Reeling from the self-inflicted blow to my head and afraid of falling, I clung desperately to the ladder as tiny pinpricks of light exploded around me. Unfortunately, the stars flashing before my eyes did nothing to lighten the inky blackness of Linda Decker’s basement.
My legs shook uncontrollably. Fighting vertigo, I made my way back down to the floor. I counted the rungs on the ladder. Seven in all from the point where I’d banged my head.
I stood on the floor holding the side of the ladder for several minutes trying to get my bearings, waiting for the shaking and dizziness to stop, hoping that somehow my eyes would adjust to the darkness. Eventually the trembling diminished, but I still couldn’t see my hand in front of my face when I tackled the ladder again. I didn’t know what was going on, but one thing was clear: I had to try to get out.
Careful not to damage my head further, I counted the rungs as I climbed, inching my way up the ladder far enough to brace my back and shoulders against the door. I grunted with exertion, pushing against the resistant wood as hard as I could, but the pressure wasn’t enough. The hasp, the hinges, and the wood all held firm.
Giving up, I stood for a moment hunched under the door, listening for any sound of voice or movement outside or inside. There was nothing—no footsteps in the room above me, no whispered deliberations outside—only the dull interior thud of my own pounding heartbeat.
I was over being surprised and scared. Now I was angry. Pissed. I was certain the childish cry of victory had come from the little boy as he slammed shut the coal chute door. What the hell were they up to? I could picture the three of them, Linda Decker and her two children, standing somewhere just out of earshot, gloating over my having fallen into their little trap.
They’d trapped me all right, but we’d see who had the last laugh on that score. Assaulting a police officer is no joke. Kidnapping one isn’t either. Linda Decker hadn’t figured that out yet, but I fully intended to show her, just as soon as I got the hell out of her goddamned basement.
Cautiously counting the rungs, I made my way back down to the floor. In the instant before the light had gone out, I could remember glimpsing a stairway on the other side of the basement. Now, with my eyes finally accustomed to the dark, I could see a faint glow that had to be daylight leaking into the basement through a crack under a door at the top of the stairs.
I attempted walking toward it, only to stumble over an invisible box on the floor and crash, nose-first, into a solid upright timber. A quick spurt of blood told me I’d done something to my nose—something bad, something that would add another lump to it and give my face more character. Just what I needed.
Maybe I’m not too bright at times, but at least I learn from my mistakes. I dropped to my hands and knees and began crawling toward that tiny sliver of light at the top of the stairs. The concrete floor was cold and damp beneath me as I groped my way across it, creeping along like an overgrown baby. The basement was musty and reeked with the smell of long-resident mice. The house had probably stood vacant for some time before Linda Decker and her children moved into it.
I made slow progress. The actual distance across the basement couldn’t have been more than twenty feet or so, but in the dark it was one hell of an obstacle course. What had seemed like a relatively empty room with the light on was actually a jumble of wood and boxes, furniture and tools.
Along the way I jammed my knee down on something sharp, a piece of broken glass or a loose nail that my scouting hands had missed. There was a sudden telltale wetness on my knee and leg, unmistakably warm and slick. The texture of rough concrete on lacerated skin told me I’d torn the hell out of both my knee and my pants. The knee would heal; the pants wouldn’t. And this was one pair I wouldn’t be able to voucher. I’d never get Seattle P.D. to agree that tearing my pants in Linda Decker’s treacherous basement ought to qualify as a line of duty mishap.
Had the lights been on, I’m sure I would have made quite a sight. The bloodied nose and the torn knee created a symmetry of sorts, the top and bottom halves of a matched set. An ugly matched set.
At last my fingers touched the far wall. I inched my way along it until I located the bottom of the stairs. They were made of roughhewn cobweb-covered planks open at the back end. My hands searched in vain for a handrail on the outside. There wasn’t any. Running my hands up and down the wall I located a two-inch pipe that had been bolted to the wall as a make-do banister. Clutching it gratefully, I eased my body up the stairs, feeling my way one step at a time, clinging to the pipe with one hand while sharp wooden splinters from the steps bit into the palm of my other hand.
