Crawlspace

by Sarah Graves

  Not that it was going to make a difference in the long run. No one would see his fire down here in this hole. But if it made him feel better for a little while, why not?

  At least it was something to do. He opened Sam’s emergency kit, unwrapped the packet of stick matches inside it, and struck one. Its sudden, bright flare was just about the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and when he touched it to the sticks and pine needles he’d gathered together, they didn’t just burn.

  They flared, the pine pitch still in the needles sizzling and popping like gasoline. A giddy laugh escaped him as he warmed his hands over the blaze, which small as it was lit up the whole bottom of the pit.

  Which was when it hit him: gasoline. If he had some of that, maybe he could signal for help with a bigger fire. Or maybe if he used …

  Pine boughs. The sudden, vivid memory of the sentinel tree looming over the pit’s edge came back to him once more. Tall, dead, and … well, not quite dead. With all those live pine boughs still waving all the way up there at the top, the old tree was probably visible for miles in daylight.

  And at night, if it were on fire … At the thought Chip felt a surge of energy go through him. It made his pain explode back to life, too, as if somebody had just stuck a hot poker through his rib cage. But …

  The hell with it. If he didn’t do something, pain would soon be the least of his problems. He scrambled to gather more fallen pine boughs before his fire went out, grabbing any twig and stick he could find, especially ones with pine needles still on them.

  By the time he had enough of them, he was gasping in agony, a slick of pain-sweat making his clothes stick to him. Sweat and a lot of blood, because now in addition to the pain in his ribs, he could feel a stealthy but steady pulse leaking warmly from his shoulder.

  But before he could think too hard about that, he forced his bad arm out of his coat sleeve, letting himself groan aloud. Next he wrapped the coat around the pine boughs he’d collected and tied the sleeves in a tight knot. The boughs stuck bushily out of the coat’s top like a bouquet, just as he’d hoped they would.

  A bouquet—or a torch. But another wave of serious weakness washed over him as he thought of this and he sat down hard, very frightened again suddenly. Because maybe this dying business was not quite as time-consuming a project as he’d thought.

  Maybe he was going to do it now, or in the next few minutes. The blood-pulse seemed abruptly very convincing, and meanwhile Sam might very well still be down there on the beach.

  Maybe even still alive. If the tide hadn’t washed him away, if he wasn’t already floating …

  So there was no time to waste. Tiredly, Chip got up, began feeling around the slope of the sand pit for the rope he’d seen dangling, back when there was light to see it with. He imagined it must be from where some out-of-work fisherman, long ago reduced to the grim labor of humping sand out of a pit, had built a pulley and hung it from a branch of the sentinel tree, so at least he wouldn’t have to haul heavy bags of sand uphill on his back.

  Chip tripped over a stone, landed hard on some more of them, flat on his face in the dark, and as he lay there found both ends of the pulley rope by accident.

  When one end went down, the other would go up. With both rope ends in his hand, he sat again on the cold wet sand with his brush-filled coat in the crook of one arm, the match kit in his other hand. There were only six matches left. The kit did contain a flint and steel, but in this dampness he doubted he could do anything with them.

  So: six matches, rope and pulley, and a bunch of pine boughs with his coat wrapped around them, instead of around himself. He shivered convulsively, gritting his teeth until the spasm had passed. Now all he needed was a counterweight, something to make one end of the rope go down so the other would go …

  Up. Chip sighed heavily. All the activity was making blood pulse out of his shoulder thicker and faster; possibly that alone would kill him, especially if he tried climbing the pit’s steep, unstable side yet again.

  But what the hell, he thought. Probably it would kill him anyway. That or the cold. Screw it, he thought, understanding on some deep level that he was thinking a lot less clearly now.

  Feeling worse, too. But … clumsily, he began to work, tying one end of the rope around his branch-stuffed coat. Then he struggled uphill through the shifting sand, gathering the slack in the rope as he went.

