Better off Dead

Chapter 35

I closed the phone, slipped it into my pocket, and got out of the car. Mansour must have seen me tailing him after all. Or maybe he spotted Sonia’s car. But whatever it was, something had spooked him. That was clear. Because he was staying inside. I could wait him out. There were no creature comforts in the house. And he didn’t strike me as a patient kind of guy. Not as patient as me. I was pretty sure of that. But appearances can be deceptive. I had no idea how long he would stay. Every minute he lay low was a minute Fenton might not have. And there was no guarantee he would come out my side. He could sneak out of the back. Make me get involved with chasing him. Or he could go after Sonia. I didn’t want to end up with two hostages to rescue. So I decided on a different approach.

I cut across diagonally from the sidewalk to the front right-hand corner of the house. Ducked down. Crept beneath the window. Past the door. Around to the far side. Ducked below the first bedroom window. And stopped outside the next room. The bathroom. The best room to break in through. The place you’re least likely to find anyone hanging around. And if someone does happen to be there, they’ll be in the least favorable position to fight back.

I took the knife I’d captured from the guy at the Border Inn out of my pocket. Discarded its sheath. Found its largest blade. Unfolded it. Heard it click into place. It felt solid so I reached across and worked the blade up into the gap between the two sash panels. I found the lock. It was stiff. I increased the pressure until it rotated far enough to disengage. I put the knife away. Switched the gun to my other hand. Raised the lower pane. Just an inch. And peeked in. It was dark. The room seemed empty. There was no movement. No breathing. No running water. Just a regular drip, drip, drip, like I’d heard earlier.

I opened the window the rest of the way and climbed through. I stood and listened. I couldn’t hear anyone. Couldn’t sense anyone’s presence. I didn’t move for five minutes. I needed my eyes to adjust to the dark as fully as possible. Then I moved to the main room. No one was there. I tried the large bedroom. The small bedroom. The kitchen. No one was in any of those places. I tried the external doors. They were locked. I found a light switch. Flicked it on. Saw nothing that helped. Which just left one place to check.

I went back into the bathroom and pulled the front off the medicine cabinet. The whole thing was a mirror. It was old. Its silver was tarnished in places. But it was good enough for what I needed. I approached the hole in the main room’s floor. Stopped three feet from the edge. Used the mirror to look down. Saw the furnace. The water tank. But not Mansour. I worked my way around the circle. Started to the left of the ladder. Moved clockwise. Examined the space below. Inspected it from every angle. All the way around to the right of the ladder. No one was there. The guy had disappeared. There was no trace of him at all.

He must have heard me breaking into the bathroom and used the opportunity to escape. I figured I’d better check in with Sonia in case he went out the back and found her. I put the mirror down and reached for my phone, and I noticed something on the floor. It was faint, but definitely there. A footprint. It was large. Size eighteen, at least. Maybe twenty. Pointing toward the front door. I scanned the path whoever left it should have followed. But I couldn’t see any other prints. I crouched down and looked from every angle. And realized why. The trail stretched in the opposite direction. The guy had come in through the back door. He’d walked around the hole. Got to the top of the ladder. Turned around. And gone down. His feet must have gotten soaked at Dendoncker’s building. By the sprinklers, or all the water the firefighters had hosed in. They must have still been damp when he climbed down. They must have dried out the rest of the way while he was in the cellar. Then when he came back up, they left no more prints.

The drying-out part was fine. But I couldn’t understand why he’d gone into the cellar in the first place. There was just a furnace down there. And a water tank. Maybe, when he heard me breaking in, he decided to hide. It was possible. But the guy didn’t strike me as the hiding kind. There must have been some other reason. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of going belowground but whatever drew the guy down there was my only clue as to where he might have gone. I stood up, grabbed the ladder, and started to descend. I went faster this time. I figured that if the rungs could take his weight, they could sure as hell take mine.

I found a footprint at the bottom of the ladder. Another big one. I could see where the guy had turned. And walked over to the wall. To the section directly below the door to the bathroom. Then he’d stopped. And stood still. There was a pair of prints, side by side. But I couldn’t see where he went next. I crouched down and checked the floor from every available angle. There was nothing. The trail had vanished.

I spun around, gun out in front. I had a sudden vision of the guy charging at me from behind the furnace or the water tank. I figured he could have made the footprints as a lure so he could attack me from behind. But there was no one racing toward me. No one was there at all. It was like the guy had just walked through the wall.

I turned back and rapped the wall with my knuckles. Maybe there was a hiding place behind it. Or a safe room. But the wall wasn’t hollow. It was the opposite. It sounded dense. Solid. Far more so than I would have expected for such an old structure. I moved to the side until I was beneath the smaller bedroom. I rapped again. The note was different. It was lighter. Emptier. I tried beneath the larger bedroom. That also sounded thin and flimsy. I went back to the center. Tried again there. I hadn’t imagined it. It was like a castle wall in comparison. I took out the knife. Extended the biggest blade. Stabbed the surface. The wood was old. It looked desiccated and weak. The knife penetrated. But not far. Only three quarters of an inch. Then it hit something hard. Some kind of metal. I tried six inches to the right. The result was the same. I shifted another six inches. And another. I hit metal every time. The tenth spot I tried was different. The knife sank in all the way to the handle. Six inches beyond there, it sank in again.

