Missing Persons

70

I stumbled back toward the table to grab my phone and as I reached out I managed to push it over the edge onto the floor. The phone clattered and slid away into the darkness. I dropped down to my hands and knees to try to locate it.

“Alan!” Bill stage-whispered from the basement. “Down here, please, hurry.”

“I’m calling for help.”

“Please, it’s Mallory!”

The tunnel? I scrambled to my feet and felt my way toward the basement stairs, found them, and slowly started descending. A solitary step into the basement I ran into someone. The shock of the collision took my breath away.

“It’s me,” Bill whispered. I could feel his breath on my face. “Come on.”

He took my wrist and led me across a room and through a doorway. “This is where the glass broke, I think.”

I couldn’t see broken glass. But then, I couldn’t see much. “You said it was Mallory. Where is she?”

“What are you talking about?”

What? “Where’s the tunnel?” I asked.

“In the crawl space.”

Somewhere nearby, a door closed in the house. Bill released my arm and stepped away from me, back toward the door we’d just come through.

I moved in the same direction.

“Shhh,” he said.

“Is there a phone down here?” I whispered.

“Quiet. I need to listen.”

The door at the far side of the room we were in opened slowly. A figure paused in the doorway-a black silhouette against an almost black background. Burnt food on a cast-iron skillet.

Mallory? No. Too large, too masculine.

Bob? Maybe.

I was about to call Bob’s name when the person’s right arm began to rise and a brilliant flash blinded me and a deafening roar blasted my ears. Before I could even process the first explosion, another one erupted. Then, I thought, another. The figure’s knees began to buckle and he grasped at the door frame with both hands.

The support did him no good. A second later he heaved forward and collapsed to the floor.

My hearing temporarily gone, my eyes useless in a basement dark as a moonless night, I was most aware of the smell of the burnt powder from the gun. I was trying to figure out what had just happened. Bill touched my arm and forced a flashlight into my hand. I flicked it on and saw the gun he was holding. It was a revolver. A big thing.

“Over here,” Bill said. I pointed the light in the direction of his voice. He’d stepped away from me and was standing in front of a gray electrical panel. With the benefit of the illumination he reached up and pulled hard at the main power circuit.

Instantly the lights in the house came back on.

With great relief I realized that I didn’t recognize the man in the heap at the foot of the stairs. It definitely wasn’t Bob.

The butt of a pistol had come to rest two inches from the man’s nose. Had the man been holding it? I didn’t remember hearing it clatter to the floor. I said, “Who is it? Do you know him?”

Bill moved closer. “It’s Doyle.”

He didn’t sound surprised.