  Sweating and bleeding, cursing and sometimes weeping, he fell several times and each time had to make up the ground he’d lost doing so. But he managed it. One step at a time. It was yet another of the lousy platitudes he’d inflicted on Sam, back in the city.

  But to his surprise, it actually worked: step by step, he climbed the pit’s side. After what felt like hours but was really only about twenty minutes, he reached the top.

  Panic had made him fail earlier, he realized. The beliefs, simultaneously held, that he couldn’t do it but that he had to. Plus Randy, shooting at him with a gun …

  The memory made Chip giggle, which scared him again quite a lot. It convinced him that he really had lost a lot of blood so he’d better get on with it. Because this next part would be the worst:

  Going back down into the pit again. Fast—

  Everything in him said that instead he should find Sam, then stand at the water’s edge, yelling for help. But the truth was, nobody would hear him. It might make him feel good, or as good as he could feel while freezing and bleeding to death.

  But that was all. That, he realized bleakly, was absolutely the only benefit he or Sam would ever get out of it.

  Hauling on one end of the rope wouldn’t work, either, to make the other end rise. It would have, earlier. But now his hurt shoulder had stiffened up so much, he could hardly move it. So:

  Climbing up the last few yards out of the pit, he took one end of the rope in both hands, letting the slack fall to the ground by his feet. Above, the rope hung over the pulley wheel; the other end was tied around his pine-brush-filled coat.

  So when he went down, the coat would get hauled up to where the pulley wheel was bolted … .

  Hoping the pulley itself wouldn’t just crash down on his head, he tied the rope’s free end around his waist. His fingers felt thick and unwilling; his body was urging him to lie down.

  In a minute, he thought, then wrapped the rope around himself a few more times and knotted it. Then you can rest.

  Funny how your hands went on moving even after your mind had let go, he thought. And how after a while being ice cold made you feel warm …

  Oh, just get on with it. He pulled out Sam’s emergency fire kit. Another giggle escaped him, but this time he didn’t bother worrying about it. He was losing it, and he knew it.

  At last he stood at the edge of the pit with his coat in his hands. One end of the rope was around it, the other around his waist. The middle still hung unseen, high above.

  Where the pulley was … where the pine boughs were. The very flammable pine boughs … like the ones in his coat. A final task remained, but first Chip stood a moment looking down into the pit.

  Big mistake. All that dark nothingness … for an instant, he didn’t think he could do it. It’s this stopping to think about things all the time that’s got you messed up, he realized. Hell, the worst it can do is kill you.

  And that, he was pretty sure, Randy Dodd had already done. Just a matter of time … Thinking this, he struck another match on the side of Sam’s emergency kit.

  The match flared yellow and red. Chip touched it to the pine boughs in his coat. They burst into flames, singing his eyebrows, and almost at once his coat caught fire, too, the stink from its melting fibers and plastic zipper stinging his nose.

  Reflexively he flung the flaming bundle away, saw the arc it made, flaring as it swung at the end of the rope.

  Then, with a calm inward smile that astonished him more than anything else so far, he hurled himself over the edge. Falling and falling …

  From above him came a brief, harsh crackl
ing sound, like a sudden intake of fiery breath. Next, the sky exploded, so that as he fell he was chasing his own dark, out-of-control shadow.

  And after that, very suddenly so he didn’t even have time to be afraid, he knew nothing more.

  OUT ON THE WATER, CAROLYN RATHBONE WATCHED THE eastern sky fill with light. The few remaining clouds glowed sullen orange, as if the fire came from within them.

  But even from where she lay, she could tell that it didn’t. Tall flames licked the sky over there, as if some giant torch had been set burning.

  All the other little boats on the water had nearly gone by, while the one she was prisoner on waited silently in darkness for them to pass, only a hundred yards or so distant.

  Randy Dodd crouched with his knife to her throat. He’d shut down the engine and disabled the running lights.

  “Don’t make a sound,” he’d whispered, and she hadn’t. So his ruse had worked, and as the fire over there rose higher she heard men’s shouts, and the other boats’ engines revving.