I moved to a thin gap between the panels near the third and fourth places I’d hit metal. I jammed the blade in as far as it would go, then pushed to the side and tried to lever the wood forward. The surface layer separated. It came off in a jagged hunk, but a strip was left behind. I tried a foot lower and got the same result. It was the original wood. I was sure of that. But it was stuck to something with incredibly strong glue. Something metal. It must be a door. I couldn’t see any other explanation. But I also couldn’t see any handle. Or keyhole. Or any method of opening it at all.

I started at the top left and worked systematically across and down. I was pushing with my fingertips, checking every square inch. Looking for a concealed button. Or a secret flap. Or anything a lock could be hidden behind. I found nothing. I tried the sections of wall on either side. Had no luck there, either. I tried kicking the wall. There wasn’t a hint of movement. Not even any noise. It was muffled by the wooden skin. I turned, raised my knee, and drove my heel back like I had done at Fenton’s hotel. It didn’t even make a dent.

I began to search the walls farther to the side, then stopped. Putting the controls so far away didn’t make sense. I had no experience with safe rooms but I assumed that if someone like Dendoncker had one, he would want to be able to get in it quickly. The whole point was to use them in an emergency. That implies a high degree of urgency. You wouldn’t want to go to the far corner of the cellar to operate some kind of elaborate mechanism. Even keying in a PIN could be too much of a delay. Plus PINs can be guessed or discovered or betrayed. Some kind of remote control would be a better solution. Like cars have. Then another thought struck me. Sonia said the gate at Dendoncker’s plant was operated by a transponder. And if that was a technology Dendoncker trusted in one key area of his operation, why not in another?

If a transponder was needed to open this hidden door, Mansour must have one. I didn’t know what they looked like. I thought back to that morning, when I searched his pockets at the morgue. To his keyring. Transponders serve the same function as keys. That would be a reasonable place to keep one. And Mansour’s had one thing that stood out. The square piece of plastic. I had dismissed it at the time as a fob. The guys at The Tree also had them. I pulled out the Chevy’s keys. There was nothing similar on its ring. I guess the guy I took it from wasn’t senior enough. Which left me with a self-defeating proposition. The only way to get a transponder was to take one from Mansour. But if I could get my hands on him to take his transponder, I wouldn’t need it anymore. I figured the best option was to wait for him to come back out. Or to trick him into coming out. Or to lure another of Dendoncker’s stooges down there. And hope he had enough juice to warrant a transponder.

Juice. Aka power. Status. And in some places, slang for electricity. If the door lock was remotely triggered by a signal from a transponder, it must run on electricity. I crossed to the wall by the water tank. Where the fuse box was mounted. It was a decrepit-looking thing. Dark wood. Scuffed and battered. Like an electrocution waiting to happen. I opened its door. There was a row of insulators inside. Old school. Made of porcelain. Six of them. Each cradling an exposed section of fuse wire. They all looked intact. They all looked equally obsolete. There were no labels. No markings. Nothing to indicate which circuits they served. I figured I could pull them, one at a time, and see what happened. But it would be quicker to hit the switch at the top that controlled them all. I reached for it, then stopped. At the bottom, tucked away in the right-hand corner, there was a pack of matches. I was amazed how often people put matches and flashlights in their fuse box. It made no sense. It was the wrong way around. The fuse box is the destination in a power failure. Not a starting point.

I took the pack, struck a match, and flicked the switch. The bulb on the first floor blinked out. The cellar shrunk until it felt no bigger than the flickering pool of light from the flame. I couldn’t see much. I couldn’t swear to it, but I thought I heard something. Behind me. From the wall below the bathroom. A click. Soft. But definitely mechanical.

I moved back to the section I’d been gouging with the knife. I took out my gun. Leaned against the wall. And pushed. It didn’t move. I slammed my shoulder against it. And felt it give. Just an inch. I figured it wasn’t only the lock that was electric. The door itself was motorized. The mechanism wasn’t designed to work without power. So I pushed harder. The panel swung back another inch. And another.

A crack appeared and light shone through. It wasn’t bright. It had kind of an orange tone. But the other side was definitely illuminated. I dropped the match and crushed out the flame with my shoe. I stepped aside. Listened. I picked up no sound at all. No movement. No breathing. I waited a minute. Then I threw my full weight at the door. I kept shoving. The crack stretched to four inches. I dropped into a crouch. My gun was ready. I peered through the gap. I could see a wall of bricks to the right. They were slightly uneven sizes. They’d been whitewashed at some point and now the surface was flaking away. The mortar was crumbling. The floor was covered with the same tiles as the main part of the cellar. There was no sign of Mansour. I braced myself. I expected him to try to push the door back and knock me flying. Or pull it open and send me sprawling at his feet. But nothing happened. There was no movement. No sound. None of the subliminal vibrations emitted by another living creature. I was left with the feeling of being alone. I waited two minutes. Just to be sure. Then I pushed the door until the gap was big enough to squeeze through.