Vertical Coffin

Chapter 26

Of course, Jo Brickhouse wanted to be our tunnel rat- the one to go through the hole.

"I'm not the CHCO, remember?" she said, her attitude temporarily replaced by excitement. "Look, Scully, I'm smaller. If that tunnel narrows down you're gonna get stuck in there."

I'm sure it was one of the few times in her life that Jo Brickhouse had admitted to being smaller. But she had a point.

"Okay, but take a Handy-Talkie. Talk to me all the way to the bomb shelter."

"Of course. You think I'd even consider doing this without you bitching in my ear and barking instructions?"

I went back to the car and picked up two Handy-Talkies and a flashlight, then jogged back to the basement area.

The female cadets were all standing around Jo Brickhouse, staring at her. They were impressed. This buff, hot-looking lady sheriff had just backed off the big, dumb L. A. cop. She was going to crawl through that tunnel alone, prepared to face untold dangers in some underground cavern. You could feel the adrenaline and hero worship flowing back and forth among the six young women and Jo. The male cadets were harder to read, but were probably thinking, Whatta pussy this L. A. cop turned out to be.

Finally, Jo was ready. She triggered the Handy-Talkie.

"Radio check," her voice screamed from my belt.

I took my unit off and turned down the volume, then spoke into it: "Okay, we're hot."

She leaned toward me. "This is more like it."

She looked at her audience once, then dropped down on her hands and knees and looked into the hole.

"Better take this."

I handed her the flashlight I'd brought from the car. She eased halfway into the tunnel, paused, then continued all the way in.

After she disappeared we were left standing around looking at the mouth of the hole. Me and my two dozen disapproving helpers.

"That's one brave lady," one of the female cadets said.

"Just hope she doesn't run into the gopher who dug that thing," I said.

They looked at me for a moment, trying to make sense of it. "Kidding," I added.

That remark lost me the few remaining points I had left. It was bad enough that I was afraid to go through the tunnel, but how could I make jokes about heroic Sergeant Brickhouse at a time like this? I'm telling you, it's hard to be an enlightened male. I usually end up wrong.

I looked at my watch. Two minutes. I triggered the Handy-Talkie. "How's it going?"

I could hear the squelch as she triggered her unit, then heard her grunting with effort as she elbow-crawled along.

"Gotta… It's kinda… can see…"

Then static-then nothing.

We waited some more. The cadets all had worried expressions as we stared at the hole. Robyn DeYoung was sitting on the bottom step of the basement stairs looking interested but skeptical.

"I triggered the unit again. "Come in. What's going on? You okay?"

All I heard back was static.

"One of us should go in after her," a dark-haired female cadet said, starting to cinch her slicker tighter.

"No-she's okay. It's just that we've lost range on the Handy-Talkie. These units aren't too good transmitting through solid matter."

"I'll go in and look for her," a blonde cadet volunteered.

"… find… in… light…" I heard Jo say through a wall of static. We were all staring at the round, dark hole like a team of anxious proctologists.

A minute later Robyn De Young stood. Now she looked concerned. "She's been in there over five minutes."

"I guess I'd better go in," I said, and reluctantly belted my slicker.

"Won't be necessary, Hoss."

Everyone spun around. Jo Brickhouse was standing on the stairs behind us, backlit by the morning sun, spiky blonde hair dusted over with dirt.

"How'd you get there?" I said.

We all scrambled up the stairs and back into the burned out house.

"Come on, I'll show you."

She led the way across the backyard toward a four-foot-high grape stake fence. She grabbed the top of the fence and easily jackknifed up and over-a perfect, gymnastic parallel bar move. Nothing to it. I tried to duplicate the maneuver, but parallel bars are not my event, unless they've got Coors signs in the windows.

Eventually, most of us landed on the other side of the fence and followed Jo, who was winding her way down into an overgrown gully behind the house. She stopped and pointed to the other end of the hole.

"No bomb shelter. Just a tunnel. Starts in the basement, comes out here."

Finally everybody had climbed down to where she stood and we all studied this opening with varying expressions of confusion.

"You sure you didn't miss a fork or anything in there?

"This is it," Jo said. "The tunnel follows the washer drain pipe most of the way. The last fifty feet or so, the pipe goes right, but he dug straight through to here."

One thing I had come to learn working crime investigations is that even the most confusing things usually have some kind of central logic. If they appear not to, then what you have to do is rearrange the facts until the correct pattern emerges.

As I looked down at the tunnel I knew that I was working the wrong theory. We definitely had some pieces way out of order.