Being blind must be hell, but real blind people have canes and seeing-eye dogs. I only knew things were in my way after I ran into them. That’s a little late.
On step number twelve I barked a knuckle against something metal—something round and metal and cool. It was another grill, more of the ornamental iron bars I had seen on the outside of the house. Beyond the bars was the smooth finished surface of a wooden door.
Suddenly, I heard swift footsteps coming toward me. The light came on and the wooden door fell open beneath my hand. When the door gave way, it took me by surprise and I lost my balance. I had to grab hold of the metal bars to keep from pitching ass over teakettle back down the stairs.
When I righted myself and looked up, I found myself staring into the barrel of the biggest pistol I’d ever seen. From where I was, it looked a hell of a lot more like a cannon than a handgun. I was only dimly aware of the woman behind it, but her words came through loud and clear.
“Let go of the bars. Now!”
I let go and retreated down the stairs a step or two.
Her voice was steady even though the gun wasn’t. “Mister, if you’ve got a gun on you, you’d better shove it under this rail right now before I blast you into a million pieces!”
There was no doubt in my mind that Linda Decker meant what she said. Even if she didn’t, I couldn’t afford to call her bluff, not with a gun pointed right between my eyes from some three feet away. A shaking gun at that.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Take it easy.”
Cautiously I eased the Smith and Wesson out of my shoulder holster. I didn’t want to do anything to alarm my captor. She was nervous enough already. Her finger was still poised on the trigger while the barrel of the gun trembled violently. It scared the holy crap out of me.
I slipped my gun, handle first, through a flat, clear space at the bottom of the metal bars. With a quick, deft movement she kicked it behind her, sending it spinning away across the linoleum floor until it came to rest against the bottom of a kitchen cupboard.
“Now take off your jacket and push it through here, too,” she ordered.
“Look,” I began. “You’re making a terrible mistake.”
“Shut up and take off the jacket.”
I did. “What’s going on? You already saw my ID. You know I’m a cop.” I finished poking the jacket under the bars and glanced up at the gun. It was still pointing at me, still shaking.
“I don’t know anything of the kind,” Linda Decker answered. Without ever taking her eyes off me, she kicked my jacket away as well.
“Call my partner, Detective Lindstrom at Seattle P.D. He’ll vouch for me.”
“Cop or no cop, you’re still working for them,” she retorted.
I took a deep breath, summoned my most conciliatory tone, and tried again. After all, I’m supposed to be trained to talk my way out of tough situations. “Linda, I already told you, I’m investigating the death of Logan Tyree. I thought you’d want to help.”
She winced when I mentioned his name, but she didn’t back off. “Cut the bullshit. You tried that line already. I called Seattle P.D. just a few minutes ago. You’re not assigned to Logan’s case, so what the hell are you doing here?”
There was no point in trying to explain that I was on vacation and looking into Logan Tyree’s death on my own because I felt like it, because I didn’t like the way the official investigation was going. She wouldn’t have believed that in a million years. Actually, I hardly believed it myself.
“I just wanted to talk to you, to ask you some questions.”
“You went to a hell of a lot of trouble. I figured you’d show up today. I warned the kids to watch out for you, told them to come inside the minute they saw a strange red car.”
She must have noticed the puzzled expression on my face. She answered my question without my ever asking it. “I talked to Jimmy last night. He told me all about you, about how you’d been so nice to him and given him a ride to the center. He told me you had asked about me, but he couldn’t remember whether or not he’d given you my phone number. I guess we don’t have to wonder about that anymore, do we. If you were on the up and up, you would have picked up a telephone and called.”
She jerked the gun in my direction and my heart went to my throat. “Empty your pants pockets,” she added. “Turn them inside out.”
“Wait a minute…”
“Do it!” she commanded. “Now!”
I did. My car keys, change, and pocketknife ended up in a pitiful pile which I shoved under the grill.
The little girl appeared at her mother’s side and clung to one leg, whining. “I’m scared, Mommie. What are we going to do with him? What’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know yet, Allison. Go on outside and play with Jason. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
Allison backed away from the door, watching me warily through the bars as she did so.
“Now the ladder,” Linda Decker ordered.
