Let Me Go (34 page)

The blackness was absolute. It was somehow darker than it had been before she had even found the Coleman. She had to blink to reassure herself that her eyes were still open. It was like death. It was like her consciousness and her body had been separated. This was what Gretchen did. She terrorized. She tortured. It wasn't enough that she was going to kill Susan, she was going to make her scared first.

Susan reached for the lantern and turned it back on.

Fuck it.
She had never been very good at rationing anything. She pulled her T-shirt over her knees for warmth, scraped a bit of peanut butter off the front of the shirt, and ate it.

Anyway, she wasn't camping with her dad. Her dad was dead. She wasn't sure now that they had ever been camping. Maybe she had just seen that tin Coleman in the basement.

Susan hugged her knees and kept her eyes on the edge of the light.

She was on a submarine. She was on a submarine in the deep Pacific, exploring the Mariana Trench. And she was absolutely alone.

 

CHAPTER

39

 

The island was
a dark shape in the distance. Archie stood next to Gretchen in the thick woods of an undeveloped lakeside property. The trees went right down to the lake's waterline and were dense enough to obscure the houses on either side of the two-acre lot. The ground was a soft bed of cedar needles and the branches of the hulking evergreens blotted out the stars. They had parked on the side of the road and then Gretchen had led him through the trees with only a small penlight to guide them. He'd tripped on tree roots and fallen twice, but she navigated the woods easily, as if she'd memorized the terrain. She also had the advantage of not being high.

The cold black water of the lake lapped gently at the muddy shore. The dead leaves that lined the bank were soft and fetid, and smelled of rot.

“Where are we going?” Archie asked.

“The one place the police know I'm not,” Gretchen said.

Archie gazed back up at the island. It was a hundred yards away, and he had a feeling they weren't going to take the bridge. “Are we going to swim?” he asked.

She turned to him. The white of her nurse's uniform seemed to glow faintly in the dark, making her look almost ghostly. She swung the penlight back into the woods and he followed her between the rough trunks until they came to a sort of clearing. Far above them, there was a shred of dark blue where the treetops didn't entirely cloak the sky. Gretchen aimed the light near the toes of her white pumps.

“Here,” she said. “Clear it.”

Archie looked at the ground she was indicating with the penlight. He could see in the light that the bed of cedar needles had been disturbed. The older, darker needles were mixed in with the lighter, dryer ones. He dropped to his knees and started sweeping the pungent needles aside with his hands, piling them to one side. A few inches below the surface, his palms touched wood. Archie used the forearm of his corduroy blazer to brush the rest of the needles aside, and then he sat back on his heels. The wooden slab that he had revealed was three feet by four feet. The air smelled thickly of cedar. Splinters stung his hands.

“There are two tunnels in,” Gretchen said. “Jack Reynolds's island? Look on a map, darling. It's called Runner Island. The old man who built the house in the twenties was a bootlegger. Jack's interest in the island went beyond an enthusiasm for Tudor architecture. The other tunnel is newer, reinforced, well lit. I assume it's the one they use for their business. This one is a bit dodgy. I had to pry the door open from the inside. You're not afraid of spiders, are you?”

Archie looked behind them, through the trees, toward the dark water. “It goes under the lake?” he asked. It had been ten months since he'd pulled Susan's lifeless body from the floodwaters, but the dark water still gripped at something in his chest.

“You're not going to drown, darling,” Gretchen said gently.

He believed her. She would not let him drown. He believed her because she had said it, and because he had long ago come to terms with the fact that when he did die, it would be on Gretchen Lowell's terms. “So how is it going to happen?” he asked her.

She paused. The small circle of light thrown by the penlight in her hand remained at her feet, unmoving. “I haven't decided yet.”

“Well, that's comforting,” Archie said.

Gretchen shifted the light to a blocky wooden handle and then bent over and pulled the tunnel door open with a rusty creak. The door slammed onto the ground, filling the air with dust and dirt. They both stood looking at the inky well at their feet. The light of the penlight was swallowed by the darkness. Archie could barely see where solid ground gave way to air, but he thought he saw a ladder descending into the pit.

