52 Steps to Murder (16 page)

We locked the door, tested it, and breathed a sigh of relief. But it was a short sigh. A few seconds later we heard footsteps, huffing and puffing, and the rattling of the door. The big bad wolf had returned. I reached out, pulled the doorknob with all the strength I had left. Whoever or whatever was on the other side of the door didn’t give up easily. The struggle for supremacy continued. I needed a quick bite of my candy to sustain me, but I doubted that our adversary would allow me to call a time-out. Instead, I remembered that, supposedly, there’s strength in numbers.

“Quick, Lou. Run upstairs and call headquarters. Get us some back-up. I’ll try to hold on here until you get back,” I uttered, breathing heavily.

Lou wasted no time with a rebuttal.

I held on each time our assailant rattled the door. Each time I managed to get some leverage, my sock foot slid across the floor. In a couple of minutes Lou returned.

“They’re on their way. Is it still there?” Lou asked in a voice that showed he was as much out of breath as I.

I turned to reply while I kept my hand on the doorknob.

“I’m not sure. There hasn’t been anything for about a minute. Look and see if you can find a button that will open and shut the wall.”

“There’s not enough light. In all the excitement, I left my flashlight in the kitchen. Wait a second while I get it.”

“I’m not going anywhere. At least I hope I’m not going anywhere.”

Lou climbed the steps breathing laboriously. When he got to the top, he paused for a moment, put both hands on his   thighs, and rested. He could rest only a moment, because neither of us knew the identity of whomever or whatever hovered on the other side of the lower door. Would that man or beast beat or claw his or its way through the door before reinforcements arrived? Lou hurried to pick up his flashlight, sat down on the next-to-the-top step, turned around, and shined his light under the top step.

“Yeah, there are some buttons here, Cy.”

“Okay, I’m going to chance it, Lou. Maybe whatever it is won’t come up where there’s light.”

I trudged up the steps, sidestepped Lou, stepped through the open pantry wall, and fell into a chair in the kitchen. As I groaned, Lou leaned over and pushed the button that slid the lower wall back into place. Not taking any chances, he stepped through and closed the pantry wall, too. Both of us were exhausted. The two of us went to the living room, plopped down in well-padded chairs while we waited for reinforcements.

+++

A few minutes later Lou and I heard sirens. “Here come the Marines.” Several men came running up the steps. One of those men was Lt. George Michaelson, a good friend and long-time member of the force.

“What happened to you two? Have a falling out?” George exclaimed as he walked into the room and wondered if he had happened upon the aftermath of the main event or the preliminary bout.

“You should see the other guy,” I replied. Actually, I had no interest in any of us seeing the other guy.

“You mean you called in this many back-ups for just one other guy?”

“There’s only one that we know of, but we’re not sure if it’s human or not.”

“Could be both. Maybe you ran into a werewolf or a vampire.”

“Could be.”

“So where is our mysterious beast?” George asked.

“Under the house as far as we know.”

“So the house fell on the wicked witch, huh?”

“More like a wicked warlock, I’d say,” I answered.

“Well, do you want us to take over from here?”

“I guess we’d better lead. You don’t know the way.”

An incredulous look appeared on George’s face.

“You mean we don’t go down to get under the house?”

“We do, but in all the excitement we forgot to mark the path.”

George looked down at my feet.

“What happened, Cy? Find a shoe?”

“No, but someone did.”

George laughed and wondered what predicament we had gotten ourselves into.

Lou lifted himself from the chair, walked hesitantly to the pantry. The rest of us followed him. It was George’s first trip to the house. He looked surprised when Lou turned the lid on the olives and the wall slid away.

“Whoa! This is some set-up you’ve got here, Cy. I see what you mean about not marking the path.”

Lou bent over, reached under the step, and hit the button that opened the wall. I watched George as Lou pushed the button. Each new button impressed George a little more.

“Say, how much are you paying for this place, anyway. I might want to sublet.”

“We’ve got one more for you before we get to the big surprise, George.”

