An Unquiet Grave

CHAPTER 37

Thirty-five minutes. A damn long thirty-five minutes.

Louis leaned against the wall, staring at the sky. He had heard nothing from above. No Charlie. No footsteps. No sirens. No voices.

It was well after three now and what little warmth the sun had provided all afternoon was long gone and the sky was turning a smoky gray. In another two hours, it would be dark.

He looked back at the lift. He had broken every slat and even pulled a post from the wall in his attempts to climb it again. His knuckles were bleeding and he had ripped his jeans along the shin in a second fall. The cold was seeping into his shoes and down his collar.

He stared down into the tunnel.

Charlie should have been back by now. Unless the troopers had just put him in a squad car and called Dalum to pick him up again. Maybe if Dalum did, Charlie would tell him about the tunnel.

Maybe.

He looked back up. Well, he could stand here and stare at the sky or go find something that he could use to climb up with.

Louis turned on the flashlight and shone it ahead of him into the darkness. He took three deep breaths before he started walking, but this time he tried to count his steps, and he guessed he had gone thirty feet when he stopped to listen for sounds.

Dripping water and a lingering echo of something. His footsteps? His heart?

He moved on, the darkness suffocating, the only light coming from the sweep of the flashlight beam as it jerked around the cave of concrete.

Ten, twenty feet more, and he wondered if he had crossed under the iron fence that formed the eastern boundary of the Hidden Lake grounds.

Then the light picked up something new. Doors. Large, heavy, and made of rusted metal. They were wide open, pushed back against the walls.

There would be no cinder-block walls in this tunnel, Louis suddenly knew. These doors were the barrier to the outside. He bent and examined the sides, looking for a latch or a lock. There was none. Then he pulled on them. Neither was easy to move, both too rusty and old, their bottoms resting heavily on the floor.

The flashlight beam picked up something else. Long scraping arcs across the concrete floor where it looked like the doors had been forced open and closed many times. He was about to turn away and move on, when the light caught something on the door.

Paint, maybe. Or even blood. .

A scrawl that looked like a handprint. And it came to him in an instant. The old man in Detroit, Maury. Buddy Ives’s landlord said Ives had put the same mark on his apartment wall. But there was something else, too.

Louis stared at the handprint.

The same mark had been on Dr. Seraphin’s old office wall in E Building, near Zeke’s head. He remembered seeing it now next to the word bitch.

Ives was their killer. Louis had no doubt now. The teenager who had raped and killed his grandmother, raped Millie Reuben, and killed Sharon Stottlemyer and Rebecca Gruber, was living here.

He had been right. Dr. Seraphin had been right.

He shone the flashlight ahead of him, the beam lasering through the darkness. He knew he shouldn’t go any deeper into the tunnel. But if Ives was living down here, there had to be something down here he used to climb out with. And it couldn’t be much farther. Ives would want to keep it handy, in case he needed to make a quick exit.

A few more feet. He’d still be close enough to hear the doors close if Ives somehow came back behind him.

He moved on. The water was all over the floor now, a black rivulet that ran downhill with the subtle slope of the floor. He was starting to hear other things, too. The scratch of little feet. Faint knocking noises behind the wall, like some trapped animal. And the trickle of water moving in pipes he couldn’t see.

Then suddenly the beam of light lost the wall, disappearing into an expanse of darkness to his left. It took a second for him to realize it was another tunnel, branching off in a T from the tunnel he was in.

He tried to clear his head, reorient himself, and get a bead on his direction. If the tunnel he was in now ran east-west from the cemetery to the mortuary, that meant this new one ran due south. Maybe this was Ives’s other exit.

He swung the flashlight beam into the darkness to his left. But this south tunnel could lead anywhere, and he was damned sure he didn’t want to end up under the hospital in a maze of darkness.

He would go straight ahead, keep heading to the mortuary. It wasn’t much comfort, but at least he would know which building he was near then. Maybe some cop would hear him.

Shit, maybe some cop would shoot him, thinking he was Ives.

Louis walked on, the water at his feet turning to a slimy sludge of mold. Then he started hearing something else. The pitter of something alive and moving, and a few steps later, he saw it and he froze. The rat froze too, its eyes glowing red in the flashlight beam. Then it was gone.

He waited until his heart slowed; then he went a few more steps.

The beam picked up something gray ahead. A cinder-block wall. He hurried to it, and sticking the flashlight under his arm, he ran his hands over it. All the blocks were in place, solid and unyielding. He even gave it a kick to make sure.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

The screech came out of nowhere, long and lingering, the sound slashing through the tunnel.

At first he thought it was a woman screaming. And it seemed to come from somewhere in front of him, maybe on the other side of the wall. But then he knew it was the scrape of metal on concrete. And it came from behind him.

He spun and ran back, the flashlight jerking over the walls, the sound of his breath rushing in his ears. Twenty feet. Ten. Five. But he still couldn’t see the doors.

Then suddenly the light hit metal and he ran right into them.

