lightened. My toes? Still a problem.
“Get as steady as you can get on those footholds. Balance yourself.”
“Okay.”
“Now take your hands from around my neck and put your hands flat on my back.”
“Alan, I—”
“Trust me. Please.”
He put his hands on my back. “As long as you keep pressure on my back with your hands, you will stay pinned on that wall. Think about it. Does that make sense?”
He thought about it. “Yes. It does.”
“Now push on my back. As hard as you can. Like you’re trying to force me away. It will pin you even more securely.”
Jonas was stronger than I feared he would be. Not as strong as I hoped he would be. But his pressure on my back helped me reach across the shaft to my left and right. I found handholds on each side.
My feet continued to stay in place on the far wall.
“As I move forward, in order to keep your hands on my back, you will have to lean forward, too. As long as you keep as much pressure on my back as you can, you’ll be fine.”
“If you say so.”
I began to use my arms to pull slowly away from Jonas. I could feel his hands increasing the pressure on my back
. “It’s working,” he said. He sounded surprised.
“It’ll work,” I replied. I was trying not to sound anywhere near as lacking in confidence as I was feeling. I moved my feet off the far wall onto footholds on the sides, slightly below where Jonas was standing. I moved my hands to the wall in front of me and braced myself to resume carrying his weight.
He kept his hands, and his weight, on my back the whole time.
“Okay. Now climb back onto me, Jonas. When you have your arms locked around my neck, you can take your feet off those rocks.”
“They’re not really rocks,” he said.
I knew that Jonas, like his mom, could get argumentative when he was anxious.
I was pretty sure he was anxious.
41
“Where we heading?” I asked.
“The pantry in the kitchen, where the dumbwaiter door used to be. There’s a secret entrance in the back of the pantry. A closet for the closet.”
I said, “Of course it has a secret entrance.”
“Ma used to tell me that Dad would go into the pantry to get a box of cereal and then he’d completely disappear. Two minutes later he’d walk into the kitchen from the other side with a box of Froot Loops. She calls him Houdini.”
I noted the present tense. At some times Adrienne was deader to Jonas than at others.
“She never knew?” I asked.
“Nope.”
I was sure Adrienne knew. But it was a great story for Jonas to remember about his father.
“I looked Houdini up online.”
“Show me later?” I said.
“Yep.”
For the next ninety seconds, I continued to descend the shaft. We were both coughing and trying not to cough as Jonas felt along the walls for indications that we’d reached the back side of the magic pantry. “Here,” he said finally. “To the right. It’s a ledge.”
“You go. I’ll follow you.”
He scrambled off my back onto the ledge. I felt like I’d just shed a ton. “Is there room for me?” I asked.
“Come on,” he said.
I squeezed in beside him. I could not feel either my fingers or my toes. The smoke was starting to burn my lungs.
“How does it open?” I asked, fearing that the answer would be that Jonas didn’t know.
“There’s a latch,” he said.
“Great.”
“But I can’t find it. I thought it was . . . here.”
The cavalry was arriving downstairs, in the basement. I could hear men and women yelling. Radios crackling. Someone said, “Too hot. Back out. Back . . . out. Wait for the firefighters.”
At that moment, I couldn’t think of a worse place to be trapped during a fire than where we were. Rescuers would never find us in this hidden, sealed shaft.
“Here it is,” Jonas said.
“Terrific.”
“I can’t move it. But I found my phone. It was on the ledge.”
Yes! “Do you have a signal?”
Seconds passed. The screen illuminated. “Nope,” he said. “No bars.”
“Let me try the latch.” I contorted myself to reach past him.
“I’ve been here before. You pull it out,” Jonas said.
“Gotcha.” The latch was smooth and carved from hardwood to fit a hand like a glove fits a hand. Perfectly. But I could not get it to budge either.
“Are you pressed against the door, Jonas?” I asked. I was hoping the mechanism was a pressure latch and that the solution to the problem was simple.
“Yes,” he said.
“Maybe that’s the problem. I’m going to go back out into the shaft so you have some room to scoot away from the door. It should open right up then.”
I did not want to go back out into the shaft. But I found footholds and I eased myself back out.
Immediately, Jonas said, “Got it. Only two more steps to open it.”
Two more steps? What the fuck, Peter? “Two more steps?”
“Dad liked puzzles.”
Peter, I swear— The door swung open. Through the thick smoke, I could see a band of light down at floor level. Jonas tumbled out. “Stay close. Stay low,” I said. “Breathe only down near the floor.” I launched myself onto the ledge and then scrambled headfirst out the secret door into the pantry.
Suddenly, behind me, a loud swooooosh erupted but was instantly enveloped by an explosive roar. Bright flames rose like Satan’s breath up the dumbwaiter shaft from the basement. Intuitively, I guessed what had happened. Someone in the basement had opened the old dumbwaiter door, creating a chimney effect in the core.
If that had happened five seconds sooner . . . I would have been rotisseried.
As I slammed the door closed behind us, Jonas said, “Holy shit. That was close.”