  They were going away. The knife’s pressure on her skin eased slightly. But, peeking up, she saw Randy Dodd’s face contorted in a snarl of frustration.

  He seized her hair, pulling her head up out of the blanket she’d been huddled in. Her breath came in shudders of fright that she couldn’t control, as he scrutinized her face.

  She thought he might kill her right then, but instead a new thought seemed to occur to him. As he considered it an eerie calm came over him, his expression smoothing and relaxing suddenly.

  He flung her away from him, then cast another glance at the departing flotilla. They were headed toward the now-diminishing firestorm on the other side of the water. When their running lights were little more than sparks afloat on it, he restarted the engine and they motored slowly toward the lights of Eastport, so distant a moment earlier but looming rapidly now.

  Brighter and nearer, but at low tide under the wharves by the harbor, no light shone. Down there, the gloom was complete. He aimed the boat at the nearest one, confidently and with the air of a man who knew, now, just exactly where he was going.

  And what he would do there.

  She knew, too. That it was over, that like the other girls’ final moments, her own had arrived. Or would very soon. But unlike the others, she didn’t wonder about them. She knew. Evidence, trial testimony, photographs … Oh, yes, Carolyn Rathbone, true-crime writer, knew only too well what was in store for her.

  And she wasn’t having any. Come with us, the girls in their graves crooned seductively, but she ignored them, scrambling up toward the boat’s rail, full of sudden decision.

  Up and onto it, where she stood for a glorious instant under a dark sky, looking out at the dark water. Startled, Randy Dodd lunged the length of the boat at her, but too late. She balanced on teetering tiptoe there, laughing and weeping.

  Maybe I’m going to die now, she told the girls. Maybe I am. Or maybe not.

  But that bastard …he’s not going to kill me.

  The smell of the sea was so intoxicating, it made her feel she could fly. Spreading her arms, she did.

  CHAPTER 10

  BY FIVE-THIRTY IN THE AFTERNOON, IT WAS PITCH DARK outside, and Jake had exhausted her list of immediately doable household repairs. A feeling of panic rose in her as she contemplated the washing machine that no longer boiled the laundry no matter what temperature its control knob was set on.

  Ditto the leakless faucet in the upstairs bathroom, the old doorknobs that now turned without falling off in her hand, four non-creaky stair treads each cured by the application of a single well-placed grooved ring-nail, and a carpet whose dinginess had been eliminated by the simple method of throwing the damned thing out.

  She searched her mind for yet another useful project, found none, and sat down in the telephone alcove in dismay. Just doing nothing while waiting for word about Sam was impossible, and so was calling someone—anyone—for updates.

  Or just to talk. She’d already called everyone, and Ellie was the only one who hadn’t made her feel that tearing her hair out was a viable option.

  “I’ll be here,” Ellie had said. “Call any time you want. A dozen times, if you need to.”

  Which Jake had needed to, but she hadn’t done it, because how many times could you tell even your closest friend that you were going crazy with worry, and even crazier with the inability to do anything helpful in the search for your missing son?

  “They’ll find him,” said her father, coming in briefly to put a hand on her shoulder. “They will. Every boat in the area is out there on the hunt for him. You just concentrate on that.”

  “Right,” she said, putting her own hand up to grasp his in gratitude. But the only thing she wanted was to be out searching, too, and she couldn’t be. She would only be in the way.

  “I’m going to take a ride down to the breakwater,” he told her. “Just have a look around.”

  She nodded and let him go, then wandered aimlessly around the house until she recalled that the damper flap on the furnace flue in the cellar needed replacing, and that she actually had the replacement part.

  Which was why she was down there, hands coated with black, greasy soot, when the phone rang.

  “Bella?” she called up the cellar steps. “Can you get it? I’m all covered with—”

  But Bella didn’t reply, nor did her quick-step sound on the floor overhead. The telephone kept ringing.

  “Bella!” she called again, hurrying toward the stairs. Still no answer.

  Jake hustled up the cellar steps, grabbed a fistful of paper towels as she dashed through the empty kitchen, and tried fruitlessly to get the grime off her hands before picking up the receiver.