Closed. They were closed.

He spun backward, trying to hold his breath, trying to hear something. But he heard nothing. Ives was gone. Probably out through the lift entrance. He would have no reason to stay down here now. Ives knew more cops would come. He was probably crawling out onto the grass this second. And by the time Charlie brought anyone here-if he brought anyone here-Ives could be out of the state.

Damn it! Son of a bitch!

Louis almost threw the flashlight, but he stopped himself. He pulled in a thick breath and looked back at the doors. He hadn’t seen a lock. But there was no handle either. His fingers groped along the edges, but the doors were tight and flat against each other. He knelt, feeling everywhere, looking at every corner, and looking again, even checking the bottom for some way to get his fingers under it. Nothing.

Okay. Think.

Again, he ran his hands over the doors, but there was nothing. Finally, he stood back and shone the light down on his palms. They were stained with rust, dirt, and blood from where he had reopened the tears in the knuckles. He realized his hands were growing numb. And suddenly, he felt something else. A nub of fear, deep in his gut.

Stop this. There has to be something down here you can use.

Cans of food. Some form of furniture. A blanket. . he could use a blanket right now. Or a fucking exit.

Wait. . there is another exit. You saw it in the warehouse. It was somewhere south. . you can find it.

He went back to the T-intersection and turned south. A few feet into the new tunnel the concrete walls and floor changed to that same ugly tile he had seen in his short walk in the E Building tunnel. He knew he was definitely inside the fence now, but he couldn’t gauge what building he might be near.

He swung the flashlight up to the ceiling. There was a single line of electrical sockets, most empty but with a few bare bulbs still in place. But he didn’t see any switches and the lights were probably disconnected anyway.

There was less water now, but more rats. The scratching and scampering were almost constant, and every once in a while the light would catch one as it moved along the edge of the wall. He started keeping the beam at waist level, not wanting to see them.

Then he started spotting trash.

Large, open cans of corn, peas, and soup, the edges of the tins crusted with mold and crawling with roaches. Then the smell of urine, and he lowered the beam to the floor, knowing what he was going to see, but needing to look anyway.

Feces. Little piles. Dried. Some fresh. A trail of them.

Louis put a hand out to the wall to steady himself, fighting the gag in his throat. He wanted to close his eyes, but he knew if he did, he’d lose his stomach.

He forced his feet forward, one step at a time, and kept moving until the smell faded. The corridor was clear for a while longer, filled with just tiny pieces of garbage and an occasional dead mouse.

He realized he had stopped counting his steps and he wondered how far he’d come and he found himself looking up, as if he could somehow see through the ceiling and earth and figure out what building he was under.

He moved on, following the jump of the flashlight beam. The sound of the rats and water was still in his ears, and he realized he was growing used to it, beginning to think of it as normal.

Then he came to another intersection.

This time the tunnels went in both directions, and he had three new paths he could take.

He walked straight ahead, counting on some weird feeling that it might be right. Maybe fifty more feet, another intersection. Again splitting in four directions.

He had a sudden strange image of Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs along their trail. He reached inside his jacket, grabbed a felt-tip pen, and used it to mark an X on the tile wall with an arrow pointing back toward the way he had come.

He heard a soft shriek, something like a frightened animal might make, and he turned quickly, scanning the tunnel. He waited, unsure what it had been.

Now another shriek. Stronger. Closer. Human.

He spun back, unable to tell the direction, his mind suddenly electrified with a dozen thoughts that were coming too fast. Was it a woman?

Then a third, this one a full scream.

Oh, Jesus. It was a woman.

Where was she? Was she alone? She had to be alone. Ives had left, hadn’t he? Why else close the doors? Why lock himself out?

She had to be alone. Had to be tied up or just lost. And he had to find her.

Then another scream, this one piercing, and it was echoing all around him. He took a step down one of the side tunnels, listening, but still there was no sense of direction. He was about to shout back at her, but she screamed again-a long, agonizing scream that ricocheted through the dark tunnels and seemed to go on forever until it was absorbed by the darkness.

Then. . laughter? Yes, just a trickle of it, so quick and unexpected that when it was gone he wasn’t sure he had heard it.

Ives. He hadn’t left the tunnels. He was down here with a woman and he was hurting her.

Louis started to call to her but he stopped himself. Shouting would alert Ives that he was here. But Ives already knew that, didn’t he? But what if he didn’t? What if Louis called to her and Ives panicked and killed her? Then came looking for him?

Jesus. Think, Louis. Think.

Another scream, a ragged, piercing one. Louis stepped to his right, drawn to that tunnel, and he moved down it.

More screams, a rush of them, each one louder and more wretched. Louis quickened his step, the light jumping, his ears following the echos. But there was still nothing to see. Nothing.

Until suddenly another cinder-block wall. As sturdy and solid as the one by the mortuary.

Louis spun back.

Where the hell was she?

He trained the light into the tunnel, the beam stretching long and deep into the blackness.

Where the hell was he?