“The ladder!”
“Go get it, bring it over here, and shove it under the bars. It’ll fit.”
Linda Decker had evidently thought this whole scene through in some detail. She was leaving no stone unturned. I wouldn’t get out of there until she was damned good and ready and not a moment before.
When the ladder had been shoved under the bars and moved safely out of reach across the kitchen, she sighed with relief.
“Now what?” I demanded. “I suppose the next thing you’ll want me to take off my pants.”
No matter how old I get, I’ll never learn to keep my big mouth shut. I doubt she would have thought of it on her own if I hadn’t been such a smart-ass and made the suggestion.
“That’s a good idea.”
And so the belt and pants came off, and my socks, and finally my dress shirt. I sat there in nothing but my shorts, feeling as naked as a plucked chicken. A trickle of blood was still running down my leg from the gash in my knee, but at least by then my nose had stopped bleeding.
“Now put your hands behind your head and keep them there.”
I did as I was told, but I tried once more to talk some sense into her head. “Will you please listen to reason?” I asked. It’s tough to sound reasonable when you’re down to nothing but your skivvies, when you’re talking to a total stranger who’s packing a pistol.
I took a deep breath, searching for some scrap of dignity. “I’m a sworn police officer, Linda. Are you aware you can go to jail for this?”
She waved the gun impatiently. She wasn’t listening to me, hadn’t heard a word I was saying. “Who sent you here?” she demanded.
“Nobody sent me.”
“You tell me who sent you and then I’ll figure out whether I should call the cops or plug you full of holes myself.”
“I already told you, I came on my own,” I insisted.
“You still expect me to believe that? Just how stupid do you think I am?”
When I didn’t answer, she shrugged and turned away from me. She walked over to the counter long enough to pour herself a cup of coffee. Taking both the coffee and the gun with her, she sat down on a tall kitchen stool. She placed the gun on the counter beside her then sat there sipping coffee while she gazed at me speculatively. We had reached an impasse. Neither one of us said anything for some time.
Having the gun out of her hand made me feel a little better. Not a whole lot better, but a little. A loaded gun in the hands of a frightened person can be a deadly combination. There are plenty of dead cops out there to prove it’s true. I didn’t want to join them.
“Please listen to me. I’m a cop. A detective. I work for the Seattle P.D.”
She laughed, but the sound was harsh and humorless. “Sure you are,” she responded. “Can’t you come up with something a little more original? We’ve been through that already and I’m not buying, remember?”
I didn’t give up. “I came because I don’t think Logan Tyree’s death was an accident.”
“Think?” she asked bitterly. “You think it wasn’t an accident, or you know. Which is it?”
“You think I killed him?”
“Didn’t you?” The countering question was quick and accompanied by a look of sheer hatred. “It doesn’t matter,” she added. “They’re not here, either. You won’t find them. They’re in a safe place.”
“What’s not here?”
“After what happened to Logan, do you think I’m dumb enough to have those tapes with me?”
“What tapes?” I asked.
“And if anything happens to me…”
She was interrupted by a frantic pounding on the outside door leading into the kitchen. “Mommie, Mommie. Open the door quick. Somebody’s coming.”
Linda Decker leaped to her feet. She was wearing a loose-fitting sweatshirt and Levis. She stuffed the gun under her shirt and raced to the kitchen door, frantically unlocking a series of dead bolts and pushing open the grill to let the breathless children inside just as the doorbell rang at the front of the house.
“Who is it, Jason?” she hissed as she closed both the grill and the door and fastened all the locks.
“It’s a policeman,” Jason answered, his voice a high-pitched squeak. “With blue lights on top of the car and everything.”
My first reaction was one of relief. A policeman. An ally. Someone who would make Linda Decker listen to me, someone who would help me out of my predicament.
The doorbell rang again, insistently. Wavering, Linda Decker glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the front door and then down at her two frightened children. Last of all she turned to me. Her face hardened. She reached under her shirt and tentatively touched the gun. For a moment I was afraid she was going to give it to Jason, but she evidently changed her mind. Quickly she retrieved my Smith and Wesson and shoved it under her shirt as well.
