Play Dead

Chapter 45

Elise listened to the crackling and scurrying of a million cockroaches, and the sound of dripping water.

Where was her backup? She pulled out her cell phone.

No signal.

She checked her watch. Starsky and Hutch should have reached Mary of the Angels by now.

Never go in without backup.

Every rookie knew that.

She returned the phone to her pocket and continued in the direction of the cemetery.

As she walked, her subterranean view never seemed to change. The tunnel stretched out before her, going on and on until reaching a vanishing point like some artistic lesson in perspective.

Suddenly her flashlight beam picked up a dark shape in the distance.

Elise shut off the light and jumped from one side of the tunnel to the other, quickly changing her position. Crouched, she pulled out her handgun and listened.

Poets and writers always tried to describe complete and total darkness, but it couldn't be done. It wasn't just being unable to see the smallest flicker of anything. It was that weird and false sensation of having something solid right in front of your face.

Something all around you.

Closing in.

Audrey tried David Gould's number again. Still no answer. She hung up and slipped on her panda bear backpack. Maybe he was home. Maybe he just wasn't answering his phone. Some people did that. Audrey didn't know why, but they did.

Mary of the Angels wasn't that far from the police station. Probably eight blocks. She would just walk there. See if she could find David.

Her dad always told her to be careful in the Historic and Victorian Districts, not to walk around by herself, but it wasn't night, and there were lots of people out, especially tourists taking pictures and staring at buildings and talking about how hot it was.

It didn't take Audrey long to get to Mary of the Angels.

A spooky place, really old with lots of ivy. Up high, on top of the building, were weird iron silhouettes, the gray roof reminding her of a place where chimney sweeps would dance and sing and get dirty.

She spotted a police car in front of the building. And a lot of people standing outside. Two of them were detectives she recognized from the police station.

She went up to one of them and asked what they were doing.

"Aren't you Elise Sandburg's kid?" the detective asked. He had a red face and freckles.

Audrey clung to her backpack straps. "She told me to call David Gould, but he isn't answering his phone. Is something wrong with him9" CUa hoped not. That gave her a weird feeling in her stomach.

"We don't know."

"Where's my mom? Wasn't she meeting you at Strata Luna's?" Audrey was feeling more nervous by the second. "She told me you were serving a search warrant."

"Something came up here," the detective said, glancing nervously at his partner.

They were keeping secrets. Audrey could tell.

"Is my mom okay?" she asked, her voice rising.

He put out his hands as if she were a dog he was trying to keep from jumping on him. "She's in a little tunnel under Mary of the Angels, that's all. No big deal. She should be showing up here soon."

"In the tunnel? By herself? She wouldn't do that. I know she wouldn't do that."

"She's in the tunnel," the partner said, beginning to sound annoyed.

"Then why are you out here?" Audrey glanced around.

Two police officers were just standing by the apartment building, talking to a gray-haired guy holding a cat.

"Why aren't you in the tunnel too?"

The detectives looked at each other, and Audrey could see shame in their faces. "They're too dangerous," the freckled man told her. "Nobody is supposed to go in them. Not even the police."

"You have to go in there!" Audrey said, looking from one to the other. "You have to!"

She knew about public ridicule. After all, she was thirteen.

"Are you afraid to go in the tunnel?" she taunted. "Are you afraid of a few little bugs?"

Elise's heart was hammering in her head.

Her breathing was choppy.

She couldn't hear anything but the beat of her own fear.

Should have waited for backup.

No time!

She straightened to a half crouch. Slowly, her eyes open wide and straining at nothing, she moved forward.

She tried to retrieve the image. Tried to recall exactly how it had looked.

Dark. Misshapen. Maybe the size of a person, but it could also have been something else. Some artifact left over from the time the tunnels had been secretly used to cart plague victims to the cemetery.

She paused and straightened.

With feet spread and legs braced, she held her gun against the flashlight, aiming in the direction she thought the shape should be. But like someone driving in heavy fog, she found it impossible to gauge how far she'd come since turning off the light, and how far away the shape had been to begin with.

She pressed the switch, turning on the light.

Where?

She shifted the beam.

There.

And held it.

The shape was exactly as she'd remembered, but with more detail.

Dark fabric. The approximate size of a person.

She moved forward one slow step at a time, never taking her eyes off the object.

A dress.

Black lace.

The curve of a person's back under crumpled fabric.

A gloved hand.

For all appearances, a dead body.

Strata Luna's dead body.

But since dead bodies had a way of not being dead, Elise approached with caution.

She hooked a foot against the shoulder.

The body unrolled limply from its huddled, protective position, falling with an echoing thud against the floor.

Strata Luna.

Eyes open.

Mouth open.

A pool of blood.

Dead.

Where was David?

What was going on?

Who'd killed Strata Luna?

Where was David?

The dead body suddenly heaved, sucking in air.

Elise jumped, almost dropping the flashlight.

"Go" the black, bloody heap rasped, pointing down the length of the tunnel, her monumental struggle to communicate conveying the utmost urgency.

Elise scrambled to her feet, turned, and raced toward the cemetery, keeping her head low.

No time to think, no time to try to figure out what was going on beyond the obvious.

The killer wasn't Strata Luna.

David Gould was in danger.

Those were the two things she knew. The only things she knew.