All doubt had left George’s face. He was ready to believe anything we told him. Well, maybe not everything.

Lou pushed the other button and the panel at the bottom of the steps slid away, revealing the door. I noticed that no one pulled on the other side. Lou and I led the men down the stairs. We grimaced in pain with each step. With no railing to lean on to help us in our descent, both of us felt the brunt of the pain with each downward step. Also, with each step we grew closer to another possible encounter with the man or beast on the other side of the door.

“Be ready. He or it might be just on the other side.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. Just open the door, Cy, and spare me the histrionics,” George said, quickly forgetting that everything I’d told him to that point had turned out to be true.

Lou reached for the bolt, slid it until the door was unlocked. He waited a moment to see if anyone charged us. When no one opened the door, he pushed it slightly open.

“Here! Get out of the way! I’ll lead the way,” George said.

22

George opened the door the rest of the way, beamed his flashlight in front of him, cut through the darkness, and focused on the steps and the expansive area below.

“What kind of place do you have here, anyway? And where’s your monster?” he asked as he turned to face me.

There was no sign of life below. Lou and I exchanged perplexed glances. Had we scared our assailant away?

George led the officers down the steps and almost tripped over the shoe the maniac ripped from my foot. George recognized it, turned and flipped it to me. I took a chance and sat down on the step, slipped my shoe back on.

When George got to the bottom, he shined his flashlight from side to side. Nothing. Nothing but a dirt floor, concrete walls. There appeared to be no end to the expansive underground. I guessed the area to be thirty feet wide and who knows how long. The group spread out and each of us flashed our lights back and forth. Finally, one man called out.

“I’ve got something over here!”

Everyone hurried to the officer who had shouted. Our lights joined his as we focused on a man, kneeling and whimpering. His clothes were filthy. His hair was matted with dirt, and he had not shaved in some time.

“Is this your monster?” George turned and asked Lou and me. We didn’t know, but we assumed he was.

George stood around six feet three inches tall. Although gray was beginning to mix with his flaxen-color hair, his muscular body still looked capable of landing a punch, and his granite-looking jaw looked like it could still take one. Especially if he knew one was coming. Before George could turn around, the kneeling man sprang toward him with the quickness of a cat. Unprepared, George fell back onto the dirt. By the time any of us could respond, the man who appeared to live underground rose up and took off running in the dark. As far as anyone could tell, the man had no weapon other than his hands. Everyone tried to keep him in sight. We shined our flashlights on the disappearing man as we took off in pursuit. Naturally, neither Lou nor I was in the lead.

After two hundred feet or so, a wall signaled the end of the straightaway, but the dirt roadway took a hard turn to the right. The man vanished around a corner, a bevy of bluecoats bore down from behind. The hounds stalked the fox with no tree in sight. As I arrived at the first turn, I prayed that our path was not circular. I envisioned lemmings following one another in an orderly fashion for days on end with no cliffs to jump off, no place to drown, and all the dirt looking the same as the dirt before it.

As the first of the uniformed officers arrived at the end of the underground passage and turned right, he caught a glimpse of the disheveled man disappearing around another bend. Several of Hilldale’s finest scrambled after him, but arrived at the second curve to find no one there.

“Where did he go?” one of the men asked, surprised that the man they thought they had contained had disappeared into the darkness. When the rest of us caught up, everyone gathered in a circle and faced outward. We shined our flashlights in every direction, but only flying dust penetrated our lighted path. We saw no sign of our fugitive.

George shouted instructions to the others.

“Be careful, men. He could be hiding anywhere.”

Actually, there weren’t too many places the man could hide. While the dirt floor was around thirty feet wide, the only place our fleeing trespasser could hide was underneath some steps, unless he gained entrance to one of the houses.

“Unless he can get inside one of these houses, we’ve got him trapped. Let’s spread out. If you find him, holler. Check under the steps first. If we don’t find him hiding under someone’s steps, we’ll start trying the doors. Okay, let’s go! I don’t think he’s armed, but I don’t want anyone trying to be a hero. Understand?”

