Home Repair is Homicide 13 - Crawlspace (21 page)

The cabin was a tiny, low-ceilinged enclosure with a small filmy plastic window, a low cupboard, and the table on sawhorses. Moonlight
through the square of window plastic showed a crumpled bag of Cheetos and a half-eaten pack of Ring Dings on the table.

Despite her belief that she wasn’t hungry, she crammed one of the Ring Dings into her mouth. Chemical-tasting fake sweetness clogged her throat, but she forced it down.

It gagged her, but she made it stay there. The stink in the cabin was hideous, even with the hatchway door open. Squinting around, she saw why:

A plastic bucket on the floor was coated with ancient fish scales. Unidentifiable stuff stained the rough table. Cleaning and gutting tools, some with toothed blades and others with edges so sharp they glinted even in the thick gloom, hung from nails.

A plastic gallon jug stood in one corner; she grabbed it and cautiously sniffed its spout. Water … She drank greedily, then spied a quart bottle of Wild Turkey by one of the sawhorse legs.

Thank you, God. …
She tipped the bottle up and took a long, warming swallow, felt the alcohol hit her and spread out through her nerve endings, and took another.

Then she caught sight of the scrapbook. Sticking out of a large canvas duffel, its corner looked at first like a sheet of cardboard; she almost missed it.

Even as she approached the bag, she thought only that it might contain a gun, or perhaps a cell phone. Her own phone was missing along with the rest of her bag’s contents, and the bag itself.

Still in the car trunk, maybe, or in a trash can somewhere. She didn’t care. Hastily she rummaged in the duffel.

A tattered sweater came out, some socks and underwear, a can of mosquito repellent. A few T-shirts, threadbare jeans, sneakers, and … a black official-looking folder.

She opened it, found papers in an envelope. A Canadian passport, the name on it unfamiliar, the photograph recognizably Randy Dodd.

There was a driver’s license, also Canadian. And a bankbook in French, which Carolyn neither read nor spoke.

She tucked them away again, not wanting Randy Dodd to know she’d been down here, and reached out for the scrapbook to put it back where she’d found it, as well.

As she did so, it fell open. A clipping slid out. Stapled to it was a photograph.

Not a newspaper photograph. Carolyn glanced at it and felt her gorge rise; reflexively, she grabbed the Wild Turkey bottle again. The alcohol made her eyes water, blurring the face of the girl in the picture.

Unfortunately, it didn’t obscure the rest of her body. Or what was left of it …

Hideously, Carolyn felt her working instincts kick in with a cold surge of excitement. The clipping was a year-old story from a small-town newspaper in Georgia, detailing the disappearance of a local girl.

FAMILY IN LIMBO AS VANISH ANNIVERSARY LOOMS
, yelled the headline. Carolyn didn’t bother reading the rest. She didn’t have time, and anyway, she knew what it would say, so much so that she could have written it herself.

It said what they all said. It said everyone still hoped the girl had just run away, that after all this time she was alive.

Even though they knew she wasn’t. Carolyn flipped through the rest of the scrapbook, knowing what she would find: girls in graves, girls who were about to be in graves, girls who had been in graves but who’d been removed from them.

Six in all. Two in Georgia, three in South Carolina, one in Alabama, all vanished over a period of eighteen months. The last one had disappeared in a Wal-Mart parking lot, in broad daylight.

All had long black hair like Carolyn’s, except for one whose hair color could not any longer be determined by anyone who hadn’t already known her.

Not from the photograph, or in any other way. Carolyn closed the scrapbook with hands she would positively not allow to tremble, put it back in the duffel, picked up the water jug and the Wild Turkey bottle.

She stumbled back up on deck and crouched by Sam, tipped the jug to his lips. In her mind’s eye, all those dead girls watched her carefully, waiting to see what she would do.

For them. For herself. Sam drank thirstily, then gasped and signaled enough. She broke off a piece of the chocolate snack and showed it to him.

“Can you eat? Maybe you should …” But to this he shook his head firmly; she hesitated, then ate the other Ring Ding herself.

“Do you want some of this?” She held up the Wild Turkey.

He hesitated, licking his lips, but refused this, too. “Maybe I shouldn’t,” he said with a strange little laugh. “I might have something kind of … important to do.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. She took another sizable swig herself, capped the bottle, and put it aside. “Sam, we’ve got to get out of here.”

