“Maybe you bleed ink, O’Connor, like some of your friends at the paper.”
“No more than you bleed blue.”
Lefebvre smiled and said, “All right. Just so long as we understand each other.” He took his gun out and started to climb. O’Connor concentrated on stepping where Lefebvre stepped, seeing the reddish brown spots they avoided, all the while telling himself that it wasn’t really so much blood, perhaps no more than a small cut would produce.
Then Lefebvre’s flashlight caught a smear of blood on the wall of the hallway. Much more blood than they had seen before. It was up high, at about the height of a man’s waist. “Someone was carried, I think,” Lefebvre said softly. “Not very carefully.”
They turned a corner; this hallway was much darker than the rest of the house. Moonlight came through an open doorway at the end of the hall. Lefebvre stood for a long moment, listening. Gradually, cautiously, opening doors one by one, they worked their way down the hallway. Below, they heard patrol cars pulling up, doors opening.
Lefebvre called to them once, telling them that O’Connor was with him, and to be careful not to step on bloodstains on the stairs, but otherwise continued his methodical clearing of each room.
Two of the officers caught up with them. They carried powerful portable lights and brightened the hallway with these. With the additional light and more men to check the rooms, they made progress more quickly. Lefebvre noticed some faint bloody shoeprints and again warned the others to avoid stepping near them or the drops of blood along the floor.
The rooms were empty and only briefly held their interest, save the last one-the open one.
It, too, was unoccupied, but the bright lights illuminated several large bloodstains and bloody shoeprints on the hardwood floor. A closet door stood open. There were several objects scattered on the floor. O’Connor immediately recognized one of these and felt woozy, as if he had taken a hard, unexpected punch.
“Her jacket,” O’Connor said brokenly, starting forward, then heeding the pressure of Lefebvre’s hand on his shoulder, did not move into the room.
“Yes. I recognize it, too. The one she had on today,” Lefebvre said. “And that’s her purse, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I think so.”
They could also see a wallet, some bloodied tissues, a rag, and a small bottle.
Lefebvre moved cautiously into the room, avoiding the bloodstains and spatter. O’Connor saw him briefly glance at the shoeprints-which seemed to have started when someone stepped in blood in this room, and became fainter as he had walked down the hall, toward the stairs. Lefebvre spent a little more time studying a handprint on the floor, and then looking at the bottle, although without picking it up.
“Chloroform,” he said.
O’Connor leaned against the door frame. “Jesus…”
Lefebvre looked up at him. “She probably left here alive. They wouldn’t have bothered moving the body if all they wanted to do was kill her.”
O’Connor said nothing, but Lefebvre perhaps read his next thought, because he added, “No use thinking the worst just yet.”
He put on a pair of gloves and carefully opened Irene’s handbag. He held up a reporter’s notebook, then a wristwatch.
“Hers. If he’s done something to her…” O’Connor said angrily.
Lefebvre ignored him and reached back into the bag. He found another wristwatch, a man’s watch-and a wallet.
O’Connor felt briefly puzzled. Two wallets? Two watches? Were they both attacked?
Lefebvre verified that the wallet from the handbag was Irene’s. “There’s some cash and a credit card here, so apparently she wasn’t robbed.” He gingerly opened the man’s wallet. Something wrapped in a piece of paper fell to the floor. Lefebvre ignored it for the moment and looked through the wallet’s contents. “Max’s temporary California driver’s license. And it doesn’t appear that he was robbed, either. I’d say they’re both in trouble, though.”
Lefebvre reached for the fallen paper and opened it. “A New Hampshire driver’s license. Kyle Yeager-Max’s old license.” He read the note that had been wrapped around it-the paper had been torn from a spiral notebook.
“What does it say?” O’Connor asked anxiously.
“It says, ‘Warren Ducane knows where we are.’”
47
I OPENED MY EYES IN UTTER DARKNESS. FOR A PANICKED MOMENT I WAS convinced I had been blinded. My cheek lay against a cold surface-hard and smooth. Concrete or marble, I thought. I could smell dried blood on my clothing. I remembered Max then. I tried to move and found that my wrists were taped together, as were my feet.
“Who’s there?” a voice called from nearby.
“Max? It’s Irene.”
“Irene? Oh God…”
“How’s your head? You were bleeding…”
“Never mind me-did they hurt you?”
“Not really. They used some kind of drug on me-chloroform or ether- I don’t remember anything after that.”
“Are you all right?”
“A little woozy, that’s all. Max, it’s you I’m worried about. Your head was bleeding so much. And you sound-I don’t know, you just don’t sound like yourself. Worse off than I am, anyway. Are you still tied up?”
“Yes. I’m-I’m okay. I don’t think I’m still bleeding, but I’m tied up. You are, too, I take it?”
“Yes. Your head must be killing you.”
“They hit me pretty hard, I guess.”
“Your cousins?”
“I can’t be certain, but I think so. Whoever it was hit me from behind.”
I had no idea how long I had been knocked out, and began to wonder how late it was. My father-I had to get out of here. He would worry…
No use thinking of that right now, I told myself. I felt groggy, but the chill air was helping to clear my head.
“Any idea where we are?”
“No.”
“Somewhere in the house?”
“It has a big basement,” he said. “Maybe that’s where we are. No-wait. The basement floor has linoleum on it.”
We decided to try calling for help. We shouted a few times. It made my head ache worse than before.
“We could be anywhere,” Max said. His voice sounded odd, with a drowsy quality to it.
“I’m going to try to scoot over to you.”
I moved slowly and not in a very controlled way. I was now sure the surface below me was concrete; too rough to be marble. It felt like a cold, damp sidewalk.
I lost track of Max’s location in the dark. “Talk again,” I said.
“What?”
“Are you falling asleep?”
“I guess I kind of drifted off.”
It was enough to help me find him. Sort of. I found his shoes with my face. It startled him as much as it did me.
“Okay, I’m going to work my way up to your hands. You’re lying on your right side?”
It seemed to stump him for a moment, then he answered, “Yes.”
