A Bat in the Belfry (35 page)

Paulie Waters started across the muddy field toward us. “Ow,” Harvey moaned again, and when he realized Paulie was there: “She hit me,” he began whining. “She started it, I was only—”

“Shut up, Harvey,” said Paulie with about as much concern as if Harvey had a hangnail.

I didn’t want him to shut up, though. He knew where Sam was, I could practically feel it coming off him in poisonous waves, a secret that had somehow compelled him to steal the car, to race down a dark, wet road in it, to—

Paulie turned to Lizzie. “You haul him out?”

Of the burning vehicle, he meant. She shook her head. “No. The gas tank blew, the bang knocked me down. And when I came to, this ugly little critter was already on top of me, going through my jacket.”

Harvey scowled, hearing himself called “critter.”

“But she clobbered him,” Ellie put in admiringly.

“Yeah, well.” Brushing this off, Lizzie glanced over at the smoldering wreck. “I guess we need a wrecker, some transport to custody for this creepster here, and I suppose he ought to get a look by a doctor, too.”

She stopped short. “But you know all that, don’t you? I’m kind of making a fool of myself trying to tell you how to do your job. So I should probably shut up.”

Paulie looked at Lizzie, down at Harvey’s now-subdued form, and over at the car’s wreckage again. He stood thinking a moment, possibly about the fact that she’d meant to haul Harvey from the burning vehicle, if he was in it; that’s why she’d approached it.

Harvey just hadn’t been, was all. “Nah, don’t shut up,” Paulie said. “You might turn out to be worth listening to after all. You’ll want to get that eye looked at, though.”

He waved his flashlight at her; from the purple lump forming over her left eyebrow, Harvey must’ve clocked her a good one. She touched it curiously, winced, then turned to Ellie and me.

“What’re you two doing out?” she wanted to know.

By then I could hardly contain myself. The whole thing burst out of me, including the part about this being Carol’s car, and Carol being Sam’s friend, and us not having seen Sam lately and being worried about him.

And how sure I was now that Harvey had something to do with it. But all the while, I knew they weren’t going to do anything to Harvey to get the truth out of him: they couldn’t. They were cops, I realized as I poured the rest of the story out; they had to obey the law. But I didn’t, and by the end of it, I
couldn’t
contain myself:

“You know, don’t you? You know where he is.” In reply Harvey just smirked at me, a look so snottily defiant, it tipped me over the edge. The others weren’t expecting it, so when I hurled myself at him no one stopped me at first, not even Harvey himself.

But what I did next shocked even me. I slammed into him, smelling his sweat and blood. Grabbing his hair in my two fists, I shook his head so that his eyes rolled.

And then I
headbutted
him, so angry and scared when I did it that it didn’t even hurt. “You know where Sam is. Carol, too, you took that car from her to get away from whatever you did to—”

My hands were around his throat. “Tell me!”

A keening sound was coming from him, high and breathy like the air escaping from a punctured inner tube. Around me, people kept shouting and grabbing at me, but I didn’t care. “Tell me, you—”

Paulie dragged me off, finally, by seizing my shoulders and hauling me backwards while Harvey staggered and was grabbed by Lizzie again. Her captive sniffled resentfully while she spoke.

“You know, Paulie, I think I’ll ride with these two ladies,” she said, turning and giving Harvey a shove. Paulie caught him.

“Unless,” she added, “you want to leave our pal here with me for a few minutes.” She touched the knuckles of her punching hand with the fingertips of the other. “My fist’s not broken … yet.”

Because on her face in the glow of Paulie’s flashlight I saw the same notion I was worrying: Harvey Spratt had gotten Carol’s car somehow and I couldn’t imagine Carol letting it go willingly.

Harvey looked nervous for a moment, but he knew Lizzie’s threat was empty. His upper lip, even bloody and swollen as it was, curled triumphantly at me.

“Meanwhile, Dylan needs to see a doctor,” she added sternly. “Make sure he does, please.” Dylan, apparently, did not have a vote in this; Paulie either.

“Aye, aye, sir,” the young cop said, yanking Harvey along by his collar.