He frowned, said nothing. “While he’s gone, Sam,” she said urgently. “We’ve got to move the boat out of here, or get off it before he comes back.”

It had been maybe an hour now that Randy had been gone, though she had no way of measuring time. Her watch had smashed when she landed on her wrist, and Sam wasn’t wearing one.

She inspected him again. He was breathing, and his color—at least as far as she could tell—seemed better, his lips not so bluish-black and his cheeks less papery-looking.

Though that could be the growing moonlight, as the fog thinned and the sky cleared. She picked his wrist up and tried to find his pulse, but she didn’t know how to take it, and what would she do about it anyway, whatever it was?

“Sam.” His eyelids flickered, but there was still no reply, and she had to hurry.

“Sam, I’ve got to leave here, I’ve got to try to find someone to help us, I can’t—”

The water would be frigid, and all she could see of shore was
dark, the big old trees and whatever lived in them. A person could die out there, especially in this cold, and she was not so stupid as to think she could survive just by wishing it so.

But staying here … It just wasn’t possible. Not if she wanted to live. “Sam, I’m going. I’ll try to come back for you, I’ll find someone and tell them …”

The boat rocked gently in the dark waves. She shook Sam’s shoulder gently. Muttering, he woke. “No. You can’t …”

Leave me
, she thought he meant. “I’m sorry, I don’t want to, but—”

It was only thirty feet or so to shore. Wincing, he opened his eyes. “Tide’s running out,” he whispered. “Too fast. It’ll take you … .”

A terrible suspicion struck her. Rising, she hurried to the rail and peered over. In the moonlight the water’s surface was a bright, ruffled expanse, like aluminum foil smoothing and then crinkling again.

Not too bad-looking, really, and there were plenty of rocks sticking up out of it. So even if it turned out to be deep, she could stagger from one to the next … .

“Don’t do it.” His voice was an anxious whisper, followed by a cough.

You just don’t want me to leave
, she thought rebelliously.
You just can’t stand it, that somebody else might get to …

But then she looked straight down, saw the water against the boat’s side rushing along … racing along. On the surface, it was flat. But …

No
, she thought.
Oh, please no
.

Because Sam was right, she’d never make it. Not that it was so far, and the rocks were there, all right. But the water … the water was running like a river. A fast river.

“Rocks … too slippery,” he whispered. “Don’t …”

Wildly she looked around for something to help her, to hold on to, the tree that the boat was hidden under, maybe. Grimly she managed to climb onto the rail, straining up hard with both arms, trying to reach one of the thicker branches overhead.

But when she grabbed it, it snapped crisply off in her hand, knocking
her off balance. Arms windmilling, she fought to stay upright, then sidestepped crazily and fell off the rail, tumbling to the hard deck.

Ouch. No more Wild Turkey for you, missy
.

But even being stone-cold sober wouldn’t make those branches any sturdier. They were as brittle as old bones.

Like yours will be …
She struggled up, bolts of panic invading her at the thought that any minute now, he would return.

For one thing, as Sam had pointed out, that tide was moving. On its way out now, but when it came back in, the water would be too deep for Randy to slog through it.

And he must know that, too, that he had only a window of opportunity, that the water would be too …

Squinting into the darkness, she spotted a thin, pale line running across the water to the shore. A rope. She hadn’t noticed it earlier, but now she saw one end of it was tied to a cleat on the boat’s front end. So if she untied it …

He wouldn’t be able to follow it back. She scrambled back up onto the rail, inched along until she was nearly to the rope. The boat’s rocking threatened to push her off the narrow board she perched on, as with stiff, numb fingers she fumbled at the knot, tearing at the rope looped tightly and, worse, so unfamiliarly in the metal cleat.

The knot didn’t budge. Carolyn kept at it, nearly weeping with frustration. How, how were you supposed to untie this thing? She fought with the loose end, pulling and pushing it.

Still the knot held, and though she went on battling it, in her heart Carolyn Rathbone began to know it was hopeless. That she hadn’t quite yet joined the company of girls in graves but that she would, soon.

That it was only a matter of time.