The profanity surprised me. But, in context, I had no problem with it. I asked, “What’s nearer? The front door? Or the french doors to the deck?”
“Same same.” Another Adrienne-ism.
“We have to get out of here fast.” The front door was solid wood. If it had a keyed dead bolt on each side, as the asshole had warned us, it did us no good. We could get all the way there and still wouldn’t be able to get outside.
The french doors in back were glass. Even if they were locked, we could bust our way out. “Help me find something to break glass,” I said. “Something heavy and hard. A frying pan, a . . .”
We were working by touch, searching the shelves in the pantry. “What’s this?” Jonas said a moment later.
I couldn’t see it. I felt the shape of what he was holding. I said, “It’s a sharpening steel. It’s perfect. We’re going to go out on our bellies toward the glass doors in back. You’re leading. Go. I’ll be on your heels.”
The smoke was thick everywhere in the room. I thought I could see the bright lights of flames dancing from burning draperies on the walls. Even bigger flames were shooting up the outside of the house. The black smoke was billowing, drifting. The supply seemed endless.
Jonas crawled like an infantryman, leading us directly to a pair of glass doors at the back of the house. I passed by him right at the end, reminding him to stay down. I reached up to try the latch. The door was dead bolted, as the asshole had promised.
I couldn’t stop coughing. Breathing at all was becoming a major concern. I kept telling myself we were almost out. I tried to say I hope this is safety glass, but I failed to get the words out of my throat. I put my lips next to Jonas’s ears and rasped, “Move to the side. Cover your face.”
I hoped Jonas did as I asked. I whacked the glass with the steel. Breaking the glass was much harder than I thought it should have been. It took me half a dozen blows with the heavy steel to get enough glass to break to make an opening that would allow us to fit outside. I helped Jonas scramble out onto the deck. I tasted a little fresh air.
“Get away from the house as fast as you can,” I yelled.
He immediately collapsed as his lungs revolted in a coughing fit.
I could feel heat behind me. I turned my head to see a big upholstered chair erupt in flames. I started to follow Jonas outside.
Breathing a big gulp of what I thought was fresh air was a bad idea. It wasn’t fresh. My lungs spasmed. I collapsed in the opening in the door in a fresh fit of coughing.
Through the drifting smoke outside, I watched a firefighter emerge. He was wearing one of those big firefighter’s jackets. He scooped up Jonas and began to carry him away from the danger on the deck.
The fire department had arrived. Thank God. The relief I felt that Jonas was safe felt better than oxygen. But the firefighter was carrying Jonas in the wrong direction. He was heading up the hill away from the house. Not toward the rescue vehicles that would be parked on the lane in the other direction.
I heard someone yell, “Stop! Right now! Stop!”
It felt like bad advice. I decided I would stop after I made it outside the burning house.
“Stop! Put . . . that child . . . down. Now!”
I knew the voice. I knew the tone. Lauren?
“Take another step and I swear I will shoot. Put him down!”
I put all my energy into moving a few more feet. Just before I made it out through the opening in the french door, I realized I was slowly passing out. The awareness that I was losing consciousness, and my inability to do anything about it, was the strangest sensation for me. I felt as though I was heading down a slide at a water park, unable to influence my momentum. I would splash down when I would splash down.
“Stop! No!”
I heard a shot.
Through my cerebral haze, a second or two later, I heard a second shot. At least, I thought I did. Part of my brain was trying to convince the rest of my brain that the shots I’d heard were merely an echo of the shots that had been fired earlier inside the house.
The gunshots made no sense to me. Not then. Help had arrived. The danger was over. Right? Nothing was making much sense.
Fighting what felt like an inexorable slide to unconsciousness, I looked back toward Jonas. I didn’t quite trust what I was seeing. The firefighter holding Jonas in his arms had one leg of his jeans turning from blue to black. No, not black. Red.
Why so much blood? Why is the fireman wearing jeans?
Jonas remained in the man’s arms. Jonas’s face was nothing but fear and soot. He was screaming and coughing. Screaming and coughing.
All around me, the house was painted in flames. Parts of the deck were on fire, too.
The firefighter took an additional step toward the stairs that would lead off the deck and up the hill. He tried to take another, but his next movement was more of a lurch than a step. He made one more lurching motion as he fell forward onto the decking, landing partially on top of Jonas.
No! I have to be hallucinating this. Maybe I’m already unconscious. This can’t be happening.
The next thing I saw seemed more like an apparition than an event. Lauren emerged from the distance and entered the narrow frame of my vision. She was almost ghostlike as she hobbled through the smoke toward the distant part of the wooden deck. Her Glock was in her right hand. Her cane was in her left, but she was holding it as a weapon, not as a mobility aid.
She limped directly up to the fallen firefighter. Without any hesitation, she put the foot of her weak leg hard onto the man’s throat. I mean hard. She was using all of her relatively insubstantial weight to pin the wounded man to the planks with the sole of her shoe. With the tip of her cane, she scooted a revolver away over the planked decking. It disappeared over the edge.
The Last Lie Page 32