After that, Lizzie strode with Ellie and me over the dark, muddy field, through the streaming ditch, and between the spruces whose boughs thrashed wildly in the rising gale. At the road she ducked into her car to turn the flashers off and hurried to mine.

“Okay, now let’s go find your kid,” she said.

But only Harvey Spratt knew where Sam was, and Harvey wasn’t talking, so I didn’t really see how we could.

“S
am,” said Carol.

She’d been crying, but now she’d stopped.

Sort of. “Sam, we’re not going to make it, are we?”

“Cut it out. Of course we’re going to make it.”

Of course they were. He just had no idea how. Or even how long they’d been here, tied up in a beachfront cave with a storm howling outside and the tide rising.

“Just let me catch my breath a little, and I’ll go down and try it again.”

Try untying the knot binding her arms together, he meant. To do so, he was using his teeth, clamping them onto whatever part of the line he could get at, then worrying and tugging at it like a dog playing with a rope. The trouble was, doing it underwater was difficult.

Because the tide kept rising, and each time a wave broke over the sand ridge at the front of the cave, more water slopped in; now the place where they sat was three feet deep in ice-cold, intensely salty and gritty seawater. He had to put his face under it to get at the knot securing Carol’s wrists, and of course he couldn’t hold his nose because his own hands were also tied; thus the task was an exercise in gag-reflex suppression plus not panicking while also feeling that he was drowning.

It was why he was resting now, just for another minute.

Or two. “Carol. What did you want from Harvey Spratt?”

Sam let his head loll back, hoping it might allow more air into his windpipe. He felt her shrugging beside him.

“Just … a little taste,” she answered reluctantly. “Mostly he’s had pills. Pot’s too tame for him nowadays. But—”

“Taste? Of what?” But then he realized: “Heroin? Are you telling me you’ve been injecting, that Harvey’s been selling …”

Shock silenced him. The pills were bad enough, but at least you knew what you were getting. But with heroin, it might be a hit of euphoria or a shot of cyanide, and you’d never know until it was too late.

“Don’t be mad at me, Sam. I just wanted … I don’t know. To feel better. I mean, I never got hooked or anything.”

“Yeah.” He understood. He’d said the same thing to himself many a time. “Yeah, okay.”

She wasn’t telling him everything, he knew from her voice. Another icy wave sloshed in, deepening the cold water they sat in by another half inch. He wondered once more what could possibly be so bad that she still had to hide it from him, then gave up on the thought.

Because it didn’t matter, did it? Nothing did except getting free of these ropes, getting out of here before water filled this cave and they—

Drowned. Inch by inch, breath by gasping, struggling breath, until it rose up over their …

No. He took a deep breath of his own—
while you still can
, a voice in his head whispered thinly—then plunged his head down into the briny water again, resuming his fight to get out of this mess by, quite literally, the skin of his teeth.

But when his head was fully submerged, he heard something, a crackle-and-whoosh sound transmitted clearly through the water to his eardrums. Thrusting his head up, he blinked away the stinging salt water, hoping he was wrong.

He felt it, too, though, the dark, chilly liquid around him rising very suddenly, from his waist all the way to the middle of his chest in a single
swoosh
.

“Sam!” Carol cried. “What’s happening?”

The tide must’ve washed the sand ridge out from in front of the cave, he realized, so now water could get in much faster. He told Carol this, that it was worse than they’d thought. That they didn’t have hours in which to escape, as they had believed.

Half an hour, maybe. “At least we’re not sitting here in the dark,” he added, trying to find some good news to give her.

The penlight was still on, shining from where Harvey Spratt had tossed it onto the cave’s highest rear ledge.
Thank God it’s waterproof
, he thought; just the air in here was so damp a person could practically swim in it. And it seemed securely perched on that ledge …

But even as Sam thought this, a faint rattle sounded from back there, just the tiniest
click-click
.

No
, he thought, but as the waves thundered nearer, slamming the beach, their vibration made the penlight perched on the edge of the ledge shiver. Shiver and … Sam turned in time to see the penlight start to roll.
Clickclickclick …

“What’s that?” Carol whispered.

But before she could finish her question, the penlight fell, hit the water with a final-sounding
plop!
and sank, still shining all the way to the cave’s submerged floor, where it lay still.