  Apparently, furnace soot stuck much better to hands than it did to a wad of paper towels. The caller ID box said Undisclosed.

  “Listen, you,” she began angrily, but then a voice broke in.

  “Jake? Jake, this is Roger Dodd. Sam’s here, I’ve found him, Randy must have—”

  “What?” Relief coursed through her, as strong as a drug.

  “He’s here,” Roger repeated. “I found him in the cellar, I don’t know how—he’s hurt, I called an ambulance and the county dispatcher’s trying to find Bob Arnold right now.”

  Sam. She leaned against the wall of the telephone alcove.

  “Can you come down here? He’s asking for you,” said Roger. “He’s conscious, but I don’t know how long he can—”

  Another voice came on. “Hello?” Faint but recognizable; her heart leapt. “Hello, can you hear me?”

  “Sam,” she managed. He sounded awful. “Yes, I can hear you fine. You hang in there, now, honey, I’m on my—”

  Roger came on again, his tone urgent. “He’s losing blood, Jake; I don’t like the looks of him. Maybe you’d better—”

  “I’ll be right down,” she said, and hung up. Then, pausing only to call Ellie White and let her know the astonishing thing that had just happened—

  “I’ll meet you there,” Ellie said without hesitation.

  —she rushed from the house.

  In the dark yard, she yanked the car door open and hurled herself in, key in hand. She’d thrown the car into reverse and was halfway out of the driveway when Randy Dodd sat silently up in the back seat and put a knife to her throat.

  BELLA WAS COMING DOWN THE HALL STAIRS FROM THE third floor, where she’d been running a dustcloth over the old floorboards in Jacobia’s workroom—you could vacuum all you wanted, she felt strongly, but until you got down on your hands and knees it just wasn’t clean—when she heard Jake leaving the house.

  So now was her chance. Two minutes later, she strode down the dark street toward the Dodd House with fear and determination warring in her heart.

  She wasn’t supposed to go there. Bob Arnold had been very clear about it. When the search warrant was finally obtained, the whole place would be gone over by people who were authorized to do so.

  Until then, everyone else was to Kee
p Out. But …

  It simply was not possible to let the earring Anne Dodd had given her remain lost. Not without even looking for it. And the only place she’d been recently that she hadn’t yet searched was …

  The old cellar. She’d noticed that the earring was gone on the way to St. Stephen with Jacobia, her reflexive touch for good luck to it finding nothing but her own earlobe. Since then, she had retraced her steps to the Dodd House and back, and had gone over her own domestic territory with the grim intensity of a prospector hunting for even the tiniest gold speck.

  Without result. A seed pearl, two pennies, and a whole clove that had rolled away while she was sticking them into oranges for pomanders a week earlier had been her only discoveries.

  So this was her last chance. If the earring wasn’t somewhere in the Dodd House, she would probably never find it. And although a lost earring was not the worst tragedy, she would never be able to replace it.

  Never mind that the very thought of entering the place alone made her feel small and quavery. You can quiver when you’re back home, she told herself brusquely.

  Because sometimes if you wanted things a certain way, you had to make them that way. And if you didn’t …

  Well, if you didn’t, you deserved whatever you got. Telling herself this, she emerged from the dark alley that ran alongside the Eastport Nursing Home onto the slightly less dark and shadowy thoroughfare of Washington Street.

  Across it, hunkered down among the leafless overgrown trees, the Dodd House seemed to sulk behind shade-covered windows reflecting the yellowish streetlights. In the damp, chilly breeze, a patch of shingles on the sloping roof made a wet flap flap sound.

  No light showed from within. If it had, she might’ve turned tail and run. But—

  There’s no one in there, she told herself firmly. And I’m only going to find what’s mine.

  At nearly suppertime there were few cars on the street. She waited until none were in sight, then crossed and hurried up the old steps, careful not to put her foot through any rotten ones. She was so intent on not being seen, she forgot for a moment how nervous she was about being inside.