“After you,” Gretchen said.

Archie had the brief sensation that he was standing next to his own open grave, and then he thought of Susan, shook it off, and felt his way into the hole.

The wooden ladder went straight down. It was ancient and soft with dry rot and splintered under Archie's hands. He counted the rungs as he descended, each foothold giving slightly under his weight. After twenty, he hit solid ground. He stepped back into the blackness and brushed the splinters from his hands. Gretchen stepped off the ladder next to him. She had the penlight in her mouth and she dropped it into her hand and shone it around the dirt floor until she zeroed in on something and went to it. The space filled with white fluorescent light. Archie blinked for a moment, seeing spots. Then his eyes adjusted. Gretchen was standing in her blood-spattered nurse's costume holding the handle of a Coleman battery-powered camp lantern. The walls of the pit were rough-hewn rock and dirt, reinforced with decaying timber beams. The air was earthy and dank. A jagged tunnel headed horizontally into blackness.

Something dropped onto Archie's head and started crawling across his forehead. He flicked it away, without seeing what it was. “Happy Halloween,” he said dryly.

“This way,” Gretchen said, pointing the light to indicate that he should follow her.

The tunnel was just big enough that they could walk side by side, Archie occasionally ducking as his head brushed rotting timber beams. The walls were carved out of rock. The dirt floor was uneven and seemed to slope slightly downward, though Archie couldn't be sure. The sensation wasn't Oxycodone related. The temperature dropped the farther they went, until it felt a good fifteen degrees cooler down here than it had been up on the surface. Gretchen's white stockings and shoes gleamed. Rats scampered at the periphery of the lantern light. Archie could hear them squealing.

“You got to Susan between my house and her mother's,” Archie said. He was hunched over, hands in his pockets, trying to stay in the light.

“I was watching you,” Gretchen said. “I knew where she'd go once I put that question on her screen, and she showed right up, predictable little thing.”

Archie ducked under another beam. Loose dirt sprinkled from the tunnel's ceiling, falling on them from overhead like rain. “You must have tampered with her car before everyone else showed up,” he said.

“Even an old Saab has a computer,” Gretchen said, brushing the dirt from her shoulders. “I hacked the electronic control system of her car, and then I was able to control the car's computer wirelessly from a laptop.” She touched his elbow. “Watch this rock,” she said, shining the lantern in front of him, to illuminate a rock in his path the size of a lunchbox. Archie stepped around it.

“The car's computer controls the radio,” Gretchen continued. “The horn. The engine. It's really quite amazing. Susan doesn't vary her route from your house, you know. I didn't even have to follow her. I went ahead, and waited. And then I offered her a ride.” She smiled. “I think I might have frightened her.”

Another rat darted from the light. The ceiling spit more dirt in Archie's hair. “So you drove her somewhere,” Archie said. He was trying to puzzle out what time Susan had left his apartment, how far Gretchen could have gotten with her in order to make it back to his house when she did. He thought that Susan had left between ten and ten-thirty. Gretchen had shown up just past one
A.M
.

“I'll save you the math, darling,” Gretchen said. “I had almost three hours to take her somewhere and get back to you,” she said. “And I'll give you a hint, I didn't drug her.”

“You needed her mobile,” Archie said. He searched the tunnel floor ahead of them for signs of footprints. Gretchen had been down here before—maybe Susan had been her first guest. But the uneven ground threw too many shadows for Archie to make out any trace of disturbed ground.

“No one comes down here anymore,” Gretchen said idly. “Jack and his people don't use these parts of the tunnels.”

“I wonder why,” Archie said.

Archie ducked under another timber support beam that had disintegrated to cobwebs and splinters, and tried not to think about the ten thousand pounds of pressure from the lake pressing to get in.