Then she came over to the barred basement door, close enough for me to hear her harsh whisper, but far enough away to remain safely out of reach.
“If you so much as make a sound, so help me God I’ll kill you!”
With that, she slammed the door shut. The light went out. I was once more left in darkness, sitting almost naked on the wooden steps in Linda Decker’s damp basement, smelling the mouse crap and feeling like a load of shit.
I didn’t doubt for one minute that she’d do exactly what she said. I couldn’t afford to doubt it. I was convinced she had balls enough and then some.
She also had the gun.
I waited. For a long time. I heard the sound of voices, and then the creak of footsteps as someone walked across a room, then the murmur of someone’s voice, only one voice this time—Linda talking, but no one answering. She must have been on the phone. Again there was the creak of footsteps followed by voices again and then a whole flurry of footsteps, but no one came near the kitchen. No one opened the door to the basement for probably ten minutes or maybe longer. I’m not sure.
When the door did finally open, it was Linda Decker herself who flung it wide and hard, banging the doorknob into something metal, probably a stove.
She was different, totally different. Something had happened. Something had changed, and not for the better.
Before that, despite the trembling gun, she had been relatively calm, calculating, working a plan that she had laid out and rehearsed well in advance. Now as she stood staring at me through the barred door there was an icy fury behind her dangerously pale face. Her lips were pulled tight over clenched teeth.
Thankfully, she wasn’t holding the gun. If she had been, I think she would have shot me on sight.
“You son of a bitch!” She barely whispered the words, her voice shaking with rage while ragged tremors raced through her whole body. “You goddamned son of a bitch!”
Jason hurried into the room, dragging the whimpering Allison with him. He stopped near his mother and looked up at her. What he saw must have frightened him. “Are you all right, Mommie?” he asked. The grave concern written on his face was far older than his years.
She tore her eyes from me and glanced down at her son. For a brief moment, her face softened. Her throat worked furiously as she tried three times to choke out an answer. Finally she nodded.
“I’m all right, Jason. Take Allison out to the car and fasten her seat belt. I’ll be out in a minute.”
“But the door is locked,” he said.
Without a word, she walked to the door and unlocked the series of locks. I watched her hands. They were shaking so badly it was all she could do to control them. What had happened? What had made the difference? And where was the cop Jason had said was there?
When the outside door closed behind the children, she swung around to face me again. For a moment, she leaned heavily against the door as though every bit of strength had been drained from her body, as though she needed the door to hold her up.
“I’m sorry…” she began, then stopped as another violent tremor shook her body. By force of will she drew herself away from the door and started toward me.
She had begun with the words “I’m sorry,” but there was no hint of apology in her body language. The gun was out of sight, but at that point she didn’t need a gun. She was a menacing cat ready to spring at my face and claw me apart. For the first time, I was grateful for the bars that separated us.
“I’m sorry I didn’t shoot you when I had a chance,” she finished. She stopped only inches from the iron grill. Maybe I could have grabbed her through the bars, but I didn’t try it. I don’t believe in tackling wildcats with bare hands.
“It’s up to them now,” she added, “but if they don’t take care of you, I will. That’s a promise!”
With that she stepped back and slammed the wooden door shut. Once more Linda Decker’s basement was plunged into total darkness. I didn’t know I had been holding my breath until I let it out.
I felt a sudden rush of gratitude. I was the lucky man who is aware of seeing a rattlesnake only after he’s already pulled his foot out of harm’s way.
Linda Decker was gone, but in those last seconds before she turned away and slammed the door I looked into her eyes and knew what was different.
Before she left the kitchen to answer the doorbell, she had been undecided about what to do with me. Now she wasn’t. Her mind was made up. And when I looked into her eyes, they were empty of everything but cold hatred. Hatred and a naked desire to kill me. I’ve seen it before. I know the danger.
In that moment, my life had hung in the balance, and yet, inexplicably, she had closed the door and walked away. Someone or something had stayed her hand, had kept her from killing me. I had been reprieved.
Almost sick with relief, I took a deep breath and settled down to wait.
I suppose my mother would have been proud of me. At least I was wearing clean shorts.