Lou and I formed the rear guard. The uniformed officers examined the path before them and realized that the dirt road dead-ended after a few hundred feet. I guessed that it probably ran the length of the street. While there was a connector on the end we came from, there was nothing to connect the underground of the two sides at the head of the street. A couple of officers remained at the bottom of the U portion of the underground, as did Lou and I.  We were prepared in case the man we were chasing tried to double back. The others crept forward until they had canvassed the entire area. George remained halfway between us and his advancing men. A thorough search revealed nothing.

“Okay, men. It’s time to check some doors. Start at the far end of the street. If your door’s locked, start working back this way.”

After several efforts revealed only locked doors, a uniformed officer tiptoed up the underground steps of Stanley Silverman’s house. He twisted the doorknob. It opened. I watched him turn and whisper to the nearest officer. As the officer opened the door, no one lunged toward him. The policeman stepped inside, flashed his light up the steps.

“Hold it right there,” I heard him say. Then, the officer opened the door behind him and shouted, “I’ve found him.” Other policemen ran to the aid of the officer who had shouted.

I heard someone run down the steps toward the officer, and then the sound stopped. Evidently, the man had lunged toward the officer, because in a couple of seconds the two men flew out the door. The officer clutched the man and managed to hold on. The two falling men knocked down two other officers, as men went flying in a domino effect.

More officers ran up to the foray. Finally, they subdued the assailant. One officer handcuffed the man’s hands behind his back. The man’s shriek echoed the outburst of an hour or so earlier. It took three officers to get the man to his feet. Once they had him standing, I tried to question him.

“Who are you?”

The man said nothing. Further questions proved futile. A search of his person revealed nothing. He carried no weapon. Nor did he have any identification.

George told a couple of the men to take the unidentified man away.

+++

I stood and looked up the underground steps to Stanley Silverman’s residence. I couldn’t believe that Silverman hadn’t heard the man trying to force his way inside. Was Silverman afraid of this man? Or could it be that Silverman knew the police were pursuing this fugitive, and he, Stanley Silverman, had something to hide from the police? Was the man we arrested the one who looked out through Miss Penrod’s blinds? Is it possible he could be the man in the raincoat? While he was not as big as Jimmy Reynolds, he was still a pretty good sized man, so I dismissed him as the man in the raincoat, provided there actually was such a person.

My thoughts returned to the matter which brought us to this dilemma. Someone murdered Mrs. Nelson. Was it the psychotic man we’d just caught? Silverman? Or someone else?

George put his arm around my shoulder as we walked back to where we found the underground psycho. George patted me a few times, then smiled at me. I knew George Michaelson well enough to know that he was about to make a wise crack.

“You know, Cy. You look as if you could use a shower.”

“Well, George, you don’t look like you’re ready for inspection yourself.”

Both of us pointed at each other, slapped each other on the back and bent over in laughter. I winced as George slapped me across the back and gritted my teeth when I attempted to stand up straight. Luckily, George didn’t notice. After we took a moment to realize what had happened, we walked back through the dusty underground to where we found the deranged man. We walked across the bottom of the U until we came to the curve where we’d encountered the man whom we’d taken into custody. We stood in the underground below Mrs. Overstreet’s house trying to figure out who the deranged man was. Who was he, and how did he get here? Was he crazy, or was he putting on an act? And if he was suffering from mental problems, were his demons, like Jimmy Reynolds’s problems, caused by the war?

Our group studied the area to see what we could learn about our captive. My guess was our “friend” had resided in the dungeon for several weeks.

A search of the immediate area turned up a flashlight with dead batteries, a few cans of food, and drink containers. Nothing else was found, including a weapon, but then Mrs. Nelson was poisoned, not shot.

“Well, let’s check out this side and see if we can find out who this guy is and where he came from.”

Lou, George, and I talked as we walked, until our flashlights illuminated something that silenced us.