TRUDGING ALONG THE GRAVEL ROAD IN THE DARK, JAKE
tried to keep up with Bella, who had apparently been running
marathons and taking fitness classes from Arnold Schwarzenegger when not busy scouring the kitchen sink.

“Just … wait up a minute, will you?”

Bella turned impatiently. “Low tide,” she said quietly, “is nearly over. It’s just about finished running out.”

And after that, the tide would begin coming in again … . It had taken longer than Jake expected to get here, up thirty miles of Route 1 in the fog.

Which was now clearing. “So if we want to get there—” Bella went on.

“Yes
, yes, we want to get there,” Jake interrupted. But she also wanted enough strength left to lift a weapon, if necessary.

“How much farther, do you think?” she asked, then stumbled headlong over a hunk of driftwood onto a stony beach.

“Shh,” said Bella. They’d emerged suddenly from the trees. Jake saw the sky opening up overhead, and the sharp scent of the evergreens dissolved all at once into the smell of the sea.

“Now what?” The sky was nearly clear, but mist still lay along the beach and on the water’s surface. Behind them, droplets pattered from the branches, the fir boughs rustling and sighing.

Suddenly the fog’s curtain parted at ground level. Islands appeared, their shorelines dark edges of rocks and seaweed. Jake crept up beside Bella.

The sandbar should be showing now, a trail leading to Digby Island. But there wasn’t one, only dark water. “Are you sure this is the place?”

“Oh, yes.” Bella began walking again, striding away down the narrow strip of beach. “But there’s no sandbar, is there?”

Jake followed. “So, what happened? It didn’t just—”

Disappear
. They didn’t do that, did they? It was indeed low tide; most of the beach was covered in slippery, slimy rockweed so treacherous that they had to pick their way.

Through the weed mats, huge granite slabs stuck up, jagged obstructions alternating with smooth, gleaming platforms that were even more dangerous. Slip on one of them, crack your skull on another, and bingo, that’s all she wrote.

“Look.” Jake followed Bella’s gesture to where a patch of paler sand spread out. Overhead, the moon pushed through, making the patch glimmer.

It was a sandbar. They’d just missed seeing it at first. But once spotted in the gloom, it was as clear as a marked trail.

Small, chaotic waves broke on it, lacy white. Jake lurched forward excitedly toward what looked to be easy walking, unbroken by rocks or weeds. Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a difficult project after—

“Wait.” Bella’s hand stopped her. “Here’s what we should do.”

What?
Jake thought, irritated.
You’re going to tell me—

Bella went on quietly. “We make sure they’re out there. We try to make sure they’re okay. We use your cell to call Bob Arnold. Then we sit tight and let the people who do this kind of thing for a living take charge of it.” She eyed Jake calmly. “All right? Because we should agree in advance on what we’re doing.”

Which made sense. “Well …” Jake began uncertainly. What she wanted to do was charge out there, guns a-blazin.’

Well, one gun, anyway. Biting her lip, she stared across the sandbar. If he was here, Randy Dodd had been smart. But just as he had when he got the speeding ticket Chip Hahn had found, Randy had made a mistake.

Two mistakes, really: he’d left a blank notebook page in the Dodd House, not a map but the ghost of one, brought to life again by Bella when for once in her life she’d spread some dirt instead of cleaning it up.

And you took my son
, she thought at him, staring into the night.
That was your biggest mistake
.

“Fine,” she said. “But if they’re not okay, then we’re going to plan B, and I’ll be in charge of it.”

With that, she took a step forward, tripped over a chunk of driftwood, and fell headlong onto the stones again. The satchel she carried, with her phone and a flashlight in it, flew from her hand, landing with a tinkling crash.

The flashlight
, she thought as her cheek smacked hard stone. But it wasn’t the flashlight smashing, she realized in the next moment; it was the phone. Meanwhile …

Pushing up painfully from the wet, cold rocks, she grabbed the cell phone and raised her head just in time to see the flashlight rolling toward the water. “Bella …”

But Bella was busy grabbing up the satchel with one hand and Jake’s arm with the other. “Come on,” she hissed. “If he’s nearby he could’ve heard that.”

The flashlight kept rolling, a small dark tube moving down the sharp slope to where the waves lapped. But not all the way—a rock stuck up from the water’s edge.