In its own reflected glow it resembled a tiny submarine, one lit-up porthole gleaming. But in the next moment another, larger wave rolled in and claimed it, washing it out toward the cave’s mouth. Successive waves tugged it farther, each time rolling it a few inches back in toward them but then out again a little more, until at last its feeble glow thinned, dissolved, and in an awful moment vanished entirely, leaving them in the dark.

W
ith Lizzie Snow and Ellie in the car, I drove cautiously up Key Street. Even as we neared home, all I could think of was getting back out again to find Sam, but Ellie looked blue with cold and Lizzie’s teeth chattered, though she tried to hide it.

Through the downpours, my big old house looked like a ship on a wild sea. There were lights in only a few windows, and even those were unusually dim.

Now what?
I thought, realizing that the houses all along our route home had been in similar shape. But once inside I caught on swiftly: of course the power was out. With the wind howling and the power lines along the causeway no doubt getting the brunt of it, it was a wonder we’d had electricity for this long.

We stripped wet clothes off and put on all the warm, dry sweatshirts and jeans that I could find, including sneakers for me and Ellie. Lizzie’s feet, amazingly, were dry in her knee-high boots; what I’d been taking for expensive leather turned out to be amazingly good-looking and practical neoprene.

Wade was still out, said Bella, who pressed cups of hot, creamy-sweet coffee into our hands, while on the woodstove the kettle simmered and lanterns burned pleasantly on the fireplace mantel.

Bella asked no questions, but her big green eyes fixed me with a look of concern. Sam wasn’t back. And she knew I couldn’t stay home, not with him still out there somewhere in a gale.

And with, as no one else seemed quite to be realizing quite as clearly as I did, a murderer still on the loose. When we were warm enough to think straight again, Lizzie spoke:

“So you’ve called all around looking for him?”

I nodded.

“And the little red car we found wrecked belonged to a girl he’s been seeing?” she followed up.

At my second nod, she looked thoughtful. “I first spotted the car on Water Street. It wasn’t speeding at first but when the kid saw me behind him …”

“Maybe Harvey had just grabbed it?” Ellie suggested. Her wavy red hair had begun drying to ringlets around her face, which had gotten a bit of its color back.

Lizzie nodded slowly. “Maybe. Hadn’t put the pedal to the metal yet,” she mused aloud. “Just got behind the wheel, still checking it out …”

She looked up. “So where around there d’you think the Spratt kid might’ve run into her? And Sam, too, if he was with her?”

But I didn’t answer, being already halfway out the door with Ellie right behind me, and Lizzie, too.

B
ob Arnold drove just as fast as he dared out Route 190 and across the causeway, gripping the wheel against storm-driven wind and noting the dangling power lines being flung about, writhing like angry snakes. At Route 1 he swung left onto the two-lane blacktop headed south, the road past his slapping wiper blades a black gleaming surface, as treacherous as hell.

No one else on the road, though. That was good luck, at least. He tried the radio again, finding only hissing static.

Still no comms, then, he realized, so not only could he not warn the Machias people about Hank Hansen, he couldn’t even try to find out what kind of car Hansen was driving, or a possible plate number.

So he was screwed.
Blued and tattooed
, his mind added automatically. Nothing he could do but
keep driving, buddy
. Once he got to the courthouse, he would find Hank Hansen if he was able to, and stop him from doing whatever it was that he intended to do to Chip Hahn, Hank’s daughter’s accused murderer.

Also if he was able to. Bob let a blip of how
he
would feel if it had been
his
little girl slip in under his mental radar, saw his own hands clenching around the steering wheel.

But then as his squad car sped through Pembroke and over the Dennys River bridge, he calmed himself down.
Take it easy
.

Just get there. Find him, and stop him. Because …

But as the dark sky let loose with yet another terrifying downpour, flooding the roadway and his vision at the same scary time, he found for an awful instant that his heart was flooded, too, with brain-paralyzing rage. In that moment, while the tires hydroplaned slightly and the squad car drifted toward the ditch and the trees beyond, he found himself unable to come up with any reason why Hank Hansen
shouldn’t
be allowed to kill Chip Hahn.