They kept going, advancing in silence, Archie's mind busy trying to figure out if Susan was really somewhere down there, or if Gretchen just wanted him to think that Susan was down there somewhere so that he'd trudge along obediently beside her. Occasionally he glanced around at the darkness that filled in behind them. It was complete black, like the world was evaporating with each of their steps, disintegrating into nothingness. Archie remained close to Gretchen. He didn't want to risk stepping outside of the light.

“I have a surprise for you,” Gretchen said.

Gretchen's surprises were never good. “Will it use up my health insurance deductible?” Archie asked.

“It's a gift,” Gretchen said, picking up her pace. “You'll like it.”

Archie hurried along beside her. “I don't want any more presents.”

“Guess what it is,” Gretchen said.

Was it an illusion, or was the tunnel getting smaller? “What
what
is?” he asked.

“The present,” Gretchen said.

There was only black space up ahead, no way to see how far they had to go, if this tunnel ever ended. “I'm not really in the mood for games,” Archie said. He was breathing hard. The tunnel air was light on oxygen.

“What do you like to do best of all?” Gretchen asked. She stopped and lifted the lantern, illuminating both of their faces.

Archie raised a hand to shade his eyes. “I give up,” he said.

“Catch killers,” she said brightly.

Archie dropped his hand and gazed at her in incomprehension. The light carved dark shadows into her face, sharpening each angle. “You're turning yourself in?” he asked.

“No,” she said. She lowered the lantern. “Don't be silly, darling.” She turned on her shiny white heel and started moving again, and Archie found himself instantly enveloped by darkness. Rocks crunched under his feet as he struggled to catch up with her.

They continued in silence again, so that the only sounds were the rats, the gravel under their feet, and the distant menacing whisper of the lake moving over their heads.

“There,” Gretchen said finally.

She aimed the light straight ahead, where the tunnel ended at a thick wooden door set in a concrete wall. They had come to the end of the line.

“It sticks,” Gretchen said. “We'll both have to push.”

Archie didn't argue. Wherever that door led, he was confident he would like it more than the tunnel he was standing in. He put his shoulder against the warped wood and leaned into it as Gretchen turned the rusty knob. With the only other exit back the way they had come, Archie gave it his all, inhaling a century's worth of dust and cobwebs in the process. It took three body slams before the door gave way, and he tumbled through the doorway in a cloud of dirt, barely getting his hands out in front of him in time to break his fall as he toppled into darkness. The first thing he noticed was that the floor on the other side was hard. He got to his feet, palms stinging, shoulder aching, coughing up dust, as Gretchen came through the door behind him with the light. They were standing at the intersection of two concrete passageways. Archie shook the cobwebs off his blazer, thumbed the dust from his eyes, and glanced around. This wasn't like the pseudo-mine-shaft they'd just come through; this was a basement.

They were on the island, or under it.

It was not the first time Gretchen had taken him to a basement. The last time, Archie had nearly died. Archie rubbed his shoulder where he'd bashed it into the door for her. “Should I be worried?” he asked.

Without answering, Gretchen turned and moved swiftly away down the concrete hall, taking the lantern with her. Again, Archie found himself in the dark.

“Hey?” Archie said. “Wait.”

He could see the faint outline of her silhouette, the glow of her stockings and cap, and then, in an instant, she was gone. Everything went black. Archie's senses were electrified, as he fought the dread that suddenly gripped him by the gut. He looked back in the direction of the door they had just come through, but it was too dark, he couldn't see if it was still open. His skin felt prickly and cold. Then he heard the creak of rusty hinges.
A door up ahead.
That's why Gretchen had vanished so suddenly—she had stepped behind an open door. Archie made his way tentatively forward, finding the wall with his hand to guide him, a cold sweat on his neck. Then he saw it—a ribbon of white outlined the door in the darkness. Archie's fingers grazed the chalky concrete wall as he felt his way closer. His hand found the doorknob and he turned it and pushed the door open.

Gretchen was standing with the lantern at her feet, waiting for him.

“Get the light switch, would you, darling?” she purred.

Archie hesitated, confused.

“Just inside the door to the right,” she said.